Web Trader MT5
New York opens, and for a few hours the two biggest currency centres on earth are trading at once. The New York session is the North American slice of the 24-hour FX day, running roughly from 8am to 5pm Eastern time. It matters for two reasons. It carries the US economic data that can move markets, including jobs numbers, inflation prints, Fed decisions, and for part of the morning it overlaps with London, which is still winding down.
That overlap is often a key trading period: liquidity can be deeper, spreads can be tighter, and market moves can be more pronounced. Once London clocks off in the early afternoon, trading activity may thin and the market can become quieter.
Example: A trader watching dollar pairs plans her day around the London-New York overlap in the morning, when trading activity is typically higher and a US data release can cause significant moves in EUR/USD, then eases off in the late afternoon as European desks go home and the market enters the slower Asian handover.
