One of the biggest advantages of trading forex is that you can trade literally right around the clock during the working week (ending with the US session on Friday and starting with the Japanese session on Monday). With no central exchange regulating transactions or data feed the various entities that make up the forex market - banks, funds, corporations etc. - can trade where they like, when they like in as big a quantity as they like.
Or can they? Well, as the map above shows, nearly but not quite. In particular, the three hour gap between the US session closing and the Oceanic session opening means that business could happen then but rarely would, at least if businesses were doing anything of any size.
If it's GBPUSD, USDCHF or EURUSD any time between 8am GMT (forget the European open at 7am GMT - it's nearly always a fakeout before the London session open) and around 3pm GMT (sometimes up to an hour later) will offer excellent potential. After 3-4pm you can usually forget it unless youy're already well into a US-inspired move.
In the absense of any big news at the open, New York usually follows London's lead on the European-denominated currencies, but the Yen usually plots its own course and is rarely a worthwhile intraday trade for European and early session US traders.
In the next item we'll look at how actual trading volume relates to the open session map shown here.
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