Forex Trading Around the Clock

ByR. Stevens

When reading about forex trading, one of the first things you'll learn is that this market is a bit different from the others. One of the many advantages of the forex market is that it's a market open around the clock. At any time during the day between Sunday 2200GMT and Friday 2200GMT, you can trade. This means not only open and see the market moving, but actually acting on it by opening, closing or managing trades. This is a huge difference with other markets because they have very specific opening and closing hours during the day.

How does that affect us?

Well, first of all it allows anyone from anywhere in the world to trade at anytime they want. That's right, anytime. Whether you want to trade 10 minutes before going to work, or one hour after putting the kids to sleep, or even all day from 8 to 5, you can. You are no longer tied to the fixed hours of the markets; you can make your own hours, your own schedule, and eventually a lot more of your own decisions.

Another great advantage is that the forex market is a very open market. It is worldwide, and scheduled, which means that a great percentage of the big news that affects the market is scheduled to come at a specific time of a specific day and everyone knows it. No insider information, no surprises (most of the time). You can be ready for the news to come, have your strategy prepared or make any appropriate adjustments you need. Some traders will get the news faster than others - there's a paying fee for this; but for the most part all traders are equal in that regard.

The forex market is divided into sessions, which means that you can do some forex trading during the Asian session, or the London session, etc. This is important because some of those sessions overlap, giving the market extra-boosts of volume because of the amount of traders forex trading during those overlapping times. This is why, even though the market is open 24 hours a day, it is preferable to trade during those overlapping times.

Here's a rundown of the best times to trade:

From 8am to 12am EST (London/New York)

From 7pm to 2am EST (Sydney/Tokyo)

From 3am to 4am EST (London/Tokyo)

So remember: traders shouldn't trade just because the market is open. This leads to over trading which is one of the biggest reasons for traders to lose in the long run. Forex trading is about picking the best moments to trade and executing your forex trading plan the best you can.

Visit the Forex Training Worldwide website to find out more about our Forex Trading course and our Forex training mentors.