The four sessions
Lesson 9 · about 9 min
FX is open from Sunday evening to Friday evening, New York time, without a break. "Open 24 hours" is true and also misleading, because the market is not the same market all day. Liquidity, spreads and the size of moves follow the sun around the world, and a beginner who ignores that will pay wider spreads for smaller moves at the wrong hours.
Where liquidity comes from
There is no opening bell. What "opens" is the banking day in each financial centre. When London's dealers arrive, London-based volume arrives with them. When New York's leave, it goes. The four centres that matter are Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York, and they are conventionally called the four sessions.
| Session | Local hours | Eastern Time (winter) | UTC (winter) | Character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 07:00 to 16:00 | 15:00 to 00:00 | 20:00 to 05:00 | Thin; the week's first quotes; AUD and NZD news |
| Tokyo | 09:00 to 18:00 | 19:00 to 04:00 | 00:00 to 09:00 | Moderate; JPY pairs most active; ranges narrow |
| London | 08:00 to 17:00 | 03:00 to 12:00 | 08:00 to 17:00 | Deepest liquidity; biggest moves; EUR and GBP |
| New York | 08:00 to 17:00 | 08:00 to 17:00 | 13:00 to 22:00 | Deep in the morning, thin after London closes |
The hours are approximate; different sources shift them by an hour. Daylight saving in Sydney, London and New York switches on different dates, so the Eastern-time columns move around twice a year. The safe habit is to think in local hours for each centre and convert.
Sydney and Tokyo: the Asian session
The week starts in Wellington and Sydney on Monday morning, which is Sunday afternoon in New York. Volume is low, spreads are wide, and the first hour is often where weekend gaps show up (Lesson 3).
Tokyo brings in the yen. USD/JPY, EUR/JPY and AUD/JPY are the most active pairs, and Japanese economic releases and Bank of Japan commentary land here. Chinese data (released mid-morning Beijing time) moves AUD and NZD. EUR/USD and GBP/USD, by contrast, often drift in a 20 to 40 pip range for the whole session because the people who trade them are asleep.
Traders in Asia and Australia trade this session by necessity. For everyone else it is mainly a time to be aware of, not a time to trade European pairs.
London: the centre of the market
London handles the largest share of global FX turnover. When European dealers arrive around 07:00 to 08:00 local, spreads on the majors compress to their tightest of the day and the Asian range is usually broken within the first couple of hours. The morning also carries the European data calendar: eurozone and UK releases mostly land between 07:00 and 10:30 London time.
If you can only trade for two or three hours a day and you want to trade EUR/USD or GBP/USD, the London morning is the obvious candidate.
New York: overlap, then fade
The New York day begins at 08:00 Eastern while London is still open. For the next four hours both centres are active, and this London/New York overlap (08:00 to 12:00 ET) is the most liquid window in the world. Most of the major US releases (CPI, NFP, retail sales) land at 08:30 ET, inside it.
After London closes at 12:00 ET, volume drops sharply. The New York afternoon is quieter than the Tokyo session for the European pairs, and the last hour before 17:00 ET is dominated by position squaring, option expiries (10:00 ET is the main cut, but there are others) and the daily rollover.
What "tradeable" means by session
| Session or window | EUR/USD spread (illustrative) | Typical EUR/USD range in window | Who is active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney only | 1.5 to 3 pips | 10 to 25 pips | Few |
| Tokyo | 0.8 to 1.5 pips | 25 to 40 pips | Asian banks, JPY flows |
| London morning | 0.2 to 0.8 pips | 40 to 70 pips | Everyone in Europe |
| London/New York overlap | 0.2 to 0.8 pips | 40 to 60 pips | Everyone |
| New York afternoon | 0.8 to 1.5 pips | 15 to 30 pips | US only, thinning |
| Around 17:00 ET rollover | 3 to 10+ pips | Unpredictable | Almost nobody |
The numbers are typical rather than exact, and they change with the volatility regime. The ordering does not change: London and the overlap are cheap and move; Sydney and rollover are expensive and do not.
Key idea: The market is open all day, but it is only deep for about nine hours: the London session and the first half of New York. Trade a pair when its home centre is at work, and treat the rest of the clock as observation time.
Matching pair to session
- EUR/USD, GBP/USD, EUR/GBP, USD/CHF: London and the overlap.
- USD/JPY, EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY: Tokyo for the yen leg, London for the other; the overlap works too.
- AUD/USD, NZD/USD: Sydney/Tokyo for local data, but the biggest moves still come in London and New York because that is where the dollar is traded.
- USD/CAD: New York, with Canadian data at 08:30 ET alongside US data.
Try it: On a one-hour chart of EUR/USD, mark the London open (08:00 London) and the London close (17:00 London) for the last ten weekdays. Count how many days the Asian-session high or low was broken in the first three hours of London. Then count how many days the New York afternoon (after 12:00 ET) exceeded the London range. Write both numbers in your journal; they are your first data on where the movement lives.
Recap
- FX runs Sunday evening to Friday evening New York time, but liquidity follows the banking day in Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York.
- Sydney is thin; Tokyo is moderate and yen-focused; London is the deepest; New York is deep until London closes and then fades.
- The London/New York overlap (08:00 to 12:00 ET) has the tightest spreads and carries most US data.
- Match the pair to the session where its home currency is being traded.
- Daylight saving shifts the overlaps; think in each centre's local time and convert.
See it drawn
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.