When Can You Trade Forex: Tokyo Session

For traders residing in Muritz (“USA”), trading days starts on Sunday evening at 5:00 pm ET (10:00 pm GMT).

However, liquidity won't really come in until Tokyo reopens in a few hours.

When the Tokyo session starts at 12:00 GMT, currency trading starts in Asia.

The Tokyo Session is sometimes referred to as the Asian Session.

We built a Forex Market Hours tool that will automatically convert all four trading sessions in your local time zone. Use it as a reference until you remember the market hours from memory.

It is worth noting that Japan is the third largest foreign exchange trading center in the world.

This is not surprising, as the yen is the third most popular currency, accounting for 16.8% of all foreign exchange transactions.

In general, around 20% of all Forex trading volume belongs to Asian sessions. But it's not just in Tokyo. There are other major financial centers in Asia such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Interestingly, there is currently more forex trading in Singapore and Hong Kong than in Tokyo. Singapore and Hong Kong each accounted for 7.6%, and Japan accounted for 4.5%. Perhaps an “Asian session” would be more appropriate than a “Tokyo” session？

Below is a table of pip ranges for the major currency pairs for the Asian session.

These point values were calculated using historical averages. This is not an absolute value and is subject to liquidity and other market conditions. Also, session ranges for EUR/CHF were not included as the Swiss franc was pegged to the euro at 1.2000 during that period. An easy way to find the current average pip range of a currency pair during your Tokyo session is to use the MarketMilk™ app. For example, the average pip range for EUR/USD is:

Here are some key characteristics you should know about the Tokyo session.

• Activities are not limited to the Japanese coast. Numerous forex trading takes place in other hotspots such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.

• The main market participants in the Tokyo session are commercial companies (exporters) and central banks. Remember that Japan's economy is highly export-dependent and China is also a major trading partner, so there are a lot of trades taking place every day.

• Liquidity can sometimes be very low. Trading during this period is sometimes like fishing. You may have to wait a long time to get a slice.

• Asia Pacific currency pairs such as AUD/USD and NZD/USD are likely to outperform non-Asia Pacific currency pairs such as GBP/USD.

• During periods of low liquidity, most pairs can stay in a certain range. This provides opportunities for short-term daily trades or breakout trades that may occur later.

• Most of the action happens at the beginning of the session when more economic data is released.

• Changes to the Tokyo session can set the tone for the whole day. Traders in the recent session will take a look at what happened in the Tokyo session to help them construct and evaluate strategies for use in other sessions.

• We can usually see consolidation in the Tokyo session after a big move in the previous New York session.

What is the best pair to trade？

It's a great opportunity to trade news events as news comes from Australia, New Zealand and Japan during the Tokyo session. Also, as Japanese companies do business, the higher the volume of the yen traded, the greater the movement of the yen pair. China is also an economic powerhouse, so whenever news comes from China, it tends to lead to volatile movements. Australia and Japan rely heavily on Chinese demand, so AUD and JPY could move more when Chinese data comes out. Now let's see how to trade in the London session.