Forex Trade Signals

Forex Trade Signals Time Zones – What Are They?

For an average trader, forex trading time zones can be intimidating and difficult . Like most traders , when I first got involved in this cash 24 hour global market , the time zones issue never made a whole lot of sense to me . Over time that would change and in this article I will share some basic insights on how the 24 hour market is handled by me and hopefully that will help you the next time you’re preparing for your next big day of trading .

You first need to think about where you’re living , or the place where you do your forex trade signals trading from. This is the most important factor that affects the way you look at this 24-hour market. For an example let’s say that California is where you life which is on the West Coast in the U.S. and on Pacific Standard Time which is three hours behind East Coast time in New York.

Now that we know that California is where we’ll be doing the trading , which is 3 hours behind New York , we can start planning our forex trade signals trading day. In this 24 hour market that never sleeps ( while it quiets down on weekends and big international holidays) the trading day stops and resets with the New York financial centers closing at 5pm or close to that in Eastern Standard Time and the banking centers in the Far East like Hong Kong and Tokyo open and start a new day at roughly the same time. Keeping this in mind it’s best to have your trading charts set up so that the candle or daily bar you use will close every day at about 5pm Eastern Standard Time.

Now that we have figured out we’re trading from the United States West Coast which is 3 hours behind NY’s Eastern Time and we know when the market resets and stops to start a new day . The next thing to consider is when you will get ready and plan for the next day . If you happen to be in California , as in our example here , and you like staying up late then the London session is what you may want to prepare to trade which is from 1am-4am PST or 4am- 7am PST. Perhaps you like sleeping and you want to sleep through the session in London but have no problem getting up early , at around 4am Pacific Standard Time so you’re able to see the London session end and get prepared for the session in New York which will really get going around 5:30am PST (8:30am EST) . Or, finally, perhaps you hate waking up early and the middle of the day is when you prefer to trade; this is not a problem. Just wait for 2pm PST or 5pm EST when the new day in Tokyo starts and you can trade FX during that major market session .

Now you clearly have knowledge of the major forex trading time zones and your days can be planned accordingly. And remember , preparation and planning are the most important yet overlooked factors of success in all businesses, including this one.  Making plans can be easy for your forex trade signals day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Forex Trade Signals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.