Forex Market Hours in Your Time Zone (and Why Most Session Charts Are Wrong)
Education
Every trader looks up session times at some point. When does London open? When does the overlap start? What time is the New York close where I live?
Most answers online come from a fixed chart in EST or GMT. Those charts are right for part of the year and quietly wrong for the rest, because the financial centres change their clocks on different dates, and Australia changes in the opposite direction.
So we built a free tool that does it properly: PTM Market Hours. It shows every forex session and the CME futures hours live, in your own time zone, with daylight saving handled for whatever date you pick. Here's what it covers and why it matters.
The Four Forex Sessions
Forex trades around the clock from the Sunday open to the Friday close, 17:00 New York time on both ends. There is no opening bell. The sessions are the conventional business hours of each financial centre, set in that city's own local time:
Session · Local hours · What to know
Sydney · 07:00 to 16:00 Sydney time · First to open each week, usually the quietest
Tokyo · 09:00 to 18:00 Tokyo time · No daylight saving; yen pairs most active
London · 08:00 to 17:00 London time · The largest forex centre by turnover
New York · 08:00 to 17:00 New York time · Big US releases such as CPI and the jobs report land at 08:30
Because each session is fixed to its own city's clock, the times shift against each other whenever one region changes its clocks and another doesn't. That is the whole reason a single fixed table can't be right all year.
Why the Overlaps Matter
When two centres are open at once, more participants are in the market. That usually means more volume and tighter spreads.
The overlap that matters most for the major pairs is London and New York. For most of the year it runs from 08:00 to 12:00 New York time. Tokyo and London overlap only briefly, and Sydney and Tokyo share the Asian morning.
The tool works out every overlap from the actual session times on the date you choose rather than copying a fixed table, and that's where the next point comes in.
Why Fixed "EST" Session Charts Go Wrong
Here is when each region changes its clocks:
Region · Clocks forward · Clocks back
United States · Second Sunday in March · First Sunday in November
United Kingdom · Last Sunday in March · Last Sunday in October
Australia (Sydney) · First Sunday in October · First Sunday in April
Japan · No daylight saving · No daylight saving
Two things fall out of that table.
1. "EST" is only correct in winter. New York is on EST (UTC−5) from November to March and EDT (UTC−4) the rest of the year. A chart that says "London opens 3:00 AM EST" is labelled wrong for about eight months of the year, even when the hour happens to line up.
2. There are mismatch weeks. For about three weeks in March the US has moved its clocks and the UK hasn't. For about a week in late October and early November it's the other way round. In those weeks London opens at 04:00 New York time instead of 03:00, and the London and New York overlap runs five hours instead of four. If you trade the New York morning, that is an extra hour of overlap a fixed chart never shows you.
Sydney adds a third wrinkle. It shifts by an hour against both the US and the UK in April and October, so anyone trading the Asian session from North America or Europe sees it move twice a year.
You can see all of this for yourself: open the market hours tool, pick a date in mid-March, and watch the London open and the overlap change.
CME Futures Hours
If you trade index futures, the clock is different again. CME Globex equity index futures (ES, NQ, YM, RTY and their micros) trade from Sunday 18:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time, with a one-hour maintenance break from 17:00 to 18:00 Monday to Thursday. CME publishes these hours in Central time, 17:00 to 16:00 CT, which is the same hour.
Regular trading hours (RTH) follow the US cash stock market, 09:30 to 16:00 New York time. Everything outside RTH is the overnight or Globex session.
The tool shows Globex and RTH alongside the forex sessions, converted to your time zone. Exchange holidays and early closes change these hours, so check the CME holiday calendar before trading around a holiday.
What the Tool Does
PTM Market Hours is free and needs no login. It:
1. Shows which sessions are open right now, with a countdown to the next open or close.
2. Draws a 24-hour timeline in your time zone, with a marker for the current time and every overlap marked.
3. Lets you pick any date, so you can check a clock-change week before it arrives.
4. Lets you switch time zones and clocks, any zone in the world, 12-hour or 24-hour.
5. Includes CME futures hours, Globex and RTH, next to the forex sessions.
Bookmark it and stop doing time-zone maths in your head.
Knowing When Is the Easy Part
Session times tell you when the market is busy. What to do inside them is the method. Phantom teaches it in two curricula, Foundations for forex and Futures for index futures, and both have free preview lessons.