Best time to trade Forex

The Forex market opens 24 hours, it on Sunday night (5 PM EST) and closes on Friday afternoon (4PM EST).When the Asian market closes its doors, the European market starts followed the US market then the Asian market open it doors again and etc.

During this period you have the freedom to trade in the Forex market anytime and whenever you want. This Time-Freedom-Trade is one of the characteristic that makes the popularity of trading Forex. However, not all the times are suitable for trading Forex that’s because the volatility of the market changes too much during the 24 hours according to the major countries (markets) opens, closes and overlaps.

So, the question “When to trade?” is a very important question for any trader seeks profit in the Forex market, whatever your trading style is.

World time:

Let’s talk about the world time to make sure that your hand-watch is accurate and you can convert easily the time of Forex market sessions to your local time.

There are two main world time systems that widely used:

GMT:

The GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time) is the time of Greenwich – England time and it considered the world standard time system!

The time of Greenwich is 0 and the countries are located in the east of Greenwich have positive GMT time (for example Tokyo time is GMT +9), while the countries located in the west of Greenwich have negative GMT time (for example Alaska time is GMT -10).

You have to note that the GMT time named too UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

The GMT time will be named BST (British Summer Time) when the UK changes the clock (GMT+1) in the summer and that occures between the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October each year.

EST:

The EST (Eastern Standard Time) is the time of North America and it is GMT-5 (UTC-4 during daylight saving time and in this case called EDT).

The major Forex sessions:

There are three major sessions of the Forex market, in these sessions the volatility of the market is much higher in general and for specific currencies according to the session:

Asian session (7PM : 4AM EST):

The Asian session starts at 7 PM EST (12 AM GMT) and ends at 4 AM EST (9 PM GMT).

The most important countries work in this season is Tokyo followed by Hong Kong then Singapore.

The most trading currencies in this session are: GBP/JPY, GBP/CHF and USD/JPY; these three currencies can fluctuate up to 110 pips in this session.

The AUD/JPY, GBP/USD and USDCHF too are traded too much in this session and can fluctuate up to 60 pips.

U.S. session (8 AM : 5 PM EST):

The U.S. session starts at 8 AM EST