| Updated: October 23, 2025Asian Trading Session
This lesson will cover the following
- Basic features of trading during the Asian session
- Advantages and disadvantages
The tables we provided in the previous article make it clear that the Australian and Japanese trading sessions overlap to a great extent. Thus, when talking about the Asian trading session, we often refer to the Japanese session (or Tokyo session), as Tokyo is the third-largest trading centre worldwide (accounting for 6.2% of the overall trading volume).
In addition, about 20% of all daily transactions occur during the Asian trading session, while the Japanese yen accounts for almost 23% of all transactions in the currency market as a whole.However, Japan is not the only nation that trades during this session. Other major centres are Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney. Countries such as China, New Zealand, Russia and Malaysia are also active during the Asian session. Therefore, the Asian session does not necessarily begin and end with the opening and closing of Tokyo as a centre.
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Let us outline some key features of trading during the Asian session.
The session begins at 23:00 GMT and lasts until 8:00 GMT on the following day, or from 19:00 EDT to 4:00 EDT during the summer period and from 18:00 EST to 3:00 EST during the winter period. At the very start of the session only centres such as Sydney are trading, which explains why trading volumes are relatively thin and therefore price changes are likely to be insignificant compared with the price movement observed during the European and American sessions.
Liquidity during this session is lower than during the European and American sessions; this often leads to the so-called consolidation in the currency market, a state in which prices move within a narrow range. Some traders may take advantage of this circumstance and prepare to trade the upcoming breakouts that often occur when the Tokyo session shifts to the London session and market activity expands.
As Japan’s economic growth draws its strength from exports, and as Hong Kong is predominantly a financial centre, the major participants in the Forex market during the Asian session are usually commercial banks, investment banks, central banks and exporting companies.
Currencies of nations located in the Asia-Pacific part of the globe are expected to be more active during the Asian session than the currencies of nations outside that region. Thus, currency pairs including the Japanese yen, the Hong Kong dollar, the New Zealand dollar, the Australian dollar and the Malaysian ringgit are likely to see higher volatility when the Asian session is active. This is because business entities and traders from any specific country in the region will probably use their domestic currency in the majority of their foreign-exchange transactions.
During the Asian session, strings of macro-economic data are typically released from Australia, New Zealand and Japan, while statements by policymakers from these countries are also announced. Traders who base their strategies on fundamental analysis (also known as news traders) may therefore decide that this is the best time to trade currencies of nations located in the Asia-Pacific region.
The most active part of the trading session is in the morning, when most economic data are released.
As the Asian session is the earliest of the three sessions, European and American traders are likely to observe its outcome in order to construct or modify their strategies for the rest of the day.
Now that we have discussed the peculiarities of trading during the Asian session, we can move on to the next segment of the trading day: the European session.