Forex and index futures trade almost around the clock, but activity is not even. Traders split the day into sessions named after the financial centre that is open: Asia (Tokyo, Sydney, Hong Kong), London and New York. Liquidity and volatility rise when a big centre opens and peak when two overlap.

Session hours

Approximate hours in UTC; they shift by an hour when Europe or the United States change to or from summer time.

Session UTC (approx.) Character
Asia 00:00 to 07:00 quieter for most pairs; yen and Australian dollar most active
London 07:00 to 12:00 the largest share of forex volume; breakouts of the Asian range
New York morning 12:00 to 16:00 US data at 12:30 or 13:30, stock open at 13:30 or 14:30, overlap with London
New York afternoon 16:00 to 21:00 thinner after the London close
Off-hours 21:00 to 24:00 rollover, wide spreads

Why sessions belong in a journal

The same setup can behave very differently at 08:00 and at 19:00. Many traders find that most of their profit comes from one session and most of their losses from another, often the one they trade out of boredom. Splitting results by session is one of the cheapest edges a journal can find, as long as each session has enough trades to compare (see sample size).

In SetupBook

When you log a trade, the form suggests the session from the opening time using the UTC bands above (Asia, London, New York AM, New York PM, Off-hours); you can change it. The dashboard and Analytics show performance by session, and Analytics adds the hour of day and the day of the week.