Forex market hours in the UAE

The forex market trades around the clock from Monday to Friday, but activity follows the business day of the big financial centres from Asia to Europe to North America. For a trader in Dubai or Abu Dhabi there is an extra wrinkle: the UAE never changes its clocks, but the UK, the US and Australia do, so the sessions drift by an hour against your local time twice a year.

This guide converts the main sessions into Gulf Standard Time (GST), which is UTC+4 all year round, and shows the arithmetic so you can check it yourself.

How the conversion works

Every conversion here goes through UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) in two steps:

1. Convert the local time to UTC by subtracting the centre's offset. For example, London summer time is UTC+1, so 08:00 in London is 08:00 minus 1 hour = 07:00 UTC.
2. Add 4 hours to get GST: 07:00 UTC plus 4 = 11:00 GST.

For a negative offset you add instead. New York summer time is UTC−4, so 08:00 in New York is 08:00 plus 4 = 12:00 UTC, and 12:00 plus 4 = 16:00 GST.

Session hours are conventions, and sources differ by an hour or so. Here we use 07:00–16:00 local for Sydney and 09:00–18:00 for Tokyo, and 08:00–17:00 local for London and New York.

When the clocks change

Notice that Sydney's summer falls during the northern winter, and that the UK and US change on different dates.

The four sessions in GST

Put simply, for most of the northern summer (UK and US on summer time, Sydney on standard time) the day in GST runs: Sydney 01:00–10:00, Tokyo 04:00–13:00, London 11:00–20:00 and New York 16:00–01:00. For most of the northern winter (UK and US on standard time, Sydney on summer time): Sydney 00:00–09:00, Tokyo 04:00–13:00, London 12:00–21:00 and New York 17:00–02:00.

The weekly open and close

By common convention the forex week opens at 17:00 New York time on Sunday and closes at 17:00 New York time on Friday.

Brokers may open or close a few minutes either side, and spreads are often very wide just after the open. Prices can also gap at the open if news broke over the weekend, and a stop-loss inside a gap is usually filled at the first available price, which can be much worse than planned.

The overlaps

When two sessions are open together, more participants are active and the major pairs usually see their highest volumes.

The London and New York overlap is the one most traders care about. It normally lasts four hours, but it stretches to five for a few weeks each year. Between the second Sunday in March and the last Sunday in March, New York is already on summer time while London is not, and between the last Sunday in October and the first Sunday in November the reverse happens: London has gone back while New York has not. In both gaps London runs 12:00–21:00 GST and New York 16:00–01:00 GST, so the overlap is 16:00–21:00 GST.

Busier does not mean easier: the overlap often brings the day's largest moves, including around US data releases.

The quiet hours

The quietest stretch for most pairs is roughly from the New York close until Tokyo gets going: about 01:00 to 04:00 GST in the northern summer and 02:00 to 04:00 GST in the winter. This window contains the daily rollover at 17:00 New York time, when overnight swaps are applied and spreads commonly widen for a while. Orders placed in thin conditions are more exposed to slippage.

Release times worth knowing

Major scheduled data also shifts with the clocks:

• US releases at 08:30 New York time, such as non-farm payrolls and CPI, arrive at 08:30 plus 4 = 12:30 UTC = 16:30 GST when the US is on EDT, and 08:30 plus 5 = 13:30 UTC = 17:30 GST on EST.
• UK releases at 07:00 London time arrive at 07:00 minus 1 = 06:00 UTC = 10:00 GST during BST, and 11:00 GST during GMT.

Always confirm the exact time on an economic calendar set to your own time zone.

What this means if you trade around a day job

Suppose you work a typical office day of roughly 09:00 to 18:00 in Dubai. Some practical consequences follow:

• Evenings are well placed. In the northern winter the London and New York overlap runs 17:00–21:00 GST, so much of it falls after work. In the summer it starts at 16:00, leaving roughly 18:00–20:00 of overlap after work, followed by the New York afternoon.
• US data often lands during working hours. A release at 16:30 or 17:30 GST can move markets sharply while you are in a meeting. Consider whether to hold positions through scheduled news you cannot watch, and remember that a stop-loss limits a planned loss but does not fix the exit price in a fast market.
• Late nights carry a cost. The New York afternoon runs past midnight GST, when liquidity is thinner and tired decisions are rarely good ones.
• Mornings suit preparation. Before work, with London not yet open, review your journal, mark levels and check the calendar.

The UAE weekend and the forex week

The UAE's official weekend is Saturday and Sunday, which lines up neatly with the forex week. The market closes at 01:00 or 02:00 GST in the early hours of Saturday and reopens at 01:00 or 02:00 GST in the early hours of Monday, so all of Sunday is closed. That makes the weekend a natural time to review the week's trades and plan the next, away from live prices.

Keep in mind that positions held over the weekend carry gap risk at the Monday open, and that some instruments, such as cryptocurrency CFDs, may trade at weekends with their own hours. Check your broker's trading hours page for each instrument, especially in the weeks around the clock changes.