Main Trading Sessions / Market Hours in the Forex Market

The forex market is a 24 hour continuous market which starts from Sunday 5pm EST through Friday 4pm EST, it can be divided into 3 major sessions that overlap each other. These sessions are: Asian, European and US sessions. There is trading activity in all sessions, the most volatile are the London and US session, less volatile is the Asian session.

London Trading Session (3AM EST - 12PM EST)

The most active pairs during the London session are EURUSD with 37% of the trading volume, GBPUSD with 22%, USDJPY with 17%, USDCHF with 7% and USDCAD with 5%. During UK news releases the GBP/USD pair can move extremely volatile.

New York Session (8AM EST - 5PM EST)

New York session can be volatile due important news releases. Most volatile pairs are those traded against the US dollar such as EUR/USD or GBP/USD.

Asian Session (7PM EST - 4AM EST)

Usually, trading volatility is low during the Asian session, the USDJPY is the most active pair with 77% of the volume followed by EURUSD with 16% and EURJPY with 5%.
Daily Activity of the forex market