Opportunities are available throughout the entire day for trading forex. It’s in the nature of the Foreign Exchange Market beast that 24 hour trading is possible. Foreign currencies obviously originate in a foreign country and as anyone who has been on a long-haul flight knows, time zones differ. (Don’t you wish you’d paid more attention to geography in school?). As you go east, time increases, go west and time gets less. The market is always open somewhere in the world. From a US point of view that translates as trading opportunities available from 1700hrs EST on Sunday to 1600hrs EST Friday. I’ve deliberately used the 24-hour clock because of the time difference, there’s no need to confuse matters further with am and pm.

We’ve moved on from telex machines and telegrams, as methods of communicating important economic data and news releases now can be more or less instant with access to the Internet. This is particularly important where short-term movements are concerned; news can be a catalyst for activity not just in the US but worldwide.

Considering just those eight major currencies that are available for trade at almost all currency brokers with more than 17 other derivatives, there must always be some piece of relevant economic data waiting to be released that traders wisely use to inform their positions. It would be unusual day for less than seven bits of data to be released from the eight ‘big league’ major foreign currencies or countries most closely followed. News trade is hot. Let’s take a look at the ‘which/when’ of economic news releases most relevant to a forex (FX) trader, and how forex traders may act upon such market-moving data wisely.