Why does the forex market never sleep?

Forex runs 24 hours a day, five days a week — because there is no single building where it happens.

A market with no home

Stock exchanges have an address and opening bells. Forex doesn't. Currencies trade "over the counter" — a global web of banks dealing directly with each other — so as long as a major financial center is awake somewhere, the market is open. By most estimates it turns over more than $7 trillion a day (Bank for International Settlements, 2022), the largest market on earth.

The global relay

The clock is really a relay race between three great sessions. Sydney and Tokyo open the week in Asia; as they wind down, London takes over and dominates volume; and before London closes, New York is already trading. When the US day ends, Asia is waking again — and the baton never drops until Friday. We map the full loop in forex trading sessions: when the market is alive and when it's sleeping.

Not all hours are equal

"Always open" doesn't mean "always worth trading." Liquidity swells and shrinks through the day, and the richest conditions appear where two sessions overlap — especially London–New York — which is exactly where the real volatility lives. In the thin, sleepy hours the opposite happens: fewer players, wider costs, which is why the spread widens overnight.

Why this matters for your trades

The session you trade shapes everything — the pairs that move, the spread you pay, the volatility you face. A strategy that prints in the London–New York overlap can die in the quiet Asian afternoon. Knowing which session is "driving" is a core input to reading market readiness. So the market never sleeps — but the smart move is knowing exactly when it's most awake.

Curiosities from ForexCommand, not financial advice. Daily turnover figure: BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey, 2022.