Forex Glossary · Market

What is Trading Session?

Definition

One of four major forex trading windows defined by financial center business hours — Sydney, Tokyo, London, New York.

Also called:London sessionNew York sessionAsian sessionforex session

The forex market operates 24 hours a day on weekdays through four overlapping sessions tied to financial centers. Each session has distinct characteristics for liquidity, volatility, and trading style.

Sydney session: 22:00-07:00 GMT. Lowest liquidity. Best for AUDUSD, NZDUSD news reactions. Generally quiet otherwise.

Tokyo (Asian) session: 00:00-09:00 GMT. JPY pairs (USDJPY, EURJPY) are most liquid. PBOC and BoJ news lands here. Range-bound trading dominant.

London session: 08:00-17:00 GMT. Most volume of any single session. EUR, GBP, CHF pairs see their biggest moves. ECB and BoE news.

New York session: 13:00-22:00 GMT. USD pairs and gold (XAUUSD) are most active. Non-Farm Payrolls (first Friday of each month), Fed decisions, CPI all land in this window.

London-NY overlap (13:00-17:00 GMT) is the highest-volume, tightest-spread, most-volatile window — preferred by scalpers and day traders for execution quality.

More Market terms

Pip

The smallest standardized price move on a forex pair — 0.0001 on most pairs, 0.01 on JPY pairs.

Liquidity

The depth of buyers and sellers in a market — high liquidity = tight spreads, easy fills; low liquidity = wide spreads, slippage.

Volatility

The magnitude of price changes over time — measured most commonly as the standard deviation of daily returns.

Fundamental Analysis

Analysis of economic data, central bank policy, and macro events to predict currency movements — the macro complement to technical analysis.

What is Trading Session?

More Market terms

Trade as usual. Get paid for every lot.