The 24-hour FX market is not uniform. Understanding which sessions carry institutional volume — and which do not — is the difference between trading signal and trading noise.
The foreign exchange market operates 24 hours a day, five days a week. But this does not mean all hours are equal. The distribution of trading volume across the day is highly concentrated — roughly 70% of daily FX volume occurs during the London and New York sessions, with significant overlap between 07:00 and 11:00 NY time.
The Sydney session opens at 17:00 NY time and represents relatively low volume, primarily driven by commodity-linked currencies (AUD, NZD). The Tokyo session begins at 19:00 NY time and introduces the first significant Asian institutional volume, with JPY pairs most active. The London session opens at midnight to 01:00 NY time and is the highest-volume session globally. The New York session begins at 07:00 NY time and is the second highest by volume.
The London-New York overlap (07:00 to 11:00 NY time) is the most liquid period of the trading day. The concentration of European and American institutional participants creates the conditions for the largest directional moves of the day. Most significant technical levels are set, tested, and resolved during this window.
The period from roughly 13:00 to 18:00 NY time represents the New York afternoon and the gap before Sydney opens. Volume drops significantly. Price action becomes choppy and unreliable. Levels that hold during dead hours frequently break during the next active session. Treating dead-hour price action with the same weight as active session price action is a common and costly mistake.
These lessons cover concepts at a high level. If you want to understand how these tools are interpreted and applied in live market conditions — with the precision and confluence that produces actionable, high-quality setups — that is what the Marley mentorship programme is built around.
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