Key takeaways
- The busiest hour in forex is 15:00–16:00 London time, when the average candle is 58% bigger than normal. The three busiest hours all fall in the London–New York overlap.
- The quietest hours are 04:00–06:00 London and 20:00–21:00, at about 72% of normal.
- Yen, Aussie and Kiwi pairs keep about 95% of their normal activity through the Asian night. Sterling and franc pairs drop to under 75%.
- The 22:00 spike is not trading: it's the daily rollover, when spreads widen.
“Trade the London open” is the oldest advice in forex. It’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete. The busiest stretch of the day comes later, when New York joins London, and the right hours depend heavily on which currencies you trade.
To get beyond rules of thumb, we measured every hourly candle on 28 major and cross pairs over the past year. Because pairs move by very different amounts (GBP/JPY averages more than five times as many pips a day as EUR/GBP), we compared each hour with that pair’s own average hour, then averaged across pairs. A value of 1.5 means candles in that hour were 50% bigger than the pair’s typical hour.
The forex day, hour by hour
Show the data
| 00 | 0.81× |
| 01 | 0.97× |
| 02 | 0.94× |
| 03 | 0.80× |
| 04 | 0.72× |
| 05 | 0.72× |
| 06 | 0.81× |
| 07 | 1.14× |
| 08 | 1.24× |
| 09 | 1.15× |
| 10 | 0.97× |
| 11 | 0.96× |
| 12 | 1.07× |
| 13 | 1.37× |
| 14 | 1.42× |
| 15 | 1.58× |
| 16 | 1.16× |
| 17 | 0.92× |
| 18 | 0.84× |
| 19 | 0.78× |
| 20 | 0.72× |
| 21 | 0.80× |
| 22 | 1.30× |
| 23 | 0.78× |
The shape of the day is clear:
- 00:00–07:00 London: the Asian session. Activity sits at 72–97% of normal. There’s a modest pick-up around 01:00–02:00, when Tokyo opens.
- 07:00–09:00: the London open. Ranges jump to 1.14× at 07:00 and 1.24× at 08:00. This is the move the London breakout tries to catch.
- 10:00–12:00: the European lull. Activity eases back to about normal as the open settles.
- 13:00–16:00: the overlap. New York arrives and the day’s three busiest hours follow: 1.37× at 13:00, 1.42× at 14:00 and 1.58× at 15:00.
- 17:00 onwards: the fade. London closes and ranges fall back to 0.72–0.92× through the New York afternoon.
Why 15:00–16:00 is the peak
Three things stack up in that hour. Major US economic releases come out at 13:30 and 15:00 London time. US stock markets open at 14:30, bringing a wave of cross-asset flow. And the hour runs into the 16:00 London benchmark fix, the most widely used reference rate in the market, when fund managers’ currency orders are executed.
One caveat: the US changes its clocks a few weeks before and after the UK each year, so for those weeks every US-driven event shifts by an hour in London time.
It depends on the currency
Averages across all pairs hide the biggest difference: some currencies keep trading through the Asian night and others go almost to sleep.
Pairs with the Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar and Japanese yen stay close to normal activity during the Asian hours, at 94–96% of their all-day average. Their home markets are open, and Australian, New Zealand, Japanese and Chinese data come out then. Pairs with sterling, the Swiss franc and the Canadian dollar drop to 72–74%.
The overlap reverses the order:
US dollar and Canadian dollar pairs peak hardest in the overlap, at around 1.5× normal. That’s when North American data and markets drive the day. Kiwi and Aussie pairs, which have spread their activity across more of the clock, peak less sharply.
Which pairs swing most within the day
Some pairs are much more “on and off” than others. Comparing each pair’s busiest hour with its quietest:
USD/CAD and EUR/GBP move about 3.5 times as much in their busiest hour as in their quietest. Both are pairs whose two currencies trade mainly in European and North American hours, so they spend the Asian night nearly asleep. For traders on these pairs, the time of day matters more than almost any other decision.
What to do with this
- Match your hours to your pairs. If you can only trade in the evening in Europe or in Asian hours, choose yen, Aussie or Kiwi pairs. Sterling, franc and Canadian dollar pairs will mostly drift.
- Expect the biggest moves, and the biggest risk, from 13:00 to 16:00 London. Use smaller positions or wider stops in those hours, especially on US data days.
- Avoid opening trades around 22:00 London. The rollover’s spike in the chart is cost, not opportunity: spreads widen several times over. See our cost study.
- Check your own pair. Every market page shows that pair’s hourly profile. Our market hours tool converts every session to your time zone.
Method: Dukascopy hourly bid candles for the 12 months to 16 October 2026, 28 major and cross pairs (exotics excluded). For each pair, the average high-to-low range of each London-time hour on weekdays, divided by the average across all 24 hours; currency figures average the pairs containing that currency. The 22:00 London hour includes the 17:00 New York rollover and is excluded when picking busiest and quietest hours.
This article is for education and information, not investment advice. Trading forex and CFDs on margin is high risk and most retail accounts lose money. Read our risk warning.