Forex trades around the clock from Sunday evening to Friday evening, but volume concentrates in three regional sessions: Sydney and Tokyo, London, and New York. Session hours are usually quoted in local time, so their UTC equivalents shift twice a year when daylight saving changes in each region.
The three windows in UTC
Each session is defined by the local business day of its financial centre — conventionally 08:00 to 17:00 local time, and 09:00 to 18:00 in Tokyo. Converted to UTC:
| Session | Local hours | UTC, northern winter | UTC, northern summer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 08:00–17:00 AEDT/AEST | 21:00–06:00 | 22:00–07:00 |
| Tokyo | 09:00–18:00 JST | 00:00–09:00 | 00:00–09:00 |
| London | 08:00–17:00 GMT/BST | 08:00–17:00 | 07:00–16:00 |
| New York | 08:00–17:00 EST/EDT | 13:00–22:00 | 12:00–21:00 |
Japan does not observe daylight saving, Australia switches in the opposite direction to Europe and the United States, and the European and American changeover dates are weeks apart. That is the reason session tables published on different sites disagree with each other: they are usually correct for one half of the year and wrong for the other. Always read a table together with the date it was compiled, or convert from local time yourself.
Why the London–New York overlap behaves differently
For roughly four hours a day the London and New York sessions run at the same time — 13:00–17:00 UTC in winter, 12:00–16:00 UTC in summer. Two of the largest pools of order flow are active simultaneously, so the number of participants quoting on both sides of the book is at its highest. More quoting activity generally means a tighter spread and a smaller gap between the price requested and the price filled; it also means larger and faster price moves, because the volume that can be absorbed and the volume that is being pushed through both rise together. Higher liquidity narrows the spread; it does not reduce the size of the move, and both effects are present in the same window.
The reverse holds at the end of the New York session and through the Asian morning on pairs that have no local interest: fewer participants, wider spreads, and thinner books in which a single order moves the price further.
Where the trading day ends
The interbank convention places the end of the trading day at 17:00 New York time — 22:00 UTC in northern winter, 21:00 UTC in summer. A position still open at that moment is rolled to the next value date and the swap is applied; a position opened and closed inside the same trading day is not affected. The exact rollover time and the day on which the weekend is charged at triple rate are stated in the contract specification of each instrument.
Choosing when to enter around these windows is a separate question, covered in the lesson Trade Timing Tactics. This entry describes only when the sessions run and what changes in the market when they overlap.
Converting the windows to your own time zone: the market hours tool is listed with the rest of the trading tools.
