This article will be useful for novice forex traders to understand when to trade and when is it better not to trade?
Let’s talk about what Forex trading sessions are, about them, and what is the best time to trade forex, and when is the best time to refrain from trading.
FOREX operates 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. Since there are different time zones in the world, and large companies need to change currency all the time, Forex, unlike the stock exchange, is open around the clock.
Forex trading session schedule
Technically, trading in the Forex market starts on Sunday morning in Tel Aviv and continues until Friday afternoon in New York. However, the Tel Aviv session is so small that it is usually ignored and the real trading starts on Monday morning in Wellington, New Zealand.
Wellington, however, is a small venue, so turnover is low there. Trading really kicks in when Sydney and Tokyo wake up. but when a trading center opens in London, the market with the highest turnover, trading volumes just skyrocket. When London leaves for lunch, New York, the second largest currency trading hub, joins in. The largest volumes of transactions take place during the period when it is day in London and morning in New York. Then London closes and New York remains the main trading center for the rest of the day. The most sluggish trading period is at the junction of the New York (American session) closing and Wellington opening.
Then Sydney opens and the cycle repeats again.
How to find out when each trading session opens and closes?
We all live in different time zones. Russia (there is a discussion on this issue) does not change the clock hands to winter / summer time, but Europe and America are still doing it. Therefore, confusion can easily arise with the timing of trading sessions on Forex.
In order for everyone to be clear and understandable about the schedule of sessions in relation to your local time, I suggest using the Forex Market Hours service. Everything is intuitive there, you just need to set your time zone and the schedule of trading sessions will immediately be rebuilt in accordance with your time. There is a visual instruction in the video tutorial at the beginning of the article.
What is the best time to trade forex?
The fact that Forex works 24 hours a day does not mean at all that you need not leave your monitor around the clock. There are active periods when you can make good money, and there are periods of calm when it is better not to open deals.
If you work on daily charts, then trading sessions can be ignored. You simply open / close positions at the end of the current daily candle. The same is with the 4-hour charts (H4).
But with intraday trading, on charts with a period of 1 hour and below, the most favorable period for opening deals is from the beginning of the European and the first 2-3 hours of the American session. At the end of this period, you should close existing deals and forget about trading until the next day.
