Forex market hours in your time zone

Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York, plus CME index futures, converted to your local time for any date. Each session runs on its own city's clock, so daylight saving changes on either side of the world are handled for you. The interactive tool on this page shows which sessions are open now, a countdown to the next open or close, a 24-hour timeline and the overlaps for any date.

Session hours used

• Sydney: 07:00 to 16:00 Sydney time (Australia/Sydney)
• Tokyo: 09:00 to 18:00 Tokyo time (Asia/Tokyo)
• London: 08:00 to 17:00 London time (Europe/London)
• New York: 08:00 to 17:00 New York time (America/New_York)
• Forex week: Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time
• CME Globex equity index futures: Sunday 18:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time, daily break 17:00 to 18:00 Monday to Thursday
• Index futures regular trading hours (RTH): 09:30 to 16:00 New York time, Monday to Friday

The four forex sessions

Forex trades around the clock from the Sunday open in New York to the Friday close, passing from one financial centre to the next. There is no opening bell: the sessions are the conventional business hours of each centre, so different sites quote slightly different times. This page uses the hours below, each in its own city's local time.

• Sydney, 07:00 to 16:00 Sydney time. The first centre to open each week and usually the quietest session, with the Australian and New Zealand dollars most active. Its Monday session starts with the forex week, so while Sydney is on summer time its first hour or two falls before the market opens.
• Tokyo, 09:00 to 18:00 Tokyo time. Japan does not use daylight saving, so Tokyo sits at 00:00 to 09:00 UTC all year. Yen pairs are most active here.
• London, 08:00 to 17:00 London time. The largest forex trading centre by turnover.
• New York, 08:00 to 17:00 New York time. Many of the biggest US releases, such as CPI and the jobs report, come out at 08:30 New York time, inside this session. The 17:00 New York close is also where the forex trading day rolls over.

Why the overlaps matter

When two centres are open at once, more participants are in the market, which usually means more volume and tighter spreads. The London and New York overlap is normally the busiest stretch of the day for the major pairs. Tokyo and London overlap only briefly, and Sydney and Tokyo share the Asian morning.

The overlaps on this page are worked out from the actual session times on the date you pick, not copied from a fixed table. That is why the London and New York overlap reads as four hours for most of the year and five hours for a few weeks around the clock changes.

Why fixed "EST" session tables go wrong

Most session charts list fixed times in EST or GMT. They are only right for part of the year, because the regions change their clocks on different dates, and Australia changes in the opposite direction:

• United States. Clocks go forward on the second Sunday in March and back on the first Sunday in November. New York is on EST (UTC−5) in winter and EDT (UTC−4) in summer, so a time labelled EST in July is already an hour off.
• United Kingdom. Clocks go forward on the last Sunday in March and back on the last Sunday in October.
• Australia (Sydney). Clocks go forward on the first Sunday in October and back on the first Sunday in April, the opposite of the northern hemisphere.
• Japan. No daylight saving.

For about three weeks in March the US has moved its clocks and the UK has not. For about a week in late October and early November the UK has moved back and the US has not. 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. Pick a date in mid-March in the tool above to see it.

Sydney shifts by an hour against both in April and October. If you trade the Asian session from North America or Europe, those are the weeks to double-check.

CME futures hours

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 New York time 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) for index futures follow the US cash stock market, 09:30 to 16:00 New York time. Trading outside RTH is often called the overnight or Globex session. Other CME products keep different hours.

Exchange holidays and early closes change all of these hours. This page does not show holiday schedules, so check the CME Group holiday calendar before trading around a holiday. Forex liquidity also thins out around major bank holidays.

Holiday schedules: CME Group holiday calendar.

Learn the method

Phantom teaches what to do inside these sessions in two curricula, Foundations for forex and Futures for index futures. Both have free preview lessons.