About midway through the Asian
trading day, European financial centers begin to open up and the market gets
into its full swing. European financial centers and London account for over 50 %
of total daily global trading volume,
with London alone accounting for about one-third of total daily global volume,
according to the 2004 BIS survey.
The European session overlaps
with half of the Asian trading day and half of the North American trading
session, which means that market interest and liquidity is at its absolute peak
during this session.
News and data events from the
Eurozone (and individual countries like Germany and France), Switzerland, and the
United Kingdom are typically released in the early-morning hours of the European
session. As a result, some of the biggest moves and most active trading takes
place in the European currencies (EUR, GBP, and CHF) and the euro
cross-currency pairs (EUR/CHF and EUR/GBP).
Asian trading centers begin to
wind down in the late morning hours of the European session, and North American
financial centers come in a few hours later, around 7 a.m. ET.
