Home Market hours Sydney session
Sydney session
Sydney opens the trading week and sets the tone for the Asian hours. It is the thinnest of the four majors, which makes its ranges small and its spreads wide — and makes any move that does happen worth a second look, because it happened without much help.
Reading your clock…
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Today, in your timezone
- Sydney
- Tokyo
- London
- New York
Live now, in your timezone
| Session | Status | Your time | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney08:00 – 17:00 Sydney | — | — | — |
| Tokyo09:00 – 18:00 Tokyo | — | — | — |
| London08:00 – 17:00 London | — | — | — |
| New York08:00 – 17:00 New York | — | — | — |
| London – New York overlapthe busiest window of the day | — | — | — |
The clock needs JavaScript and runs entirely in this tab. Your timezone is read from the browser with the standard internationalisation API — nothing is sent anywhere.
When the Sydney session runs
The Sydney session is defined by the hours Sydney keeps: 08:00 to 17:00 local. In UTC that is 21:00 to 06:00 in January and 22:00 to 07:00 in July.
What only this session has
Australia's own numbers arrive in these hours. The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes on Canberra time, which is Sydney's clock, and its main releases come out at 11:30 in the morning: 00:30 UTC in January and 01:30 UTC in July, because the two hemispheres move their clocks in opposite directions. The Reserve Bank of Australia announces its interest rate decision at 2.30 in the afternoon on the second day of each meeting, which is 03:30 UTC in January and 04:30 UTC in July. Sydney changes its clocks in October and April and London in March and October, so the gap between the two moves four times a year, not twice.
London and New York are both closed when either of those lands. The other end of the day comes round here too: the daily forex candle, which closes at 17:00 New York time, rolls over at 09:00 in Sydney in January, an hour after this session opens, and at 07:00 in July, an hour before it does.
Sources: ABS release calendar · Reserve Bank of Australia
What the Sydney session is like
- AUD and NZD pairs see their most active hours here, because this is when their domestic data lands.
- Ranges are narrow. A strategy calibrated on London volatility will find nothing to do, and a mean-reversion approach often finds more.
- The first two hours of the week are Sydney alone. Gaps from weekend news get filled — or do not — in very thin liquidity.
What else is open while it runs
| Session | Hours shared | When |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo | 7h | 00:00 to 07:00 UTC |
| London | none | never at the same time |
| New York | none | never at the same time |
Sydney session in every major timezone
| Timezone | Northern winter | Northern summer |
|---|---|---|
| SAST South Africa | 23:00 – 08:00 | 00:00 – 09:00 |
| GMT Reference time | 21:00 – 06:00 | 22:00 – 07:00 |
| EST / EDT United States | 16:00 – 01:00 | 18:00 – 03:00 |
| IST India | 02:30 – 11:30 | 03:30 – 12:30 |
| GST United Arab Emirates | 01:00 – 10:00 | 02:00 – 11:00 |
| CET / CEST Europe | 22:00 – 07:00 | 00:00 – 09:00 |
| EET / EEST Europe | 23:00 – 08:00 | 01:00 – 10:00 |
| JST Japan | 06:00 – 15:00 | 07:00 – 16:00 |
| AEST / AEDT Australia | 08:00 – 17:00 | 08:00 – 17:00 |
| WAT West Africa | 22:00 – 07:00 | 23:00 – 08:00 |
| EAT East Africa | 00:00 – 09:00 | 01:00 – 10:00 |
| PST / PDT United States | 13:00 – 22:00 | 15:00 – 00:00 |
The other sessions
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