Trading hours and market holidays.

The four FX sessions

The session windows are a convention for when each centre is at its desks, not a rule: quotes continue between them. Where two windows are open together the market is typically at its most active, which says nothing about direction.

The exchanges, regular hours

These are the exchanges’ own regular sessions, which index and share instruments follow in the way each asset class line above describes. They are not the hours GIO4X offers on any particular instrument.

When does the forex market open and close for the week?

On the regular timetable this site uses, the FX week runs from 17:00 on Sunday to 17:00 on Friday in New York. In UTC that moves with New York’s clocks: in mid-January it opens on Sunday at 22:00 UTC and closes on Friday at 22:00 UTC; in mid-July it opens on Sunday at 21:00 UTC and closes on Friday at 21:00 UTC. Between those hours quotes are continuous, with activity rising and falling as the Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York sessions come and go.

Do trading hours change on public holidays?

Yes. An exchange closes on its own country’s public holidays and sometimes closes early the day before, and instruments that follow it stop with it. On 1 January and 25 December most exchanges are shut and little or nothing trades. GIO4X’s own holiday schedule is not yet published; when a change to hours is announced it will appear on the What’s new page under platforms and instruments, and on the status page.

Why do session times move by an hour twice a year?

Each session is kept in the local time of its own city. When that city moves its clocks for summer or winter, its session starts an hour earlier or later in UTC and on every clock that did not move with it. Cities change on different dates, and some do not change at all, so for a few weeks each spring and autumn the gaps and overlaps between sessions are different from the rest of the year.