In short. Forex is an over-the-counter market with no single timetable: trading moves from one banking center to the next — Sydney, Tokyo, London, New York — so the day is split into four sessions. By convention the week opens on Sunday at 17:00 New York time and closes on Friday at 17:00 New York time: while the US is on daylight saving time, that is 21:00 UTC Sunday to 21:00 UTC Friday, or 00:00 Monday to 00:00 Saturday in Moscow, and an hour later in winter. Liquidity peaks while London and New York are open together: 12:00–16:00 UTC in summer (15:00–19:00 Moscow time) and 13:00–17:00 UTC in winter (16:00–20:00 Moscow). Session hours are a market convention, not an official schedule, and the time on a MetaTrader chart is your broker's server time. To see which sessions are open right now in your time zone, use the forex market hours clock.
Why forex has sessions
The currency market has no exchange with opening hours. Banks, funds and brokers trade directly with each other (over the counter, OTC), and activity follows the working day of the financial centers: Asia-Pacific first, then Europe, then the Americas. The market is open around the clock five days a week, but liquidity varies from hour to hour.
Brokers open and close the week at slightly different times, and CFDs on metals, indices and shares follow their own schedules. The exact hours for a symbol are in MetaTrader: «Market Watch» → «Specification», where the bottom of the window lists the quote and trade sessions for each day of the week.
Session times in UTC and Moscow time
Below is a common scheme: Sydney, London and New York — 08:00–17:00 local time, Tokyo — 09:00–18:00. Other sources shift the boundaries by an hour. Moscow stays on UTC+3 all year round with no clock changes.
| Session | Local time | Summer, UTC | Summer, Moscow | Winter, UTC | Winter, Moscow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 08:00–17:00 | 22:00–07:00 | 01:00–10:00 | 21:00–06:00 | 00:00–09:00 |
| Tokyo | 09:00–18:00 | 00:00–09:00 | 03:00–12:00 | 00:00–09:00 | 03:00–12:00 |
| London | 08:00–17:00 | 07:00–16:00 | 10:00–19:00 | 08:00–17:00 | 11:00–20:00 |
| New York | 08:00–17:00 | 12:00–21:00 | 15:00–00:00 | 13:00–22:00 | 16:00–01:00 |
«Summer» runs from the first Sunday of April to the first Sunday of October, «winter» from the first Sunday of November to the second Sunday of March. The Sydney session starts on the previous day in UTC: in summer, 22:00 UTC on Sunday is already 08:00 on Monday in Sydney.
When the clocks change
| Center | Offset: standard / daylight time | Daylight saving time | Changes from October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | UTC−5 / UTC−4 | from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November | 1 November 2026, 14 March 2027 |
| London | UTC+0 / UTC+1 | from the last Sunday of March to the last Sunday of October | 25 October 2026, 28 March 2027 |
| Sydney | UTC+10 / UTC+11 | from the first Sunday of October to the first Sunday of April | 4 October 2026, 4 April 2027 |
| Tokyo | UTC+9 | no clock changes | — |
| Moscow | UTC+3 | no clock changes since 2014 | — |
EU countries change their clocks on the same days and at the same moment as the UK — at 01:00 UTC. Because the US, Europe and Australia switch on different days, there are transition weeks. From 4 October 2026 Sydney is already on daylight time — 00:00–09:00 Moscow time. From 25 to 31 October London is back on winter time while New York is still on summer time, so the overlap lasts five hours: 12:00–17:00 UTC, or 15:00–20:00 Moscow time. The same happens in spring, from 14 to 27 March 2027. From 1 November 2026 the winter columns apply.
Session overlaps and active pairs
- Sydney and Tokyo — 00:00–07:00 UTC in summer, 00:00–06:00 UTC in winter (03:00–10:00 and 03:00–09:00 Moscow time). The yen, Australian and New Zealand dollar pairs are most active: USD/JPY, AUD/USD, NZD/USD, AUD/JPY.
- Tokyo and London — a short window: 07:00–09:00 UTC in summer, 08:00–09:00 UTC in winter (10:00–12:00 and 11:00–12:00 Moscow time). Yen crosses come alive: EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY.
- London — the main session for the euro, the pound and the franc: EUR/USD, GBP/USD, EUR/GBP, USD/CHF.
- London and New York — 12:00–16:00 UTC in summer, 13:00–17:00 UTC in winter (15:00–19:00 and 16:00–20:00 Moscow time). The most liquid part of the day: all major pairs and gold (XAU/USD) are active, much US data comes out, and moves are sharper.
- New York after London closes — dollar pairs and USD/CAD; activity fades towards midnight Moscow time.
Quiet hours, spreads and rollover
When a pair trades outside «its» session — EUR/GBP during Asian hours, for example — liquidity providers quote less. The spread, the gap between the Ask and Bid prices, widens, moves get smaller, yet unexpected news can make the price skip several levels at once.
The quietest moment of the day is the rollover around 17:00 New York time: 21:00 UTC (00:00 Moscow) while the US is on daylight time and 22:00 UTC (01:00 Moscow) in winter. America closes, Asia has not picked up yet, liquidity providers switch to the next trading day, and spreads widen — for minutes, sometimes longer. In MetaTrader 5 chart bars are built from Bid, while a short position's stop loss is checked against Ask (per the MetaTrader 5 help), so a wide spread can close a short at its stop even though the chart never reached it — see «How to set stop loss and take profit in MT5». Swap is charged when a position is rolled over to the next day; the amount and the days are in the symbol specification.
MetaTrader chart time and how to convert it
Candles on a MetaTrader 5 chart, deal times and quote times in «Market Watch» are in the broker's trade server time (per the MetaTrader 5 help and the MQL5 book as of 13 October 2026). The broker picks the server time zone, and it often matches neither UTC nor your own. If the broker changes the server clock, the offset changes twice a year — check it again after the clock-change dates.
To find the offset, compare the time of the last quote in «Market Watch» with the current UTC time on a weekday while quotes are coming in. Then:
UTC = chart time − server offset; Moscow = UTC + 3 h
Example: «Market Watch» shows 13:30 while UTC is 11:30 — the server runs on UTC+2. A trade at 16:45 on the chart is 14:45 UTC and 17:45 Moscow time. The New York open in winter (08:00 New York time = 13:00 UTC) falls at 15:00 on this chart.
Practical takeaways
- Pick the hours when your pair moves and check them against your routine: trades at 01:00 Moscow time after a full working day are a common source of fatigue mistakes.
- Avoid entering right before the rollover and right after the weekly open: the spread can be much wider than usual.
- Mark the clock-change dates: in transition weeks your usual window moves by an hour.
- Compare your results by hour and by session: the same system can give different results at different hours, and only statistics show it. On a dozen trades the difference can be chance — which metrics to look at is covered in «How to evaluate a trading strategy».
How Davinchu helps
An account with any forex and CFD broker on MetaTrader 4 and 5, prop firms included, connects through the Davinchu Trade Monitor EA. The MetaTrader 5 EA converts the broker's server time to UTC by itself, and the dashboard shows trades in the time zone set in «Settings» → «Profile» → «Time zone» — no manual chart-time conversion needed.
- «By time» and «By day» — tabs on the account page: the result for the selected period in 2-hour windows and by day of week, by trade close time.
- «Time», «Days» and «Sessions» — journal analytics tabs. The first two go by trade open time; «Sessions» shows the result, number of trades, share of winners and average R for each session, with a sample badge: under 10 trades — «too few», 10–29 — «preliminary», 30 and more — «enough».
- The «Session / Killzone» column — your own tag on each trade. The default list in a forex journal is «Asia», «London», «New York», «LO KZ» and «NY KZ» (the London and New York open windows, or killzones), and you can add your own. If no session is tagged, it is taken from the open time: New York — 08:00–17:00 New York time, London — 08:00–17:00 London time until New York opens, everything else — Asia, with daylight saving time taken into account. The whole journal can be filtered by session.
- «Strategy» → «Trading hours» — your working days and London and New York hours in the chosen time zone; if yours differs, your local time is shown under them.
This shows which hours make your trading money and which give it back to the market. What else to record about a trade is covered in «How to keep a trading journal in MT5: what to record», journal features are on the «Trading journal» page, and if you are just starting out — on the «Davinchu for beginner traders» page. The Free plan connects two accounts at no cost.