The currency exchange market can be both forecastable and unpredictable. Even after spending hours developing a foolproof strategy a trader can make a move that will cause him to lose. There is no magic formula or a ritual to know for sure what is going to happen next.
However, with that said, there are some tendencies in the market that can be used to the trader’s advantage. They can vary from the different aspects of market analysis to the exact time when the trade will take place. Let’s talk about the best days and times to trade Forex.
Even though, it might sound strange at first, the markert activity fluctuates based on the day of the week. Forex works 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. Which means the market is closed on Saturday and Sunday. And even with the account for time zones there is a specific trend going on.
The simple answer to what is the best day of the week to trade Forex is - midweek. More specifically the Wednesday-Thursday period. Most logical explanation for that is most traders are people and it takes time to re-enter the productive state of mind after the weekend.
By the same logic on Monday the market can be pretty slow. And on Friday it is mostly unpredictable as the traders make rush decisions and affect the market by the amount of activity.
Keep in mind, however, that here we are talking about a regular week. These tendencies will not apply in case of major holidays and political events. Although those can also be somewhat predicted and monitored, sometimes they will not correlate with a specific day of the week.
As we have established that the best days of the week to trade Forex are those in the middle (Wednesday-Thursday) we might as well discuss the best time of the day to trade Forex.
First thing you should consider when asking what is the best time of day to trade Forex market is the specific currency pair. Pretty obvious that due to the time difference around the world the Asian traders will not be active at the same time as European ones.
There is, however, a time range that more or less applies to every market. The key here is not to trade on the most active time, but just outside of that range.
For example let’s take the currency pairs that include USD (such as EUR/USD or GBP/USD). The best time to trade for these pairs is between 2 pm and 6 am ET (New York). The time outside that range is considered most volatile and should be avoided as much as possible.
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