When Is The Best Time Of The Day To Trade Forex?

I've recently received an email from a recently retired businessman who is intending to spend 3 or 4 hours a day trading the forex markets, and just wanted to know which hours of the day are the easiest to make money.
I may have answered this question before on my blog but I thought it was worth another mention anyway. The very best session to make money (on a short-term time frame) is between 08.00 and 12.00 GMT in my experience. If you focus your attention on the GBP/USD and EUR/USD pairs during this time then you will have ample opportunities to make some decent returns.
So why is this the best time?

Well for a start you can concentrate purely on technical analysis because apart from the occasional announcement at 09.30, there are very few external factors than can influence the markets during this time. This is not the case a few hours later when the US market opens and the big market-moving data releases are made, which can render your technical analysis completely useless.

The other reason why I like this particular session so much is that this is the time when you get strong trends either upwards or downwards. So a lot of the time you just need to look at the 15 minute chart, for example, to get an idea of the morning trend, and then pan down to the 5 minute chart to get a good entry point when the opportunities present themselves.
For example if the 15 minute chart is trending upwards during the morning session, then you could wait for a slight pull-back on the 5 minute chart followed by an upwards EMA crossover for an opportunity to go long and ride this trend.
So as I say, 08.00 - 12.00 GMT is my favourite and most profitable time to trade the markets. This is obviously not the most convenient time for traders based in the US, so for my American friends I would say the next best time to trade is between 13.30 and 16.30 GMT (ideally after the important economic announcements are out of the way).