The session that opens the trading week. Sydney is first because it is the first major centre to reach Monday morning.
| Hours | 07:00 – 16:00 Sydney time |
|---|---|
| Time zone | AEST (UTC+10) in winter, AEDT (UTC+11) in summer |
| Daylight saving | First Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April. Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so its clocks move the opposite way to Europe and North America. |
| Currencies at home here | AUD, NZD, JPY |
| Overlaps | Tokyo, for the second half of the Sydney day. |
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.
Sydney opens the week. Retail forex starts at 17:00 New York time on Sunday, which is Monday morning in Australia, so the first prices of the week are quoted while most of the world is asleep. That is why Monday gaps appear when something happened over the weekend.
The Australian and New Zealand dollars, and to a degree the yen, since Tokyo opens two hours later and the two sessions run together. Australian data — the Reserve Bank of Australia’s rate decisions and the monthly employment figures — is released during these hours.
Not because they trade it, mostly, but because positions left open over the weekend are repriced here. A stop placed on Friday is live again from the Sydney open, before anyone in London or New York is awake to watch it.
07:00 – 16:00 Sydney 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.
First Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April. Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so its clocks move the opposite way to Europe and North America.
AUD, NZD, JPY. 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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