Forex market hours and session clock

Forex market hours run around the clock from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time: Sunday 21:00 to Friday 21:00 UTC while New York is on daylight saving time (mid-March to early November), and 22:00 to 22:00 UTC the rest of the year. The market is closed on Saturday and for most of Sunday.

The clock above shows them in your own time zone: whether the market is open now, which of the four main sessions are trading, when the next one opens or closes, and when the daily rollover and the next high-impact release are due.

How it works

Currencies have no central exchange, so “open” means the hours when banks and dealers quote prices. By convention the day is split into four sessions named after financial centres, each set in its own city’s business hours:

• Sydney: 07:00–16:00 Sydney time
• Tokyo: 09:00–18:00 Tokyo time
• London: 08:00–17:00 London time
• New York: 08:00–17:00 New York time

Each session runs Monday to Friday in its own city, inside the FX week (Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00 New York). The clock converts every opening and closing with your browser’s time zone database, so it knows when each city changes its clocks. The link in your address bar keeps the zone and clock you pick, so you can share it.

Forex market hours in UTC

Tokyo has no daylight saving, and Sydney’s summer is the northern winter. That gives two regimes, with a few mixed weeks between them.

Northern summer (early April to early October):

The week opens and closes at 21:00 UTC. Sydney and Tokyo overlap for 6 hours, Tokyo and London for 2, London and New York for 4.

Northern winter (early November to mid-March):

The week opens and closes at 22:00 UTC, so on Mondays Sydney only starts at 09:00 Sydney time. Sydney and Tokyo overlap for 5 hours, Tokyo and London for 1, London and New York for 4, and Sydney opens 2 hours before New York closes.

The formula

For each session and each weekday, the clock converts the city’s local hours with that city’s offset on that date:

UTC = local time − the city's UTC offset

New York at 08:00 on a date when it is on UTC-4 gives 08:00 − (−4 h) = 12:00 UTC. Your own time is UTC plus your offset. Each session is then cut to the FX week, and an overlap runs from the later of two openings to the earlier of two closings.

Worked examples

When the week opens, in zones without daylight saving. It follows New York’s clock change only:

Pitfalls

• Fixed tables are wrong for part of the year. A table that lists London at 07:00–16:00 UTC next to New York at 13:00–22:00 UTC mixes a summer value with a winter one.
• The daily rollover. At 17:00 New York the trading day ends and many brokers book the swap, usually three days’ worth on Wednesday night for currency pairs, to cover the weekend. Liquidity providers often widen or pull their quotes for a while, so spreads jump, most on crosses and exotics. The clock marks about 15 minutes either side.
• Weekends and gaps. Nothing trades between Friday’s close and Sunday’s open, but news still happens. The first prices on Sunday can be far from Friday’s close, and a stop loss is filled at the first price available, not at its level. Size for that with the position size calculator, and check the margin a trade ties up, which some brokers raise over the weekend, with the margin calculator.
• Holidays. Around Christmas and New Year liquidity is thin, and many brokers close on 25 December and 1 January. Bank holidays in any one centre thin out its session too.
• Broker server time in MT5. Your charts run on the server’s clock, not yours: often UTC+2, or UTC+3 while New York is on daylight time, so each weekday gets one daily candle. The title bar of the Market Watch window shows it (MQL5 documentation).
• Other markets. Index, stock and crypto CFDs keep their own hours, often with a daily break. Your broker’s contract specification lists them.

The risk disclosure covers thin markets, gaps and slippage in more detail.

How PipWarden handles this

PipWarden is an Expert Advisor that runs in MT5 on a Windows PC or VPS, with a broker that allows EAs. It cannot run on a phone. On the points above:

• Sessions. By default, on intraday timeframes, it opens new trades only in the London and New York sessions, fixed in UTC at 07:00–16:00 and 12:00–21:00. Unlike this clock, those windows do not move with daylight saving. You can drop either session, or switch the filter off, in the account settings.
• News. A news filter, on by default, pauses new entries on the affected currency’s pairs from 60 minutes before a high-impact release to 30 minutes after, adjustable per account.
• Spreads. If you set a spread limit for a pair, the EA checks the live spread right before each order and skips the trade when it is wider, as it often is at the rollover.
• Size and limits. It sizes each trade from your risk limit with the broker’s tick value and volume step, skips a trade below the minimum lot rather than raising the risk, and checks your limits before every order. Open trades run to their stops, and a weekend gap can take a loss past them.

See how it works and the full feature list.