Sessions
What time does the gold market open
Gold trades 23 hours a day, five days a week. The hours that matter are much narrower than that.
Gold trading hours run from Monday morning to Saturday morning, with a one hour
break each day when the servers roll over. That is 23 hours a day on XAUUSD. Almost
none of it is worth watching.
Gold trading hours by session
| Session | UK | US Eastern | NZ | What it usually does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | 00:00 to 08:00 | 19:00 to 03:00 | 11:00 to 19:00 | Builds a range. Quiet, tight, and the high and low of it matter later. |
| London | 08:00 to 17:00 | 03:00 to 12:00 | 19:00 to 04:00 | The first real expansion. Often takes out one side of the Asian range. |
| New York | 13:30 to 22:00 | 08:30 to 17:00 | 00:30 to 09:00 | The largest moves, and where news lands. |
Gold trading hours in your country
Same three sessions, in local time. These are standard times; London and New
York shift by an hour when their clocks change, and the southern hemisphere does
not change on the same weekend.
| Country | Asian | London | New York |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 00:00 to 08:00 | 08:00 to 17:00 | 13:30 to 22:00 |
| United States (ET) | 19:00 to 03:00 | 03:00 to 12:00 | 08:30 to 17:00 |
| Australia (AEST) | 09:00 to 17:00 | 17:00 to 02:00 | 22:30 to 07:00 |
| New Zealand | 11:00 to 19:00 | 19:00 to 04:00 | 00:30 to 09:00 |
| Singapore / Malaysia | 07:00 to 15:00 | 15:00 to 00:00 | 20:30 to 05:00 |
| India (IST) | 04:30 to 12:30 | 12:30 to 21:30 | 18:00 to 02:30 |
| UAE (GST) | 03:00 to 11:00 | 11:00 to 20:00 | 16:30 to 01:00 |
| South Africa (SAST) | 01:00 to 09:00 | 09:00 to 18:00 | 14:30 to 23:00 |
| Philippines | 07:00 to 15:00 | 15:00 to 00:00 | 20:30 to 05:00 |
Times shift by an hour when daylight saving changes in London or New York. New
Zealand and the northern hemisphere do not change on the same weekend, so for a few
weeks each year the overlap sits an hour earlier or later than usual.
The overlap is the part that matters
London and New York are both open for a few hours a day. That window carries more
volume than the rest of the day put together, and it is where most of the daily range
gets made. If you only have a few hours to watch gold, watch that.
The daily break
There is a one hour gap every day when the trading server rolls the date over. On
most brokers that is 09:00 to 09:15 New Zealand time. Spreads widen badly right before
it and there is no liquidity inside it. Nothing good happens in that window.
What we do with the hours
The Asian range gets marked as soon as it finishes, because its high and low become
the first two levels London reaches for. Previous day high and low go on before the
session opens. Then we watch the overlap. Most of what we take happens between the
London open and the first hour of New York.
Free download
Gold Levels Cheat Sheet (PDF)
Order blocks, fair value gaps, PDH and PDL, and the session times in nine countries. Two pages, no email needed.
How we use gold trading hours on the live chart
Everything above is marked on our chart while the session runs, not drawn in afterwards. Gold trading hours goes on before price gets there, never after. The zones get shaded, each one carries its name and its price range, and a zone turns pale once price has already been through it. When price is sitting inside one, a banner says so on screen. That is deliberate: a level you only see after the move has happened proves nothing.
The panel in the corner shows whether each timeframe is above or below its 50 EMA, from one minute up to the daily, and how far away that average is in pips. When the short timeframes disagree with the daily, the level usually holds. When they all point the same way, it usually breaks. That is not a rule, it is a lean.
Gold is not a quiet market. It can move a hundred pips in an hour on a headline and spreads widen when it does. Position size matters more than entry on an instrument like this, and a stop belongs on the far side of the level rather than right against it. The World Gold Council publishes the demand and supply data behind the longer term moves if you want the fundamental side.
See gold trading hours live
We run a live chart through every session with gold trading hours marked on it, the zones shaded, and every order block and fair value gap labelled as it forms. Watch the live chart and you can see gold trading hours being used in real time rather than explained after the fact.
Every trade we close is published in pips on the results page, wins and losses both, with the date it closed and how far it ran before the exit. Nothing is left out and nothing is cherry picked. If you want to know what your own spread and commission are taking out of your results, the cost calculator works it out for a year on your own numbers.
Related: gold trading hours · order block · fair value gap · PDH and PDL
Education only, not financial advice. Trading gold carries a high level of risk and past results do not predict future results.