Unlike conventional stock and commodities exchanges, the forex market provides traders with the opportunity to trade 24 hours a day. The forex market keeps open around the clock from Sunday afternoon at 5:00 PM EST until Friday afternoon at 5:00 PM EST.

In addition, forex trading sessions overlap among the different time zones and key trading centers, so the possibility of trading in different markets during the same session exists.

The following sections cover the primary forex trading session times for each part of the world. All of these are listed from the Eastern Standard Time or EST perspective, not taking into account any Daylight Savings Time adjustments.

Sydney Session

The forex trading week generally starts down under with the Sydney, Australia opening at 5:00 PM EST Sunday evening, although some forex traders in Auckland, New Zealand make prices even earlier.

Throughout the following forex trading week, the Sydney open at 5:00 PM EST is basically the same time as the New York Session's 5:00 PM EST close the next day.

In other words, when the market in New York closes on Monday at 5:00 PM, the market in Sydney opens on Tuesday morning in its time zone.

This allows many professional forex traders based in New York to pass their order books on to traders based in Sydney for watching at least until the Tokyo opening.

The Sydney Session closes at 2:00 AM EST and overlaps significantly with the Asian or Tokyo Session which begins at 7:00 PM EST, two hours after the Sydney open.

Asian Session

The Asian Session, also sometimes known as the Tokyo Session, opens at 7:00 PM EST and trades in tandem with the Sydney Session until the latter closes as 2:00 AM EST. Tokyo then stays open for forex trading until 4:00 AM EST.

The end of the Asian Session overlaps with the London Session for one hour, from 3:00 AM to 4:00 AM EST.

Interestingly, the final Asian Session trading hour when the London Session opens while the Asian session is closing down, makes up one of the busiest forex trading times.

London Session

The forex market opens in Europe at 4:00 AM EST, which gives U.S. East Coast traders the option of waking up early to trade.

The London Session has been found to be the most active trading session, with the widest trading ranges seen in many currency pairs.

In part, this arises from the fact that the New York Session is also trading for roughly half of the entire London Session, overlapping from the New York open at 8:00 AM EST through to the London Session's close at 12:00 Noon EST.

New York Session

This brings us to the New York Session, which starts at 8:00 AM EST while the London Session is in full swing.

The early part of the New York Session is widely considered one of the best forex trading times because of the relatively high liquidity and number of participants.

The New York Session runs until 5:00 PM EST, which is the same time that the Sydney Session starts the next day in Australia.

The forex trading times therefore go full circle throughout the week, and the forex market trades until Friday afternoon's New York Session closes. At this point, forex trading ends for the week.

The Weekend Break

After the New York close at 5:00 PM EST, the forex market then gives its participants a weekend break to ponder life.

This break runs for the rest of Friday, during all of Saturday and until 5:00 PM EST on Sunday when the Sydney Session opens.

Risk Statement: Trading Foreign Exchange on margin carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. The possibility exists that you could lose more than your initial deposit. The high degree of leverage can work against you as well as for you.