Forex Market Hours

The foreign exchange market is open 24-hours a day, except on weekends. As one financial centre closes, another one opens. We'll explain the best times to trade, and new ways to spot trading opportunities.

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Forex trading sessions

Trading hours across financial centres (London time, and New York time):

When trading sessions overlap

Foreign exchange markets are most active when sessions overlap across financial centres. For example, trading volumes for the EUR/USD and GBP/USD currency pairs are greatest when London and New York are both open. This is usually when spreads are at their lowest.

If you'd like to learn more, bookmark these GBP/USD and EUR/USD trading guides. They discuss what moves each currency pair, trading strategies as well as the best time to trade GBP/USD and EUR/USD.

Spot Forex trading opportunities

You could be asleep when trading opportunities arise. That's why it's a good idea to use a screener, like Trading Central, to surface opportunities. Trading Central screens the markets 24 hours a day, and delivers the best trade ideas directly within MetaTrader. It even suggests an opening price and target price for closing your position. If you aren't read to trade on the spot, you can bookmark ideas and come back to them later, as illustrated in the video.

Trading Central is available free of charge when you open a MetaTrader account with FxPro or a standard account with AvaTrade.com. Both brokers support all trading styles, including trading bots known as Expert Advisors. FxPro.com goes one step further and allows you to run your Expert Advisors on a virtual private server hosted in a low latency data centre, for just $30 a month.