When Does the Forex Market Open and Close?

The week as a whole

The market opens on Sunday evening and closes on Friday evening: roughly 21:00 GMT Sunday to 21:00 GMT Friday. The times shift by an hour between summer and winter, and every broker publishes its own hours in platform time.

It does not close because anyone decides to close it, but because banks around the world do not work at the weekend. Forex is a network of banks; when all of them stop, so does it.

One practical consequence matters: currencies keep reacting to events over the weekend, but price cannot move. So Sunday can open a long way from Friday's close - and that gap can jump straight over a stop loss on a position you left open.

The four sessions

The day divides into four sessions, each with a completely different character:

• Sydney then Tokyo (Asia): quiet, narrow range, thinner liquidity. Spreads widen, and breakouts here are often false.
• London: the largest forex centre in the world. Serious movement begins here, and the Asian session's range is frequently broken in the first hour.
• New York: opens four to five hours after London, and most US data is released alongside it.
• The London-New York overlap: the hours both cities are working. The highest liquidity of the day, the tightest spreads, and the widest movement - most daily trends form here.

If you only trade an hour or two a day, which two hours you pick may matter more than which strategy you use.

Gold and metals are not like currencies

Gold does not trade twenty-four hours continuously at most brokers. There is a short daily break, and its timing differs from broker to broker.

It is also more sensitive to the US session than almost anything else, because it is priced in dollars and its most important data is released there. Trading it during the Asian session is often waiting for nothing.

Check the instrument specification in your own platform - the trading hours are written there, and it is the only reference that applies to your broker rather than somebody else's.

Three times worth avoiding

• The first minutes of the Sunday open: thin liquidity, very wide spreads, and movement that represents nothing.
• The last hour of Friday: institutions are closing positions, which produces sharp moves with no analytical cause.
• The moment a major release lands: the spread widens suddenly and your stop may fill at a worse price than you set.

None of this forbids trading. It explains why some losses look incomprehensible when you review the chart afterwards: the move was not analysis, it was timing.