Trading Sessions and Overlaps: When the World's Markets Are Most Active

A day that never ends

Somewhere a stock exchange is open for almost every hour of the working week. The day begins in Wellington and Sydney, moves through Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mumbai, reaches Dubai, Johannesburg and Moscow, then Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich and London, and ends in Toronto, New York and Sao Paulo. Each venue trades its own hours in its own time zone, and the only way to see who is open at once is to put them all on one clock.

For currencies, which have no exchange, the day is divided by convention into three sessions named for their main centres. In UTC, with the hour shifts of daylight saving ignored:

The sessions overlap, and the overlaps are where the volume is.

Where the volume is

The Bank for International Settlements surveys the currency market every three years. Its 2022 survey put daily turnover at about 7.5 trillion dollars, and the trading was concentrated: the United Kingdom handled about 38% of it, the United States about 19%, Singapore about 9%, Hong Kong about 7% and Japan about 4%. London is the centre of the currency market by a wide margin, which is why the European session sets the tone and why the hours in which London and New York are both open carry the day's heaviest trading.

For equities the picture is simpler: each stock trades mainly on its home exchange during that exchange's hours, and index futures carry the price between sessions.

The London–New York overlap

The regular equity sessions of London (08:00 to 16:30 local) and New York (09:30 to 16:00 local) overlap for about two hours, from the New York open to the London close. For currencies, where the London session runs to about 17:00 local and the New York session from about 08:00 Eastern, the overlap is about four hours, roughly 12:00 or 13:00 to 16:00 UTC depending on the season. In those hours both of the two largest centres are active, the major US data has just printed, and spreads in the major pairs are at their tightest.

Because the United States and the United Kingdom change their clocks on different dates, the overlap shifts by an hour for about two weeks in March and one week in late October and early November. A schedule written in UTC is wrong in those weeks unless it has been converted for the date.

The other overlaps

Sydney and Tokyo overlap for most of the Asian morning, which is when the Australian dollar and the yen have their session. Tokyo and London overlap for an hour or two in the European morning, 07:00 to 09:00 UTC in the northern winter, when European traders arrive and the Asian session hands over; that hour often sets the direction of the European morning. Hong Kong and Shanghai open ninety minutes after Tokyo and close after it, so the Asian session as a whole runs from the Tokyo open to the Hong Kong close.

The week

The currency market opens with Wellington on Monday morning, which is about 21:00 or 22:00 UTC on Sunday, and closes with New York on Friday at 17:00 Eastern, about 21:00 or 22:00 UTC. Between those times it trades continuously; across the weekend it does not, and the Monday open can gap on weekend news. Index futures on CME Globex trade nearly twenty-three hours a day, from Sunday evening Chicago time to Friday afternoon, with an hour's break each evening, so the price of the S&P 500 is quoted almost around the clock even though the index's own stocks trade six and a half hours a day.

Reading the clock

Three practical uses follow. The first is knowing which session's character to expect: a currency pair in the Asian session tends to range, and a breakout at 07:00 UTC when London arrives is more likely to hold than one at 03:00. The second is placing data in its session: a US release at 08:30 Eastern lands in the London afternoon, with both centres trading. The third is liquidity: the thinnest hours of the day are the gap between the New York close and the Tokyo open, and prices move further on less in them.

On the desk

The Market 24h Clock draws every exchange as a ring on one 24-hour dial, each session as an arc, with the hand showing what is trading now and a scrubber to see who overlaps with whom at any hour of any day, in any of sixteen financial centres' time or your own. The market-hours pages on this site list every venue's hours in local time and in the major centres.