I'm looking into Forex more seriously now. What little I had known about the nature of it implied that Forex was active all day long, with few exceptions. Now that I'm looking into data feeds, I see the different exchanges that are active at different times. So it is a little more complicated from what I had thought. This is different from, say, opening a position 1AM and closing it at 1PM. But is there a way to do that? What if I'm in the US, but I want to mess around just at night? Can I get into the other exchanges?
Of course, you can trade whenever you want or feel like it. Except on the weekends. Although, other times are better than others, but the most liquid time is London session between 2am Est and 11am Est, and there is the overlap of US session from about 7am -12noon est, i would say these are the best times to trade. but others trade the Aus open after 4pm est as well. So its all in what you like.
Roughly speaking then, I would select the exchange and then the currency pair from there? I assume any arbitrage between exchanged operating simultaneously are corrected lightning fast these days. What happens if I'm hitting the end of one market's hours and I want to keep going? Is there a way to roll the position to another market?
I think you are confusing spot with futures. Futures trade on exchanges, and have certain hours. There is no exchange for spot and it trades 24/7. Different banks in different countries have hours that they are active but somebody is always trading. The only restriction is the hours your broker is open. Mine closes everyday from 17:00 to 17:15 and on Frdays17:00 until Sunday 17:15. There is no such thing as specifying what exchange you want to trade on, because there is no exhange.
I'm on the U.S. east coast. My trading day begins at 2am. I'm up and down at night until around 6am and then keep an eye on things until around 11:30am. Usually some good opportunities between 2 and 4am but things are slow to develop. It can get crazy after that. So yes, trading is 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, but some time periods are better or worse depending on the currency your trading, trading technique and risk tolerance.
forex -plenty of volume all day long. 3 am to 12 pm is the most active. price movements before 3 am are lower but there is lots of volume there. currency futures have much less volume. they are also more expensive because of comission. where do you live? if you go with a high leverage shope, make sure they are reputable.
Then I'm trying to figure out what the heck I'm looking at on eoddata.com. I'm definitely trusting the guys here since, you know, you actually trade it. I got an account with them originally to download a bunch of tick data for equities, which seemed to work out all right. But now I'm trying to look at their FOREX stuff. I'm going to their Foreign Exchange category and trying to get their 1-minute data. What I wind up with is stuff that starts at 9AM and ends at 5PM. I guess I need to take this up with them.
In the Forex trading i think night time is the best for trading so that this time market remains mostly constant and the spread is more at that time so great chance to earn the more and more profit at that time. But i also think that any time when you observe that market in in your favor then you can make trading. and earning the profit. but any time if you feel that market goes against to you then avoid to make trading. It is the best rule of trading.
yes, I know of no futures exchange that only trades 9 to 5. And furtheremore data from 9 to 5 would be about worthless for historical backtesting. Forex trades 24/7, but generally the spreads on the weekend are so wide that most would consider it untradable at that time. But other than that, you can't rule out any hour of the day.
You say night time, but what is night for you could be morning for someone else. I think London hours are the best because its most liquid and things really get moving.