Best Time to Trade Forex: Use Your Trading Journal to Find Your Best Hours
The London–New York overlap is often called the best time to trade forex. Both financial centers are active, and major currency pairs can move quickly. That makes it a useful place to look for opportunities. It doesn’t tell you whether your own trades make money there.
The answer has two parts. Market hours tell you when a pair is likely to be active. Your trading journal tells you how your entries, exits, and costs have behaved during those hours. Compare like with like, and a trading schedule becomes something you can test instead of a rule you picked from a clock.
What time is the forex market open?
Foreign exchange trading runs through the working week as activity passes between Sydney, Tokyo, London, and New York. Retail trading hours depend on the broker and instrument. For example, OANDA lists most of its forex instruments as open from Sunday 5:05 p.m. to Friday 4:59 p.m. New York time, with a brief daily break. Check your broker’s hours before placing a trade, especially around holidays.
The session names describe where business is active. They aren’t four separate exchanges that switch the global forex market on and off. London and New York also overlap. OANDA describes that overlap as a period of high liquidity and activity, particularly relevant to short-term traders.
Use this quick guide as a starting point:
| Period | What to watch | Why it might suit a strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney and Tokyo activity | Pairs tied to Asia-Pacific currencies, the local economic calendar, and the spread your broker quotes | A setup that depends on the behavior of those pairs may appear during these hours. |
| London activity before New York opens | European releases and the first large moves in widely traded European pairs | A London-open setup needs this window to be tested on its own. |
| London–New York overlap | European and US participation, US releases, faster price changes | Momentum or news-driven setups may get more movement, along with more execution risk. |
| New York after London closes | US events, declining European participation, and the approach to broker rollover | Results can differ sharply from the overlap even though both are called the “New York session.” |
These are research buckets, not rankings. A calm period may fit a range strategy better than an active overlap. A trader who can only trade tired or distracted during a busy window may execute that window poorly.
Time-zone check: Record every trade in a named time zone such as UTC or America/New_York, and keep its date. London and New York change clocks on different dates, so a fixed UTC overlap table can mislabel trades during the transition weeks. Broker server time may use a different offset again. Convert historical timestamps using the rules for the trade date, then assign the session.
The best time to trade forex is a question about your trades
Start with the time of entry. That’s the decision you’re testing. If a EUR/USD trade opens during London and closes after New York opens, put it in the London-entry bucket. You can separately study exit time or holding period later. Count each trade once when comparing entry windows.
For each closed trade, keep these fields:
- Entry date and time, with its original time zone and a normalized timestamp.
- Currency pair, direction, setup, and strategy version.
- Planned risk at entry, position size, and result in R or account currency.
- Commissions and financing charges or credits, if they aren’t already in the recorded net result.
- A news-event flag and a rule-adherence tag when either could explain an unusual trade.
The spread is usually reflected in the executed entry and exit prices. Don’t subtract it a second time from realized P&L. If your export reports gross price movement separately from spread and commissions, document the convention before comparing sessions. Overnight financing can also change the result of a position held past rollover; Use your own broker’s statement for the actual amount.
If you scale in or out, decide what counts as one trade before making the table. A single position with three fills should not become three independent wins just because the export has three rows.
Compare sessions with net results, not win rate alone
Export a period of completed trades and give each entry an exclusive bucket: Asia-Pacific, London before New York, London–New York overlap, or New York after London. You can use one-hour buckets later, once each group has enough trades to be useful.
Calculate these for each bucket:
Win rate = winning trades / all trades
Net R = sum of each trade's net result divided by its planned risk at entry
Expectancy = net R / number of trades
Profit factor = sum of positive net R / absolute sum of negative net RR means the amount originally at risk on a trade. A $100 net gain on a trade that planned to risk $200 is +0.5R. Using R helps compare trades with different sizes, though you should still review account-currency P&L and drawdown. Profit factor is undefined when a group has no losses; that isn’t proof of a perfect window.
Here’s an invented example using 60 EUR/USD trades from one strategy. Results are net of recorded trading costs, and every row uses the same initial-risk convention:
| Entry window | Trades | Wins | Win rate | Net result | Expectancy | Profit factor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asia-Pacific | 20 | 11 | 55% | +3.1R | +0.16R | 1.34 |
| London before New York | 20 | 8 | 40% | +2.4R | +0.12R | 1.20 |
| London–New York overlap | 20 | 10 | 50% | +7.0R | +0.35R | 1.70 |
Asia-Pacific has the highest win rate. The overlap has the highest net result per trade in this example. That difference could come from larger winners, smaller losers, or both. Read the individual trades before changing a schedule.
Twenty trades per window are also easy to overread. One large winner may account for most of the +7R. Check the median trade, the largest win and loss, and the equity path within each bucket. Remove the largest winner as a sensitivity check. If the apparent lead disappears, you need more observations.
Keep the comparison fair
Time of day gets credit for things it didn’t cause unless you control for the obvious differences. Suppose you trade breakouts during the overlap and pullbacks during Tokyo. A combined session table compares two setups as much as two times. Run the comparison within the same pair and setup first.
Then check four common traps:
- News days. A few central-bank decisions or employment releases can dominate a short sample. Tag scheduled releases and inspect those trades separately.
- Changing position size. A late-session loss placed at twice the usual size can distort account-currency totals. Review R and cash results side by side.
- Costs and execution. Fast markets can produce wider spreads or worse fills around particular events; quiet markets can have their own spread problems. Compare realized net results rather than chart movement alone.
- Missing opportunities. Your journal contains trades you took. It cannot prove that an untraded hour would have performed better. Use a separate watchlist or simulation log if you want to test missed setups.
Avoid splitting a small history into every possible pair, weekday, setup, and hour. One lucky cell will look impressive. Choose a few windows you can consistently trade, state the rule before looking at the next set of results, and keep a later period aside to check whether the pattern repeats. A weekly trading review can track whether you’re following that rule without rewriting it after each loss.
Turn the journal into a schedule you can test
Pick one pair and one setup you already trade. Label the entry session for your existing trades, then compare net R, expectancy, costs, and the largest losing run. Note what happened on major news days. Write a narrow hypothesis, such as: “For this EUR/USD breakout setup, entries during the London–New York overlap produce better net R per trade than London-only entries.”
For the next block of trades, keep the setup and risk rule steady. Log every valid signal you take, and record valid signals you pass on separately. Review the new block against the original finding. If the overlap advantage fades or your execution suffers there, revise the hypothesis. Don’t force your life around a session because a market-hours article called it the best.
You can keep the trade record in a spreadsheet or a forex trading journal. The useful output is the same: a dated, cost-aware comparison of your own trades that you can repeat when your strategy changes.
Frequently asked questions
Is the London–New York overlap the best time to trade forex?
It is often one of the most active periods for major pairs because both centers are operating. Activity does not guarantee a profitable trade. Compare your net results for the same pair and setup across entry windows before giving it a place in your schedule.
What is the worst time to trade forex?
There is no universal worst hour. An hour can be poor for your setup because the price behavior differs, costs rise, or you can’t execute your rules consistently. Label those conditions in your journal and check whether the pattern repeats.
Should I group trades by entry time or exit time?
Use entry time when choosing when to start trades. Study exits separately if you want to test holding time or an exit rule. Assign each entry to one session bucket so overlap trades aren’t counted twice.
How many trades do I need to find my best trading hour?
No single count proves an hour is best. Small groups are sensitive to a few outliers, while large groups can mix different strategy versions and market conditions. Start with broad session windows, show the count for each, inspect outliers, and test a prewritten rule on later trades. This guide to evaluating a trading strategy explains why a fixed trade-count shortcut can mislead.