Forex Trading Times
It is important to realize what are the times that certain markets are at their peak trading, because these are the times when the markets are most liquid, and the spreads most tight, meaning you can get better fills for your orders. This can also mean that you can increase your profits, especially if your trading includes day trading, which often operates on razor thin margins to be successful. On the outset, of course, the markets are really open once Auckland in New Zealand starts trading on Monday morning and ends with the West Coast and Hawaiian traders making the bulk of the market trading at the end of the week on Friday. In each of the trading zone, from continent to continent, the bulk of the trading happens from 8am to 4pm. The peaks in trading for forex products happens on each of the time zones when the traders in major financial centers of Tokyo, London, and New York are most active, between 8am to 4pm on their perspective time zones during the week, Monday to Friday. These hours are the ones that also generate most of the news that affect the major currency pairs, especially those involving EUR, USD, and JPY. There are events that happen outside of the most active hours, of course, but that is why many trading operations use 24 hour trading desks to take advantage of events, even though the trading happens outside of the peak hours for London, New York, or Tokyo. In the more thinly traded hours of the trading week, the poorer liquidity leads to larger spreads and new information is not so efficiently absorbed into the currency prices as during the hours when the market participants, including currency analysts, are most active. |