As you know, the Forex market operates 24 hours, 5 days a week. This is one of the strong points of currency trading for retail traders: you can find good trade setups at almost any time of the day.

However, what many amateur traders fail to remember is that not every single hour of the day is a good time to trade. In this article, I will point out the best times to trade Forex, and why.

What Are The Conditions For Favourable Trading?

Generally speaking, you’ll want to enter into trades when there is high liquidity in the market. High liquidity helps to reduce slippage, while at the same time providing better opportunities for large market moves and thus larger profits.

In times of low liquidity when relatively few traders are active, market prices are usually flat. This reduces your chances of making money since you’ll need the market to move in order to profit.

Another reason why you should trade during times of high liquidity is because the large trading volume makes it harder (and more expensive) for the financial institutions to artificially manipulate market prices. Stop-loss hunting for example, is much more expensive to carry out during times of high liquidity.

Here are the times when liquidity in the market is typically the highest:

The London Session

The London market opens at 8am GMT (3am EST) and closes at 4pm GMT (11am EST). Most of the daily trading volume occurs during this time. The currencies most actively traded during this period are the USD, EUR, GBP, CHF and JPY.

The New York Session

New York opens at 1pm GMT (8am EST) and closes at 8pm GMT (3pm EST). This is the second largest trading period in terms of transaction volume.

The Asian Session

Last but not least, the Asian session opens in Tokyo at 1am GMT (8pm EST) and closes at 8am GMT (3am EST). Compared to the London and New York sessions, the Asian session usually experiences less volatility in the market. However, some good currency moves may be observed every now and then.