Trade Foreign Currency: The Best Time To Trade

If you are serious about making money with forex trading, you will need to know the best time to trade foreign currency. And by the way if you are not serious about it, you probably should not be getting involved! Forex trading is not risk free and there are plenty of things that you need to know before you start trading for real.

Generally the best plan for a beginner is to get into the habit of trading during some of the busiest times. Do not look for quiet periods hoping to make a big break when nobody else is around. It just does not happen that way and you could be caught out. Better to go with the crowd at a time when you can be more sure of being matched at a good price for both your opening and closing deals.

So when are the busiest forex trading times? The answer is the overlap between the London and New York forex trading hours. London is actually the busiest currency trading floor, with New York second. London business hours are good for trading on the euro, British pound and Swiss franc, since most of the major countries using these currencies are within one hour time difference from Britain. New York of course is the home of the US dollar, the most traded currency, and the time zone also covers Canada.

Expressed in British time (the same as UTC in winter), trading starts in London at 8.00 am and finishes at 4 pm, while trading in New York starts at 1 pm UTC and finishes at 9 pm. Therefore the overlap is from 1 pm to 4 pm British time. Expressed in New York time (EST), the overlap is from 8 am to 11 am. That is when the forex market is busiest on practically every day.

Of course those hours may not be ideal for everybody. If you live in one of those time zones and want to trade foreign currency outside of normal business hours when you may be working another job, you will certainly have the opportunity. If you live in Europe you can trade in the evening when the New York market is still open, and if you live in the EST time zone you can trade in the early market when the London floor is already very active.

Also, if you trade cross pairs that do not involve the US dollar, you may find a busy time for that pair based on the business hours of their two countries. For example the AUD/JPY pair can be reasonably busy during the Asian session when Australian and Japanese business hours overlap. However, even on these pairs there is usually more activity if you can also overlap with US or British trading times.

Long term traders who may leave a trade open for several days or weeks will be less constrained by the peak trading times. For day traders, however, it is important to be able to slip in and out of a very busy market if you want to profit from forex scapling strategies. So it is also important to take into account how you plan to trade foreign currency.