Four sessions, one overlap that matters, and two weeks a year when every printed table is wrong.
The market runs from the Sydney open on Monday to the New York close on Friday. The times below are the conventional windows in UTC. They are also the reason a static table cannot be trusted in March and October, which is why the terminal carries live clocks instead.
The four sessions
Conventional windows, in UTC.
Being straight about it
Why the table above goes wrong twice a year.
Sessions are fixed in local time, and daylight saving does not start on the same date in Europe, the United States and Australia. For two or three weeks each spring and autumn the UTC figures in every static table, including the one above, are an hour out, and the London to New York overlap is three hours rather than four.
It is the commonest error in published session tables and nobody corrects theirs. A clock that reads the actual time cannot make that mistake, which is the entire argument for having one on the board rather than a printed table in a tab.
Depth
A table, or the answer right now.
The panels
Four small boards that answer it properly.
- Session clock. Live clocks for Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York, so the question is answered by looking rather than by counting hours back from a table.
- FX market status. Whether the market is open right now and how long is left in the current session, including the weekend close.
- Event countdown. The next high-impact releases on the currencies you follow, which is the other half of the question: not just whether the market is open, but whether anything is about to happen in it.
- Data freshness. How recently each underlying feed was refreshed. A quiet screen at 3am and a stalled one look identical without it.
Market hours, answered.
What are the forex market hours?
The market runs continuously from the Sydney open on Monday morning local time to the New York close on Friday afternoon. Within that, four session windows are conventional: Sydney roughly 21:00 to 06:00 UTC, Tokyo 00:00 to 09:00, London 08:00 to 17:00 and New York 13:00 to 22:00.
When do London and New York overlap?
Roughly 13:00 to 17:00 UTC, which is the busiest window of the day and where a large share of the daily range in the major pairs is set. It is four hours for most of the year.
Why do the session times seem to change?
Because the sessions are fixed in local time and daylight saving does not start on the same date in Europe, the US and Australia. For two or three weeks each spring and autumn the UTC figures in every static table are an hour wrong, and the London to New York overlap is three hours rather than four. This is the single commonest error in published session tables, and it is why live clocks are worth more than a printed one.
Which session should I trade?
That depends on what you trade rather than on a rule. The European crosses do most of their work in London, the dollar moves hardest in the first hours of New York, and the yen crosses are most active in Tokyo. Liquidity and volatility are highest in the overlap, which cuts both ways.
Is the market open on weekends?
No. It closes at the New York close on Friday and opens with Sydney on Monday. A headline over a weekend shows up as a gap at the Sydney open rather than as a move you can trade into.
Are the clocks free?
The session clock, market status and the event countdown are all on the free plan, along with 32 of the 103 panels overall.