What is the London 4 pm Fix?

What is FX fixing?

FX currency fixings are the standardized benchmark rates that are released at set times during the day. These rates serve as reference points for currency traders and other market participants to evaluate their trades and handle risk management.

What is London Forex Fix?

London is one of the biggest financial hubs, and when it comes to foreign currency exchange, it beats any city in the world in traded volume. That is why large volumes of contracts are executed at 4 pm London time. The price thus obtained is known as the London FX Fix and is set daily, Monday to Friday.

The currency "fixings" became infamous after five major banks were fined 3.4 billion dollars in 2014 for misconduct. That was due to the trading behaviour of banks around the "fix". Essentially traders in these banks were front-loading trades ahead of clients, a behaviour that is illegal in heavily regulated commodities and the stock markets. Despite these "fixes" remain popular, especially the London Fix.  

Why is the London 4 pm fix so popular?

The reason for the popularity of the London Fix is twofold. First, due to the 24x7 nature of the forex market, individuals who require a valuation of a currency for any given day will seek a "fix". Second, due to the sheer volume executed (40% of the $5.4 trillion daily global volume) at 4 PM London Time, it seems the most obvious choice. 

Now that we have established the importance of the London Fix, let us see how to access the price at 4 PM London time. There are various ways to do so but let's see some convenient ways. 

If you are interested in the Gold price you may also want to learn about London Gold fixing. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) sets the price of Gold (per troy ounce) and other precious metals. The London Fix is generally associated with Gold fixing which happens twice daily. To learn more read our article on Gold and Silver benchmark rates.

Non-Technical Users:

One of the easiest methods to check prices at the London Fix is to look at a chart or a quotes board at 4 PM London time. While this approach is straightforward, it is not very practical when requesting multiple prices for benchmarking forex trading or valuing foreign portfolios.

We recommend using our Excel add-in or our Google Sheets. You can query floating exchange rates for over 2000+ currency pairs at any time during the day up to the minute. You will need to open an account, it's free for up to 1000 requests a month which will let you approx 30 currencies once daily. 

Technical Users:

For programmers, we recommend using our Forex REST API, which lets you pull rates for any exotic or major currency pairs for any given hour for up to 12 months. Our timeseries and historical endpoint provide high flexibility to query historical London fix prices. You can use Python SDK or any other programming language of your choice. 

Please see our tutorials page. It has tons of resources to get started. If you require further help, please chat with one of our data experts.