USD/JPY trading hours, sessions and liquidity: when spreads tighten, when they widen, and how to time orders

USD/JPY trades from the Sunday open to the Friday close, but trading conditions change a lot through the day. The pair can be deep and cheap to trade at one hour and thin and costly a few hours later. This guide covers how the trading day is laid out, where liquidity builds up and drains away, and what that means for when you place orders.

This is general education, not advice. Nothing here tells you to buy, sell or hold USD/JPY, and nothing here predicts where it will go.

How big is the USD/JPY market?

Some context on scale first. The most complete data source is the BIS Triennial Survey. Turnover in OTC FX markets averaged $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, a 28% increase from the $7.5 trillion per day recorded in the 2022 Survey. The yen is one of the most traded currencies. The dollar is involved in 89.2% of transactions, followed by the euro (28.6%) and the Japanese yen (16.8%).

An analysis of the 2025 survey by The Full FX found that USD/JPY was the only top six currency pair to see its share of volume increase, by 0.8% to 14.3%.

Much of that volume isn't booked in Japan. According to the Bank of Japan, average daily turnover of the foreign exchange market in Japan in April 2025 was USD 440.2 billion, increasing by 1.8 percent from the previous survey, while Japan's share in the global market decreased from 4.4 percent to 3.5 percent. The Full FX put the gap this way: while notional volume rose $7 billion per day in Japan, in USD/JPY it rose the small matter of $363 billion per day. That means a lot of yen trading happens offshore.

London matters most here. In the Bank of England's April 2025 survey, the average daily UK FX turnover reached a record high of $4,045 billion, and EUR/USD, USD/JPY and GBP/USD remained broadly in line with previous surveys as the top three pairs traded there.

What this means for you: USD/JPY is a "Japanese" pair, but its deepest liquidity isn't limited to Tokyo hours.

The daily cycle in brief

The FX market has no central exchange. Liquidity moves around the world as dealing centres open and close. For USD/JPY the day has a few anchor points:

• The Tokyo morning, including the 9:55 a.m. Tokyo fix.
• The London session, including the 4 p.m. London fix.
• The London–New York overlap, usually the deepest part of the day.
• The New York afternoon and the 5 p.m. New York rollover, usually the thinnest part.

One reference point never moves: Japan doesn't use daylight saving time, so 9:55 Tokyo time is always 00:55 UTC. The London and New York anchors do move, as explained below.

The Tokyo session and the 9:55 fix

The Tokyo morning has a feature you won't find in most pairs. A "fixing" is a rule among the Forex market participating institutions to set a reference/settlement price for the day. In Japan, banks set their customer exchange rates for the day from interbank trading around 9:55 a.m.

Academic work by Ito and Yamada found that at the Tokyo fixing, the high trading volumes concentrates at GMT 00:55:00 (9:55AM Tokyo time) and prior to the fixing, the depth gradually increases toward the time. They report that the peak of trading volume for the USD/JPY is during the Tokyo fixing (GMT 00:55).

Traders also watch gotobi days, which traditionally fall on the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th and 30th of each month. Japanese companies tend to settle payments on these dates. Research by Bessho, Sugimoto and Suzuki (2023) focus directly on Gotobi days and find that USD/JPY tends to rise from around 03:00 toward 09:55, then fall after the fix.

That finding is easy to over-read. One broker's explainer puts it well: the pattern describes an average tendency, not a fixed sequence that USD/JPY follows every time. A historical average says nothing reliable about any particular day, and trading costs can wipe out small average moves. The practical lesson is narrower: expect concentrated flow and possibly sharp moves in the minutes around 9:55 Tokyo time, especially on gotobi days.

London, New York and the overlap

As Tokyo winds down, European desks take over. The London session has its own benchmark. Ito and Yamada describe the two big fixings as the pm London fixing (GMT 15:00, summer time) and (2) 9:55 am Tokyo fixing (GMT 00:55). The London 4 p.m. fix is 15:00 GMT in British summer time and moves an hour in winter. Large benchmark-linked orders can cluster around it.

For most major pairs, spreads usually narrow when London and New York are both open. A trading-technology firm's guide says spreads are tightest when London and New York overlap (roughly 12:00–16:00 UTC), tight during the London morning, slightly wider in the Asian session for EUR and GBP pairs, and widest in the late New York afternoon and around rollover. USD/JPY behaves a bit differently in Asia than the euro and sterling pairs do, because Tokyo is a natural home market for yen flow. Still, the overlap tends to be the deepest window.

Another retail education site describes what you'll see on screen: a major pair's spread compresses when London and New York overlap, then widens sharply in the quiet hours. Nothing about the pair changed. Only the number of willing quotes did.

Big US data releases also land during New York hours. Liquidity is usually deep then, but it can pull back for seconds or minutes around the release itself.

When liquidity thins: rollover, the Sunday open and holidays

The 5 p.m. New York rollover

The trading day ends at 5 p.m. New York time, when open positions roll to the next value date. In UTC, 5 p.m. New York is 21:00 during US daylight time and 22:00 during US standard time. The transition periods also shift other session gaps: for one to three weeks in March and in October/November the distance between London and New York changes, and so does the rollover time in UTC. Check which regime applies on the day you trade, and compare it with your broker's server clock.

An FXStreet education piece says as liquidity drains from the market between the New York close and Tokyo open, execution becomes a minefield. The same piece notes spreads can widen dramatically, often 5x to 10x their normal levels. Treat that as a rough description, not a guarantee. Your broker's actual widening could be smaller or larger.

Wider spreads also affect stop orders. A retail-forex education site observes that during rollover quotes thin out for a few minutes, spreads balloon, and price can flick violently on almost no real trading. Stops parked near the market often trigger here for no good reason. A buy-side stop triggers on the ask price, so a stop can fill when the spread widens even if the bid on your chart never got there.

The Sunday open and holidays

The same trading-technology guide notes spreads are generally wider in the late New York afternoon, around rollover, on holidays and in the first hour after the Sunday open. The weekend also brings gap risk. If news breaks while the market is shut, the first Sunday price can be well away from Friday's close, and a stop order can fill at that worse price.

Japanese public holidays matter a lot for USD/JPY. One market commentary noted that trading conditions are thinner with Japanese markets closed, and that can exaggerate moves if momentum starts building. The same goes for the Western year-end. FXStreet analysis pointed to the low liquidity days during the Christmas and New Year holiday period when many traders will be away from their desks and trading will be extremely thin.

Intervention risk in thin markets

USD/JPY carries a risk most majors don't: Japanese authorities sometimes buy or sell yen directly in the market. Recent history shows this can happen when liquidity is thin.

Jiji Press reported that in 2024, the government and the BOJ conducted market interventions during the Golden Week holiday period between late April and early May, when trading in Tokyo tends to be thin. Over that year, authorities spent around US$100 billion intervening in support of Japan's currency on several occasions in 2024.

It happened again in 2026. As of May 2, Jiji reported that the Japanese government and the Bank of Japan apparently implemented their first currency market intervention in about two years on Thursday afternoon. Before Golden Week began, Finance Minister Katayama said ministry officials would be monitoring the currency market even when much of Japan shuts for the Golden Week holidays. Nikkei Asia later reported that Bank of Japan money market data suggests around 4.5 trillion yen ($28.8 billion) worth of yen-buying interventions took place during the first six days of May, largely coinciding with Japan's Golden Week string of holidays.

You don't need to forecast intervention to learn from this. The point is that a quiet holiday market is not a safe market for USD/JPY. Thin liquidity plus possible official action can produce large, fast moves. Stops may fill well beyond their levels, and leveraged positions can lose more than planned.

What this means for order timing

None of the following is a trading method. These are practical ways to account for liquidity:

• Know which clock you're using. Charts, broker servers and news calendars may each show a different time zone. Convert the anchor times (9:55 Tokyo, the London fix, 5 p.m. New York) into your platform's time.
• Look at the live spread before you act. Your broker's actual quote matters more than a typical spread. If it's several times its usual width, that cost is real.
• Think about order type. A market order fills at whatever price is available, which may be poor in thin conditions. A limit order caps your price but may not fill. A stop becomes a market order once triggered, so in a gap or spread spike it can fill well past its level.
• Leave room for the spread. A stop very close to the market can be hit by spread widening alone, especially around rollover.
• Check the calendar. Japanese holidays, US holidays, the year-end and major scheduled releases all change liquidity.
• Treat any signal as one input. If you use Markitel's signals, they are the output of Markitel's rule-based ten-factor technical engine. They don't know your broker's spread when you act, and they're no guarantee of any result. Markitel is not a broker, custodian or adviser.

A hypothetical example for a small account

These numbers are made up and rounded to show the arithmetic. They aren't a forecast or a recommendation.

Say a trader has a $100 account and USD/JPY is at 150.00. They open a 1,000-unit position, worth $1,000 of notional exposure.

• A pip in USD/JPY is 0.01 yen. On 1,000 units, one pip is 10 yen, or about $0.07 at 150.
• If the spread is 1 pip, getting in costs about $0.07.
• If the same order is placed while the spread has widened to 10 pips, entry costs about $0.67. That's two-thirds of 1% of the account gone before the price moves at all.

Now leverage. In the US, NFA rules set a minimum security deposit of 2% for transactions involving a defined list of currencies and 5% for other transactions. Those percentages correspond to maximum notional leverage of 50:1 and 20:1, although a broker may require more margin. In the EU, ESMA's limits are 30:1 for major currency pairs, and its major currency pairs comprise any two of the following currencies: the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen, the pound sterling, the Canadian dollar or the Swiss franc.

At a 2% deposit, the $1,000 position ties up only $20 of margin. But the exposure is still ten times the account:

• A 1% move in USD/JPY (1.50 yen, or 150 pips) changes the position's value by about $10, which is 10% of the account.
• A 3% move, the kind that can happen in a fast or intervention-driven market, would mean about $30, or 30% of the account. A larger position would multiply that loss.

Leverage cuts both ways, but losses are what close accounts. In thin markets, stops may fill at worse prices, so the actual loss can be bigger than the stop distance suggests.

Key takeaways

• USD/JPY is one of the most traded pairs in the world, and a large share of it trades outside Japan. London is a major centre.
• The 9:55 Tokyo fix (always 00:55 UTC) concentrates USD/JPY volume. Gotobi-day patterns are average tendencies, not reliable signals.
• Spreads are usually tightest when London and New York overlap. They're usually widest around the 5 p.m. New York rollover, after the Sunday open and on holidays.
• Japanese holidays and the year-end can be especially thin for USD/JPY, and Japan has intervened during holiday periods in both 2024 and 2026.
• Leverage multiplies losses as well as gains. On a small account, wide spreads and gaps can eat a big share of equity quickly, so check live spreads, order types and position size before every trade.