Trading session
The forex day moves through overlapping sessions: Sydney/Tokyo, then London, then New York. Each has a personality — the Asian session is typically quieter and range-bound; London brings the day's first surge of volume; the London–New York overlap is usually the most liquid stretch.
Many automated strategies are built entirely around this structure: measuring the range of a quiet session and trading the breakout when a liquid one opens. For such strategies, correct session times — and therefore correct broker server time — are not a detail but the strategy itself.
Covered in depth in Lesson 09: Sessions: the rhythm of the forex day.
Related terms
- Range breakout — A strategy family that marks a price range during quiet hours and trades the move when price escapes it.
- Broker server time — The clock your broker's platform runs on — the timezone that defines what "session hours" mean to a robot.
- Liquidity — How much volume the market can absorb at current prices — the depth that determines spreads and slippage.
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