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In my last post, I looked at intraday activity in stock indexes; I had a few requests to repeat the same work, showing time of day influences–intraday volume (tick volume) and trend strength–for a handful of major currencies.

I’ll just present the charts here without much commentary, as the patterns are probably less significant, in many ways, than they are in stock indexes. A few thoughts:

• It is easy to see the session opens that dominate trading in these currencies.
• The primacy of the US market is also clearly visible. Perhaps this is an effect that will change over the next ten years, and it certainly is worth watching.
• The question of trend strength by time of day is more complicated, as it probably responds to a complex web of session openings and closings, scheduled news impacts, and action in related equity markets.
  • It is, at least, possible to identify best and worst trending times of day, and these will come as no surprise to currency traders.
• In general, these effects may be less important and less significant for currency traders than they are for stock index traders.