When each major pair moves, hour by hour (UK time)

Each figure here is the median range of one UK clock hour, from its high to its low, across every weekday in six months of one-minute prices; the whole-day figures are in average daily range of the major pairs. Times are UK clock time, British Summer Time from 29 March and GMT on the first two days, 26 and 27 March, and each hour is named by its start: 15:00 means 15:00 to 16:00.

The busiest and quietest hour on each pair

Each cell gives the UK hour and its median range in pips.

On every pair the three busiest hours were 13:00, 14:00 and 15:00, inside the four hours when London and New York are both open. The two regular slots for US data, 13:30 and 15:00 UK, fall in two of them. The three quietest hours on each pair all came from 21:00, 23:00, 00:00, 04:00 and 05:00. The 22:00 hour is left out of the ranking, for the reason given in the rollover section below.

NZD/USD has no sample from this publisher, so it has no figures here. Gold keeps its own clock, set out in gold's range hour by hour.

EUR/USD through the day

EUR/USD's median range was 5.0 pips in the midnight hour, rose to 8.1 pips at 02:00 and eased back to 5.6 at 05:00. It climbed from 07:00, an hour before the London session, to 12.2 pips at 08:00, dipped to 9.4 at 10:00, then peaked at 15.2 pips at 15:00 and fell away through the evening to 4.5 at 23:00. GBP/USD, USD/CAD and USD/CHF followed the same outline at their own sizes.

The afternoon against the Asian morning

The biggest hour between 00:00 and 07:00 UK was 01:00 or 02:00 on all six pairs, which is 09:00 or 10:00 in Tokyo. Here is the 15:00 hour against it, in median pips:

• EUR/USD: 15.2 against 8.1 at 02:00, 1.9 times as large
• GBP/USD: 21.9 against 10.6 at 02:00, 2.1 times
• USD/JPY: 18.6 against 16.2 at 01:00, 1.1 times
• AUD/USD: 13.1 against 10.5 at 02:00, 1.2 times
• USD/CAD: 18.3 against 7.7 at 02:00, 2.4 times
• USD/CHF: 15.1 against 7.6 at 02:00, 2.0 times

On EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/CAD and USD/CHF the afternoon peak was about twice the biggest Asian hour or more, and the Asian hours were the narrow part of the day, as the sessions guide describes. USD/JPY and AUD/USD were different.

USD/JPY and AUD/USD in the Asian hours

On both pairs the biggest Asian hour, 01:00 on USD/JPY and 02:00 on AUD/USD, was larger than every other hour outside 13:00 to 17:00, London's morning included.

The session ranges point the same way. On USD/JPY the nine-hour Tokyo session had a median range of 44.0 pips, more than the 34.9 pips of the four hours when London and New York overlap, and on AUD/USD Tokyo's 27.0 pips beat the overlap's 24.3. On the other four pairs the four overlap hours covered more ground than Tokyo's nine.

The sessions side by side

Each session is its centre's local business hours, which in UK summer time are 22:00 to 07:00 for Sydney (21:00 to 06:00 before Sydney's clock change on 5 April), 01:00 to 10:00 for Tokyo, 08:00 to 17:00 for London and 13:00 to 22:00 for New York; the overlap is 13:00 to 17:00. The figures are median ranges in pips across each whole session.

London had the widest median range on EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY and USD/CAD, and New York on AUD/USD and USD/CHF, by under a pip on both. The sessions overlap one another, so the columns do not add up to a day. For the sessions on your own clock, use the forex market hours tool.

The 22:00 rollover

The 22:00 UK hour holds the 17:00 New York rollover, when the trading day turns over. It has prices on Monday to Thursday only and rests on 95 to 104 days, depending on the pair. Because it holds the rollover, we leave it out of the rankings above.

On USD/CHF the ten minutes from 22:00 averaged a range of 14.7 pips, more than the 10.4 pips of the fifty minutes after them, and the hour's median of 15.2 pips was higher than any other USD/CHF hour, 15:00 included. So a USD/CHF figure for that hour mostly measures the rollover. On the other five pairs the first ten minutes averaged less than the fifty after them, from 4.6 against 5.3 pips on EUR/USD to 9.3 against 10.4 on GBP/USD. On the charts the hour shows as a small step up from 21:00.

The forex market hours guide explains the rollover and the week it moves: from 25 to 31 October 2026 it comes at 21:00 UK.

Using the hours with a signal

A trade still open at 13:00 UK is going into the hours with the largest typical moves on all six pairs, the rollover hour aside. That matters most for a stop close to price: on GBP/USD the median 15:00 hour covered 21.9 pips, against 6.5 in the midnight hour.

A trade left open overnight on USD/JPY or AUD/USD is not sitting through a quiet patch. On the other four pairs the small hours were quieter, but a median describes the typical night, not any one night.

These hours were measured on UK summer time, apart from the first two days. In winter, Tokyo's 09:00 is midnight UK rather than 01:00, while London and New York keep their UK hours.

Our signals go out in the London and New York hours, the busier part of the day on every pair here. The free channel shows where they land on your own clock.

Where the numbers come from

One-minute prices: GetData free sample, MIT licence, 26 March to 25 September 2026.

Each hour's range is its high minus its low in pips, 0.0001 on EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD, USD/CAD and USD/CHF and 0.01 on USD/JPY, on Monday to Friday UK dates. An hour counts only when it had at least 50 one-minute bars, so most hours rest on 131 or 132 days; the sample has 131 full trading days for the forex pairs. The first minute after each weekend or other pause of more than five minutes is left out of highs and lows, because its opening price is carried over from before the pause. Sessions are measured the same way across their local business hours. The charts and tables use the median, so one very large hour does not set the figure. The full method is on the markets page.