Market sessions

The shares come from the Bank for International Settlements' 2022 survey of forex trading. Currencies trade between banks, funds, companies and brokers all over the world, which is why there is no single exchange.

The three reasons in more detail. Cost: the same EURUSD trade can cost a fraction of a pip at 10:00 London and several pips at rollover. Follow through: the same move in a quiet hour often drifts and comes back. Which pairs move: a currency moves most while its home centre is open and its own data comes out, JPY, AUD and NZD in Asia, EUR and GBP in London, USD in New York.

The same chart can be dead at one hour and moving fast three hours later. Knowing the clock tells you which of the two you are looking at.

The example is a Wednesday in July: London is on summer time, and Singapore stays on UTC+8 all year. Check the Sessions tab before you open a chart.

Each bar is a session at its own city's hours: Tokyo 09:00 to 18:00 Tokyo time, London 08:00 to 17:00 London time, New York 08:00 to 17:00 New York time, and the US stock market 09:30 to 16:00 New York time.

The US moves forward on the second Sunday in March and back on the first Sunday in November. The UK moves on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. So for two to three weeks in March, and about a week around the end of October, London is four hours ahead of New York instead of five, and the overlap runs 5 hours instead of 4. If you live somewhere with no daylight saving, every session moves an hour on your clock twice a year.

In January London goes back to UTC+0, so Singapore is 8 hours ahead. The London open becomes 16:00 in Singapore and the overlap runs 21:00 to 01:00. The London trader's clock did not move. The Singapore trader's did, by an hour, because only one of the two cities changed its clocks.

Index CFDs often quote for most of the day, even though their volume waits for the cash open. Symbol names vary by broker.

You do not have to guess which hours suit you. Plot every trade at the time of day you entered it, with its result in R, and the session your results really come from shows up on its own.

In the example the 08:00 candle closes at 1.3444, above the Asian high, and by 12:00 price reaches 1.3483: 1.6 times the night's range in four hours. A break tells you where the levels are, not which way the day will go.

When you replay, mark the high and low before each 08:00 candle and sort what London did: broke and held, broke and reversed, or stayed inside.

London often pushes through one side of the range first, takes out the stops sitting just beyond it, then reverses through the other side.

In the example the bid peaks at 1.08585, under the stop at 1.08620. With a 0.8 pip spread the ask peaks at 1.08593, still 2.7 pips short. With 4.5 pips it reaches 1.08630 and the stop fills.

Banks settle the day's positions at rollover, which is why liquidity drains. Many brokers charge three days of swap on Wednesday's rollover to cover the weekend; the exact rates are in your broker's contract specifications.

Many brokers also set their server clock so that midnight lands at 17:00 New York (GMT+2 in winter, GMT+3 in summer), which is why a daily candle in MT5 usually runs from one rollover to the next.

The sessions timeline shows the open and close in your time. The world keeps moving while the market is shut, which is why the gap happens, and a trade held over the weekend carries a gap risk you cannot exit during.

The exact opening and closing minutes vary a little by broker. Spreads are wide and liquidity is thin in the first minutes of the week.

Weekend crypto is often thinner than weekday crypto, so moves can be sharp when few people are trading.