Trading in the Asia-Pacific session

Currency trading volumes in the Asia-Pacific session account
for about 21 percent of total daily global volume, according
to a 2004 survey. The principal financial trading centers are
Wellington, New Zealand; Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan;
Hong Kong; and Singapore. In terms of the most actively
traded currency pairs, that means news and data reports from
New Zealand, Australia, and Japan are going to be hitting the
market during this session
Because of the size of the Japanese market and the importance
of Japanese data to the market, much of the action during the
Asia-Pacific session is focused on the Japanese yen currency
pairs (explained more in Chapter 2), such as USD/JPY – forex-
speak for the U.S. dollar/Japanese yen -- and the JPY crosses,
like EUR/JPY and AUD/JPY. Of course, Japanese financial insti-
tutions are also most active during this session, so you can fre-
quently get a sense of what the Japanese market is doing based
on price movements.
For individual traders, overall liquidity in the major currency
pairs is more than sufficient, with generally orderly price
movements. In some less liquid, non-regional currencies, like
GBP/USD or USD/CAD, price movements may be more erratic
or nonexistent, depending on the environment.