Glossary
What Are Trading Sessions — Asia, London, New York
A window of trading hours by region: Asia, London, New York. Price behaves differently in each, so stats are split by session too.
How it works
Trading sessions are a rough split of the day into windows of activity tied to major regional markets: Asian, London, and New York. Each has its own character — the Asian session is usually calmer and more range-bound, London often sets the day's direction, and New York adds volume and volatility, especially where it overlaps with London.
Session boundaries follow the time zones of the relevant financial centers and shift slightly with daylight saving changes in different countries. The overlap between the London and New York sessions typically produces the day's biggest volume and volatility for most liquid instruments.
The same setup can behave very differently across sessions: a breakout strategy that works well in New York's volatility can generate mostly false signals during a quiet Asian session. That's why it pays to break down trade stats by session, not just by setup.
Example
The "range breakout" setup produces 20 trades in a month. Of those, 14 entered during the New York session with a 57% win rate, and 6 entered during the Asian session with a 17% win rate. The overall win rate of 45% (9 of 20) without a session breakdown hides that gap.
Common mistake
A common mistake is running the same breakout setup across every session without accounting for how the Asian session's lower liquidity increases false breakouts on its own.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
- Which session is considered the most volatile?
- Usually the overlap between the London and New York sessions, when participants from both Europe and the US are active at once.
- Do you need to trade every session?
- Not if the stats show a specific setup consistently performs better in one or two sessions and mostly loses in the rest.
Plan versus outcome — for every trade
The Trading OS journal keeps the planned RR and the actual R of each trade side by side and computes expectancy from real results.
No sign-up — the journal runs in your browser; an account is only needed for sync.