Best times to trade forex

The forex market is open 24 hours a day, opening 5pm Sunday and closing 5pm Friday (EST). However, the three major regions are only trading for about nine hours at a time. Shown below are the approximate open hours for the Tokyo, London, and New York Stock Exchanges.

These markets have a few hours of overlap each day. With both exchanges trading simultaneously, forex markets tend to increase in liquidity. Traders can directly benefit from this trend through decreased spreads in certain pairs. For example, during the London-New York overlap, traders will likely look to EUR/USD for increased activity and spreads as low as 0.8 pips.