The largest single session by volume, and the one that overlaps with New York for four hours each afternoon.
| Hours | 08:00 – 17:00 London time |
|---|---|
| Time zone | GMT (UTC+0) in winter, BST (UTC+1) in summer |
| Daylight saving | Last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. London and New York change on different dates, so for two weeks each year the usual gap between them is an hour different. |
| Currencies at home here | GBP, EUR, CHF, USD |
| Overlaps | Tokyo for the first hour, and New York from early afternoon. |
Hours are the conventional business hours of the financial centre. The clock above converts them into your own time zone and follows daylight saving, so it does not go stale twice a year.
The full session clock shows all four at once with a timeline.
London is the largest foreign exchange centre in the world by turnover, which is why its hours matter to traders who are nowhere near it. European data lands here: euro area inflation, Bank of England decisions, German surveys, UK employment figures.
When people say they "trade London", they usually mean the hours when London and New York are both open — roughly 13:00 to 17:00 London time. Two of the four largest centres quoting at once is the longest overlap of the day, and it has its own page.
Sterling, the euro and the Swiss franc, and the dollar for the second half of the session once New York arrives. Pairs that combine two of these, such as EUR/GBP, are quoted more tightly during these hours than at any other time.
08:00 – 17:00 London time. The clock at the top of this page converts that into whichever time zone you pick, and it accounts for daylight saving, so it stays right through the year rather than being correct for half of it.
No. Retail forex trades from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00, New York time, and every session sits inside that week. On Saturday and Sunday there is no session open anywhere.
Last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. London and New York change on different dates, so for two weeks each year the usual gap between them is an hour different.
GBP, EUR, CHF, USD. Those are the currencies whose home markets and economic releases fall inside these hours, which is what makes the session relevant to them.
The session a trade was taken in is recorded in the journal, and the analytics break results down by session, so you can see which of these hours actually works for you rather than guessing.
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