Forex trading
I will really like to know more about this. Someone should kindly respond to my question above
Welcome to the community @tbeca.
A trading session is simply the time when banks and other businesses in a particular continent are open for business. For example the London session in Nigeria is from 9 am to 5 pm daily and it simply means banks/businesses in London are open during this period. It is important for these banks to be open when you are trading because it is from them that your broker extracts the exchange rates for relevant currency pairs. If you trade after the session is closed (meaning after the banks are closed), your broker will manufacture their own exchange rate and give you which is usually higher which will lead to higher trading fees/spread.
For example instead of buying EUR/USD at 1.1500 during the London session, you can buy it at 1.1550 after the London session closes. Which makes it more expensive to trade outside the relevant session.
So depending on the currency pairs you want to trade, you must do so during the relevant session. Pairs that contain American currencies like USD/CAD are best traded during the New York session. Pairs that contain European currencies (like GBP/CHF) are best traded during the London session. Pairs that contain a combination of both American and European currencies (like EUR/USD) can be traded during both London & NY sessions.
if you want to trade stock markets indices like NAS100, US30 etc. you must do so during the session when the stock exchanges related to these indices are open. For example NAS100 indices is related to the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York so it is best to trade it during the New York session.
You must also learn how to mark out the sessions on the charts visually. I have marked out the Asian session (12 midnight to 6 pm UTC) in the attached image with an orange box. I was trading EUR/USD today and before I started I mared out the Asian session so I can know the boundaries. This is fundamental for any trader to master as they start their trading journey.
Forex market trading sessions are the busy hours of the market. The market isn’t always active 24hrs . Sometimes it’s quiet and also busy. Those busy hours are the forex trading session. These are the times traders around the world are in the market at the same time looking for buying or selling opportunities.
There are basically three of such sessions
1. Asian session
2. London Session
3. New York session.
As a beginner it’s better to always come to the market during the London and New York session. The Asian session isn’t that busy so I won’t advise you to trade during that session.