Part IV. New York trading session

Commander in Pips: Just after the British lunch…I’m kidding, but in general it starts to pick up steam roughly at this time – 12:00-13:00 GMT, and gradually fades out to 21:00-22:00 GMT. In terms of America’s time scale – this is just a simple day time – 8:00-17:00 EDT/EST

The New York trading session takes second place in overall day trading volume with about 17-18% of overall turnover. The major point of the NY session is that 80-85% of all transactions involve the US Dollar. So this is a solid reason to pay particular attention to major pairs with USD during this session. 

As with Europe and Asia, “New York session” does not mean that only New York itself trades during this time. As London and Tokyo, New York is a financial centre of the US and entire financial world keeps an eye on it.

Pair	New York session
EUR/USD	93
GBP/USD	104
USD/JPY	62
AUD/USD	84
NZD/USD	68
USD/CAD	93
USD/CHF	81
EUR/JPY	109
GBP/JPY	137
AUDJPY	106
EUR/GBP	41
EUR/CHF	85

From the table you can see that almost any pair could be traded during this period, because this trading session, especially when it overlaps with London’s one provides tons of liquidity. The huge monsters of the FOREX market are the US Banks that start to toss and turn their billions among themselves and with European whales (such as UBS or Deutsche Bank) in the morning.

Because of the fact that the USD takes part in 80-85% of all transactions, US news and macro data releases will be extremely significant for the market movement in the period of the New York session. Depending on whether data appears better than expected or worse than expected, it could lead to sloppy & choppy price action, causing the dollar to jump up and down.

What else should we know about the New York trading session? 

1. Due to overlapping with London session, the morning liquidity is higher than the evening one. Because the European trading day comes to an end, liquidity gradually decreases during the second half of the trading day of the NY session.

2. Most information of important macro data and news releases happen in the morning of the New York session. As we’ve noted already, the US dollar takes part in 80-85% of all transactions, so these macro events could seriously shake the market.

3. Friday evening is usually a very calm period – because both Japan’s session and the European one is already closed for weekend.

4. This in turn, could lead to some reverse moves on the market on Friday’s evening, because US traders can turn to taking profits or just closing positions to avoid unwelcome risk exposure due to possible news over the weekend.