For Business

Market Basics

What Is the Asian Session

The Asian session is the stretch of the day when Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong are trading and Europe and America are asleep. This paper shows you which hours it covers on those cities' clocks and on the clock under your own chart, what those hours looked like on one real day, who is trading in them, and how to find them on your own chart.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
6 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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While Europe sleeps

Nine in the morning in Tokyo. It is one in the morning in London and the evening before in New York, so the banks of Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong have the currency market to themselves. Those hours are the Asian session: the first part of the trading day, which begins when Sydney opens and ends when London arrives. The market is open — every price is live and every order works — but the crowd in it is the Pacific's crowd, and it is smaller than the one that comes later.

The same moment, four clocks

The session's hours are simplest on the clock under your own chart, which is the broker's feed. On most brokers that clock reads about midnight when Sydney opens and 03:00 when Tokyo's desks fill; it reads 10:00 when London opens and the Asian hours end. So on the feed the Asian session is roughly midnight to 10:00. Your wristwatch says something else wherever you are, but the candles are stamped with the feed, and that is the clock to read sessions on.

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