Who trades?

There are two parties involved in an online forex deal: you as the trader and the market maker, A market maker is a company that facilitates trading by offering an ask and bid price on a currency, literally making the market for traders to trade in.

Individual forex traders like you make up the fastest-growing segment of the global forex market. The other players include the interbank market which is mostly made up of the largest commercial banks and securities dealers, after which you have the smaller banks, multi-national corporations and hedge funds. 

Because forex is a truly global market, you can trade 24 hours a day, five days a week. As one region’s market day ends, the next region’s market day begins. This means you can trade on any region’s news as developments take place. The forex market is open 24 hours a day from the Monday morning open in Sydney to the close on Friday evening in New York. Each trading day can be broken down into three sessions: the Asian, the European (EU) and the US. Generally these are referred to as the Tokyo, London and New York sessions. The Asian session opens around 21:00 GMT (summer hours) and closes around 08:00 GMT. This overlaps with the EU session which opens around 06:00 GMT and closes around 16:00 GMT. Then the US session, which overlaps with the EU session, opens around 13:30 GMT and closes around 21:00 GMT. Then the cycle starts over again with the Asian open. This means you can theoretically trade forex non-stop from 21:00 Sunday GMT (summer hours) until 21:00 GMT Friday! The times when two sessions overlap are the most exciting as it is then that you will find high volumes being traded and maximum volatility which presents opportunities. The European session has the most volume traded since it is sandwiched between the Asian and the US sessions. Approximately 50% of the daily forex volume goes through the EU session.