Trade Forex, Cryptocurrencies, Individual Stocks, Commodities, Precious Metals, Energies and Equity Indices at Markettargets.
As one major forex market closes, another one opens. According to GMT, for instance, forex trading hours move around the world like this: available in New York between 01:00 pm – 10:00 pm GMT; at 10:00 pm GMT Sydney comes online; Tokyo opens at 00:00 am and closes at 9:00 am GMT; and to complete the loop, London opens at 8:00 am and closes at 05:00 pm GMT. This enables traders and brokers worldwide, together with the participation of the central banks from all continents, to trade online 24 hours a day.
The forex market is open 24 hours a day, and it is important to know which are the most
active trading periods.
For instance, if we take a less active period between 5 pm – 7 pm EST, after New York closes
and before Tokyo opens, Sydney will be open for trading but with more modest activity than
the three major sessions (London, US, Tokyo). Consequently, less activity means less
financial opportunity. If you want to trade currency pairs like EUR/USD, GBP/USD or USD/CHF
you will find more activity between 8 am – 12 pm when both Europe and the United States are
active.
Other forex trading hours to watch out for are the release times of government reports and
official economic news. Governments issue timetables for when exactly these news releases
take place, but they do not coordinate releases between the different countries.
It is thus worth finding out about the economic indicators published in the different major
countries, as these coincide with the most active moments of forex trading. Such increased
activity means bigger opportunities in currency prices, and sometimes orders are executed at
prices that differ from those you expected.
As trader, you have two main options: either include the news periods in your forex trading
hours, or decide to deliberately suspend trading during these periods. Whichever alternative
you opt for, you should take a pro-active approach when prices suddenly change during a news
release.
For day traders the most productive hours are between the opening of the London markets at
08:00 GMT and the closing of the US markets at 22:00 GMT. The peak time for trading is when
the US and London markets overlap between 1 pm GMT – 4 pm GMT. The main sessions of the day
are the London, US and Asian markets.
Below is a brief overview of trading sessions that will help you make the most of the
market:
LONDON SESSION – open between 8 am GMT – 5 pm GMT; EUR, GBP, USD are the most active
currencies;
US SESSION – open between 1 pm GMT – 10 pm GMT; USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, JPY are the most active
currencies;
ASIAN SESSION – opens at about 10 pm GMT on Sunday afternoon, goes into the European trading
session at about 9 am GMT; not very suitable for day trading.
Markettargets trading hours are between Sunday 22:05 GMT and Friday 21:50 GMT. When our dealing desk is
closed, the trading platform does not execute trades and its features are only available for
viewing.
For any enquiries, technical difficulties, or urgent support, feel free to contact our
24-hour customer experience team by email or live chat any time. Please have your account
login details with you so that we can help you with your orders.
For closing positions, setting a take profit or stop loss order on an existing position you
will also need to provide us with your ticket number. Then all you will need to do is
request for a two-way quote on a particular currency pair and specify the transaction size
(e.g. “I’d like a Dollar Japanese Yen quote for 10 lots.”). Please remember if password
authorization fails, or you do not wish to undergo this process, we will not be able to
carry out your instructions.