Oil Trading Market Hours and The 3 Major Oil Trading Sessions
London Close Charts
To maximize the number of trading opportunities during these Oil Trading hours, it is important to be aware of the times when the crude oil market is busiest. This is the time that most oil trade activity occurs.
Even though there is no official open & close time during the week, it can be broken up into 3 major Oil Trading sessions - Tokyo, London and New York sessions.
However, although it seems not to be very important at the start, the right time to trade is one of most crucial points required to be a successful trader.
The best time is when the crude oil market is most active and therefore has the biggest volume of transactions. A more active market creates a good chance to make some profit while a calm and slow one is literally a waste of time - turn off your computer and don't even bother oil trading at this time.
Not all the times are suitable, that is because the volatility keeps changing. Below is a table outlining the schedule of Oil Trading Sessions. The time used is GMT 0
The 3 major sessions are:
- Asian Market Session Hours( Tokyo ): 00:00 - 9:00 GMT
- European Market Session Hours( London ): 7:00 - 17:00 GMT
- U.S. Market Session Hours( New York ): 13:00 - 22:00 GMT
Oil Trading Sessions Overlaps
There are hours when two sessions are overlapped:
London + Tokyo overlap - 7:00 - 9:00 GMT
New York + London overlap - 13:00 - 17:00 GMT
At these overlapping market hours you will find the highest volume of oil trading transactions and therefore more chances to win during these hours.
This means that the lion share of oil trading transactions is happening between the London session & US session. Naturally this is the best time to make profits.
The oil prices moves a lot during the New York and London Sessions because Multinational companies, hedge funds, managed funds and banks are open for transacting.
Multinationals will transact oil during this time to facilitate international business transactions and commerce, hedge funds and managed funds will trade oil for investment purposes, banks on the other hand will exchange a lot of money on behalf of their clients, maybe tourists wanting to travel around the globe or just anyone wanting to exchange money so as to buy something in another country or make some transaction.
This makes the crude oil market very liquid at this time and the high volume of transactions means that oil prices move a lot. At this time the oil charts will generally move in particular direction and form a short term trend.
As a trader you also want to join in when everyone is placing their oil orders as this is the time there is enough liquidity and many good opportunities to make money, and because there is a lot of liquidity the crude oil price movement will generally be more predictable unlike when there is little liquidity and the crude oil price movement becomes unpredictable and the oil prices can move in a range bound with no particular direction.
Once you trade oil for a while you will get to know that is easier to make money when the crude oil market is moving up or moving down, unlike when it is in a range.
Asian Session Characteristics:
- Least volatile of the three marketmarket sessions
- Account for 15% of daily transaction turnover
- Typical 20 -30 pip moves
European Session Characteristics:
- Most volatile of the 3 market sessions
- 35% of daily transaction volume
- Typical 90 -150 pip moves
US Session Characteristics:
- 2nd most volatile of the 3 market sessions
- Accounts for 25 % of daily turnover
- Focuses on US economic news
US and Europe Session Overlaps Characteristics:
- Combines the two most volatile trading sessions
- Accounts for 60% of total daily transaction turnover
- Focuses on USA and European economic news
- Fast moving oil prices and oil trends in a particular direction
