When should I trade Forex?

As you may have guessed, the Foreign Exchange market is open 24 hours a day, from Sunday US evening until Friday US afternoon, which makes about 5 and half days of trading per week.

A Forex trading day starts when the Sydney (Australia) market opens at 5:00pm EST on Sunday night with limited liquidity as most markets are still closed at this time… then the market picks up around Tokyo open as the Japanese market joins in… Then the European market opens around 3:00am where the liquidity starts to really pick up, and this is the time we see some major moves and market trend developments…

As we get to European noon time, the U.S. market opens and we now have an overlapping of markets during the early U.S. session, this is the time we typically see most liquidity as the entire European and American markets are trading together.

As we approach the U.S. afternoon, American remains the only markets open until 4:59pm EST, then the whole cycle starts again at 5:00pm with Sydney market opening.

And of course, during the Asian market open, the general focus is on Asian currencies such as the Japanese Yen, the Australian dollar, and the New Zealand dollar (JPY, AUD, NZD); and during the European market, market them focuses on the Euro, on the Sterling and also on the Swiss franc (EUR,GBP,CHF).

Once we overlap into the US market, then we see more activities in the US dollar and also in the Canadian dollar. Although the US dollar is pretty much active throughout the entire trading day, as 85% of the total daily volume in the Forex trading has to do with the US dollar.

So in conclusion, you can trade 24 hours a day for about 5 and a half days a week in the Forex market, but the best time to trade the major currencies is during the time when its market is open.