| You think | You do | You make money if |
|---|---|---|
| AUD will rise against USD | Buy AUD/USD — the order fills at the ask price | the bid price later goes above your entry |
| AUD will fall against USD | Sell AUD/USD — the order fills at the bid price | the ask price later goes below your entry |
| You do not know | Nothing — you wait | the chart gives you a reason and the clock agrees |
This table is all there is to buy and sell forex — the oldest question in forex trading, when to buy and sell, in three rows. Two buttons, two prices. Everything else on this page is about when to buy or sell in forex — the second word of the question. Learning the how takes five minutes. The when took me years, and I still run the same checks before every order.
The best example I have is from yesterday, 3 November 2026, so I will use it here.
Buy and sell forex — one trade, two currencies
A currency pair is the price of one currency in units of another. AUD/USD at 0.7000 means one Australian dollar costs 0.7000 US dollars. When you buy AUD/USD, you buy Australian dollars and pay for them in US dollars. When you sell AUD/USD, you give away Australian dollars and receive US dollars. You do not need to own either of them. The broker lends you the side you are short of, and the position is closed by the reverse trade.
In the terminal there are two prices for every pair — bid and ask. The bid is what the market pays you. The ask is what the market charges you. A buy order fills at the ask and closes at the bid. A sell order fills at the bid and closes at the ask. The MetaTrader 5 help states the rule: securities are bought at the ask price and sold at the bid price.
The gap between the two is the spread, and you pay it the moment the order opens.
Say AUD/USD shows 0.6978 bid and 0.6979 ask. You press Buy and you own one lot — 100,000 Australian dollars — at 0.6979. If you pressed Sell one second later, you would close at 0.6978. One pip lost, which on a standard lot is $10. On a 0.01 lot, the size most people on cent accounts trade, it is $0.10.
This is the price of entry. It is small, and it is the reason nobody should open and close an order in the same minute. If pips and lots are new words for you, I explain them on the page about what a pip is.
So how to buy and sell forex in practice? You open the chart, you press Buy or Sell, you set the volume, and the terminal does the rest. That is the easy part. Knowing when to press takes longer, and that is what the rest of the page is about.
One morning — 3 November 2026
The Reserve Bank of Australia announced its decision at 03:30 GMT on Tuesday 3 November. Everyone expected a rise of 25 basis points — 0.25% — to 4.85%, the fifth rise of the year. The market had priced it at about 80%, and almost every economist in the polls called it. The bank delivered exactly that: in its statement it raised the cash rate target to 4.85% and said the vote was six to three.
Most articles give you a rule: a central bank raises rates — buy the currency. On 3 November the rule failed in the first hour. AUD/USD stood near 0.7000 before the announcement. Within the hour it traded at 0.6974. By the end of the day it was at 0.6965, a two-week low. The bank raised rates and the currency fell half a percent.
Why? Two things, and neither of them is the rate. The first — the rise was already in the price. Anyone who wanted Australian dollars on this news had bought them the week before, when the pair stood at 0.7053.
The second — the vote. In September the board voted nine to zero for a rise. In November three members voted against. Three votes against mean the next rise is less likely, and the market trades the next move, not this one.
Traders have a phrase for this — buy the rumour, sell the fact. The price moves while people wait for the news, and when the news arrives there is nobody left to buy.
For me this is the main lesson about when to buy and sell in forex trading. The event itself is rarely the reason to press the button. The gap between what people expected and what they got — that is the reason. How to read that gap for the Fed, the ECB and the others I describe on the hawkish and dovish page.
A one-lot sell on AUD/USD opened at 0.7000 just before the RBA decision and closed at 0.6975 within the hour. The spread is shown as 1 pip for the example — your broker’s spread will differ. Price levels as reported on 3 November 2026.
And the opposite button? A buy at the ask, 0.7001, closed at the bid, 0.6974, loses 27 pips — $270 on a standard lot, $2.70 on 0.01. Same event, same minute, opposite result. This is why the when matters more than the how.
When to buy and sell in forex trading
The second half of the question — when to buy and sell forex — is the clock. Forex trades around the clock from Sunday evening to Friday evening, but it does not trade the same way all day. The whole market moved 9.6 trillion dollars a day in April 2025 by the BIS count, and about 38% of that went through London.
The hours when London and New York are both open — 13:00 to 17:00 GMT — carry the most money and the tightest spreads.
| Session | Hours in GMT, November | What I see on the chart |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 21:00–06:00 | thin and slow; AUD and NZD news land here |
| Tokyo | 00:00–09:00 | JPY pairs move, the rest drifts |
| London | 08:00–17:00 | the day’s direction is usually set here |
| New York | 13:00–22:00 | US data at 13:30 GMT, then a quiet last hour |
| London and New York together | 13:00–17:00 | the busiest four hours, spreads at their lowest |
The four sessions on a 24-hour GMT clock, with this week’s markers: the RBA at 03:30, the Bank of England at 12:00, the US jobs report at 13:30 and the broker rollover at 22:00.
There are also hours when I do not press anything. The first — the minute after a release. In that minute the spread widens, sometimes to ten times its normal size, and the price jumps over levels without trading at them. An order sent then fills where the broker can, not where you clicked.
The second — the rollover. At 00:00 server time the broker charges or pays the swap and the spread widens for a few minutes. On many MT5 servers that is 22:00 GMT in winter, and on Wednesday night the swap is charged three times to cover the weekend.
The third — Friday after 20:00 GMT, when the banks go home and a small order can move the price. The fourth — the first hour after the Sunday open, before the gap from Friday has settled.
This week has two markers on the clock. The Bank of England decides at 12:00 GMT on Thursday 5 November, and the US jobs report comes at 13:30 GMT on Friday 6 November.
I am writing this on 4 November and I do not know what the Bank of England will do. The polls lean towards a rise from 3.75% to 4%. If it comes, the question for GBP/USD will be the same one the Australian dollar answered on Tuesday — how many voted against.
Five checks before the order
People write to me and ask how to know when to buy and sell in forex trading. No indicator answers it. What answers it is a short list of checks, and I run it every time.
The first check — the direction on the daily chart. Price above its 50-day average and the average rising — I look only for buys. Price below and the average falling — only sells. The free Smart Trend Trading System indicator shows this direction on the chart, so you do not have to count.
The second — the level. A buy at the top of a two-week range is a buy from someone who is late. I want the price near a level where it turned before, or breaking one with a candle that closes beyond it.
The third — the calendar. If a red event is due in the next two hours on either currency of the pair, I wait. Your direction may turn out right, but the spread before the event is always wrong, and the order after it costs less than the order before it.
The fourth — the spread right now. Open Market Watch and look at the two prices. If the gap is wider than usual for that hour, something is happening that I do not see yet, and I wait.
The fifth — the size. A stop at the level that proves me wrong, and a volume that makes this stop cost 1 to 2 percent of the account. On $10,000 that is $100 to $200. On a $100 cent account it is $1 to $2. The number looks small. It is the number that keeps you in the market long enough to learn the other four checks.
In my robots these checks are parameters. Forex V trades on H1 and carries a spread filter in its settings, and every order it sends goes to the server at the ask for a buy and at the bid for a sell — the code has no other way to send it. The real account runs on the Signal2Forex YouTube stream, and you can watch the orders arrive at the same hours this page tells you to look at.
Beginner and old hand
A beginner and an old hand press the same two buttons, and the difference is in the order of events. The beginner sees a green candle and buys, then looks for a reason. An old hand has the reason first and waits for the candle. The beginner asks when to buy or sell forex. An old hand asks what the spread is.
A winning trade the beginner closes after ten pips, because the profit is there. A losing one he holds, because it may come back. The old hand has the stop and the target in the order ticket before pressing anything, and after that the hand is off the mouse.
The beginner trades at 22:00 GMT because that is when he gets home from work. An old hand trades at 14:00 GMT because that is when the market is open in the real sense, and on the other days does nothing. Doing nothing is a position too.
Common questions
| Question | Short answer | Where to read more |
|---|---|---|
| What do buy and sell mean in forex? | Buy — you expect the first currency of the pair to rise against the second. Sell — you expect it to fall. | The first table on this page |
| Can I sell a currency I do not own? | Yes. The broker lends it to you for the length of the trade, and you return it when you close. | How to short forex |
| Which earns more, buying or selling? | A pip earned on a sell is worth the same money as a pip earned on a buy. The only difference is the swap, which depends on which currency pays the higher rate. | The swap column in Market Watch |
| When should you buy or sell in forex? | When the daily direction, the level, the calendar, the spread and the size all agree. If one of the five disagrees, wait. | The five checks above |
| Does a rate rise always mean buy? | No. On 3 November 2026 the RBA raised rates and AUD/USD fell half a percent in a day. | The 3 November section above |
One thing to do today. Open your terminal, press Ctrl+M for Market Watch, and watch the bid and ask on the pair you trade most — the last ten minutes before 22:00 GMT and the first ten after. Write down the widest spread you see. From now on that number is the first thing you check before any order, and the reason you wait on the evenings when it is bigger.
Figures on this page: Reserve Bank of Australia, Statement by the Monetary Policy Board, 3 November 2026; Bank for International Settlements, Triennial Survey press release, 30 September 2025; MetaTrader 5 help, Trading operations — basic principles; US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation release schedule. AUD/USD levels of 3 November 2026 as reported that day by ABC News and CNBC.
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