Forex Market Hours in Thailand and Indonesia Time (UTC+7)

In Bangkok and Jakarta time (ICT and WIB, both UTC+7), the forex market opens at 04:00 or 05:00 on Monday morning and closes at the same time on Saturday morning. In between, the four main sessions are: Sydney from about 03:00-04:00 to 12:00-13:00, Tokyo from 07:00 to 16:00, London from 14:00 or 15:00 to 23:00 or midnight, and New York from 19:00 or 20:00 to 04:00 or 05:00. The earlier times apply from late March to late October, when Europe and the United States are on daylight saving time; Thailand and Indonesia never change their clocks, so the sessions move around you instead. The busiest stretch for major pairs such as EUR/USD is the London and New York overlap, which falls in the local evening: 19:00 to 23:00 in the northern summer and 20:00 to 00:00 in the northern winter. If you run an Expert Advisor, set its trading hours in your broker's server time, not in local time: on the common UTC+2 / UTC+3 MetaTrader server, Bangkok and Jakarta are 5 hours ahead in winter and 4 hours ahead in summer. The tables below give every session in local time, the conversion to server time, and ready-made EA time windows. Times in this article are conventional session hours; individual banks and brokers differ slightly.

Forex sessions in Bangkok and Jakarta time

Forex sessions are named after the financial centres that dominate trading at that time of day, and each one is conventionally counted from the start to the end of the local working day there. Converted to UTC+7 they look like this:

Each region changes its clocks on its own date, so for a few weeks a year the columns mix. In 2026, New York moved to summer time on March 8 and London on March 29; London returns to winter time on October 25 and New York on November 1. Sydney does the opposite: summer time from early October to early April. During the gap weeks, take the London row from one column and the New York row from the other.

Indonesia has three time zones

Everything in this article is in WIB (UTC+7), the same as Thailand; traders in central and eastern Indonesia add one or two hours. None of the three zones uses daylight saving time.

When the forex week opens and closes in UTC+7

The forex week runs from 17:00 New York time on Sunday to 17:00 New York time on Friday, which is Monday morning to Saturday morning in Bangkok and Jakarta. Weekends are the only time the whole market is closed.

The daily rollover is when brokers charge or pay swap and when spreads often widen for a few minutes, because liquidity is thin. An EA that opens trades around 04:00-05:00 local time can pay several times its usual spread; how spread raises your break-even win rate shows why that matters. Gold, indices and crypto CFDs keep their own hours: check the symbol's Specification in MetaTrader (right-click it in Market Watch) for its trading sessions.

The best time to trade forex from Thailand or Indonesia

For EUR/USD, GBP/USD and other major pairs, the London and New York overlap is usually the most active part of the day, and from UTC+7 it falls in the evening after work. Which window suits you depends on what you trade:

Scheduled US economic releases, such as the monthly jobs report, usually come out at 08:30 New York time: 20:30 in Bangkok and Jakarta in winter and 19:30 in summer. Prices can jump and spreads widen around them, which is also when slippage is most likely.

How to convert Bangkok or Jakarta time to MetaTrader server time

MetaTrader shows prices and runs Expert Advisors on the broker's server clock, not on your computer's clock. Many forex brokers set that clock to UTC+2 in winter and UTC+3 in summer, so that the server's midnight is the 17:00 New York rollover; most of them switch on the US dates. With such a server:

To check your own broker, compare the time shown in MetaTrader's Market Watch with your local clock. Some brokers use UTC or another offset; cTrader shows UTC by default. Whatever the offset, the rule is the same: an EA's time filter has to be written in the clock the EA reads.

EA trading hours in server time (they don't move with daylight saving)

On a UTC+2 / UTC+3 server, the London and New York sessions sit at the same server hours all year, so a time filter written in server time keeps working through every clock change. The same filter written in Bangkok time would have to be edited twice a year.

The Tokyo row is the exception: Japan doesn't change its clocks, so in server time the Tokyo session moves by an hour twice a year while in UTC+7 it stays fixed. For the few gap weeks in March and late October / early November, when Europe and the US are on different clocks, the London rows are off by one hour in server time too.

Setting trading hours in AlgoPuzzle, step by step

AlgoPuzzle is a no-code builder that exports a strategy as a MetaTrader 5 EA (.mq5), a MetaTrader 4 EA (.mq4) or a cTrader cBot (.cs), and its trading-hours setting is written in broker server time. To limit a rule to the London - New York overlap:

1. Open the builder and build or load a rule (asset, timeframe, IF condition, THEN trade). Five simple rule types are a good starting point.
2. On the rule's last row, change Trade any time to only at set times.
3. Type 15:00 and 19:00 as the window, in 24-hour format. The start time is included and the end time is not, and a window may run past midnight (22:00 to 02:00).
4. Tick the weekdays to trade; Monday to Friday are ticked by default.
5. Run the built-in backtest, which uses the same server clock, then export and confirm the hours in MetaTrader's Strategy Tester.

Outside the window the rule only stops opening new trades; trades already open keep their stop loss, take profit, trailing stop and exit rule. The full reference is in Strategy rules: trading times. If a strategy with a time filter goes days without a trade, EA Not Opening Trades in MT5? covers the usual reasons, including a closed time window.

Running an EA from Thailand or Indonesia: what to plan for

An EA trades on the server's clock, but it only runs while the platform that hosts it is on and connected. From UTC+7, the most active hours are your evening and the weekly open is at 04:00-05:00 on Monday, so a home computer that sleeps at night misses part of the trading day.

Guides for timing an automated strategy

Session timing is one input of a strategy; these pages cover the rest.

One warning on testing: trying many time windows on the same history and keeping the best one is a classic way to overfit. Pick the window for a reason (a session, avoiding the rollover), then test it.

Common questions