News trading utilizes the fast price movement caused by financial news from different countries, released at the predefined time. Approximately one week before the actual news release, e.g. GDP or unemployment rate, the averaged expectations of analysts become available to the public. At the news release moment, usually with 1 second precision, country’s statistical institution releases the actual figure, which is instantly compared to aforementioned analysts’ expectations. If there is enough difference between those two, price on a respective currency pair can change by 30-100 pips in a matter of minutes or even seconds:

As it is evident also from the pics above, the momentum can continue after the initial spike, and so, the profit can get really big. Also, hours before the major release many pairs start to follow the news anticipation and not the technical trading principles. It is obvious that ignoring major news releases in regular day trading, especially on low TF’s, is devastating. You can either properly news trade the releases or pause all trading around the release time. Making use of news releases profitably is much more complicated, then it originally seems. Surprisingly, many things should be taken into consideration while analyzing the release; decision making should be lightning fast and the trading platform should function dependably. Most common misconception among beginners is that, compared to technical trading, news trading is a much easier and faster way to grow capital. Insufficient analysis, lacking money management and hasty decision making can easily result in losing the whole capital, sometimes in less than ten seconds.

I actually started my Forex trading career with news trading, due to the aforementioned misconception of it being fast and easy way to grow the capital. In practice, profits exceeded loses only when costly beginner mistakes were handled and each news release was traded many months in a row, with a reasonable strategy. Right when the news trading started to generate profits, my broker of that time (Trading Point, Cyprus) added delay and slippage to my trading platform. This unpleasant setback with news trading ended up being beneficial, as I started learning about technical analysis and begun a search of truly reliable broker for both trading types. The main principle of fx-trading.fi is to offer a compact and straightforward knowledge-base with own practical tips, so that the beginner would save time and effort learning and turning the knowledge into profit as soon as possible. Also the NewsTrading section follows this main principle. The practical experience from hundreds of traded and analyzed news releases is condensed on this page. Reader will get a solid knowledge-base and probably save many months just by comprehending this one page. With that base, beginner can naturally proceed to live trading after few months of demo practice. Unfortunately, this type of guide was not available when I started my career. And as far as I know, it is not available nowadays, possibly not even in English. In my own language (Finnish) there are few primitive English to Finnish copypaste translated sites with the usual “five star” market maker’s banners. There are also some Finnish forums with shallow discussion on spike trading. This may well be the case for many others non-English speaking countries. To conclude the news trading’s introduction: the right way to begin trading career is, instead of news trading, to concentrate on technical analysis and familiarize oneself with this page’s strategies. News trading requires fluent use of MT4 platform, implementing the principles of technical analysis (i.e. S/R, fib, price action, market sentiment) and rather seasoned trading mentality.

On a daily basis, approximately every 1-3 hours, some financial news are released, but only a fraction of these have direct and tradeable impact on Forex pairs. It is extremely important to trade only the releases, which can clearly and predictably move the price chart, instead of causing e.g. just a single 10-20 pip jiggle. If the historical performance of the release and the current market condition are not analyzed, yet the buy/sell button is pressed when price goes into one direction – the trade will usually end up as a “surprising” loss. Supposedly, the theoretical probability of news trade is 50/50, but there are many factors against the unprepared and hasty trader. List of tradeable “high impact” news varies from time to time and, for instance, many of Eurozone’s, US’s and UK’s releases have been off that list for a while. Below is the current (and periodically updated) list of important releases, that I myself follow and trade:

Thorough descriptions of the above releases and some additional ones, which are not tradeable at the moment, are summarized into this file. It is definitely worth reading it properly, keeping in mind that similarly named releases are country specific and so, have different behavior. Some of this news are released monthly, while some – quarterly. There are about 10 potentially tradeable releases each month. Less then half of those meet the deviation requirement. There are, of course, plenty of lower impact releases and the important ones from other countries like Japan, China, Switzerland, Norway etc. Based on my trading experience, those are not worth the time. Quality over quantity, also in this case! Proper, organized news trading gains around few hundred pips per month, already with less than 10 trades. This is due to the fact that SL is around 10 pips and the aforementioned releases usually generate 30-80 pips in minutes or even seconds. It might be motivating to calculate the corresponding Risk/Reward ratio and trader’s hourly wage with certain capital.

Internet offers a wide variety of news release calendars. Considering the modification possibilities, clarity and functionality I can recommend ForexFactory’s and Investing.com’s calendars. In addition to a calendar, one or several news analysis sites should be utilized. In the beginning of my news trading career, I used only the FPA news signals free service, where the upcoming releases and prevailing market conditions were thoroughly analyzed. Based on these, the tradeable deviation and trading plan alternatives were suggested. Service has had many big changes over the years (e.g. autoclicker app and respective trading style introduced in 2013), but it is still a useful tool for beginner news trader. Another good analysis page option was found by coincidence and as far as the news trading forums, not many people are aware of this free professional news service’s existence: Fast Economic News (FEN). Back in 2012 they launched a web-based charting service. With that, old news releases’ price action can be analyzed with extraordinary 1-second precision. It is wise to use this service (“Settings” and “Find” options), especially if own notes and video recordings are yet insufficient. FEN news analysis page is a part of paid news trading tool, and so, I would once again remind the reader to concentrate only on free content behind that link, and not to stray elsewhere! As far as I know, FEN’s paid autoclicker tool (approx. 200$ per month) is indeed useful, but I have been trading successfully without it.

Generally there are three main ways to trade news releases:

For me, the first proper guide on news trading’s basics was Henry Liu’s “Definitive Guide to Fundamental News Trading” released in 2008, containing over 100 pages. Later on, in 2010, it was updated and revised into a lite version. Pages 5-22 are worth reading. Overall, this actually is quite an informative piece, although its tradeable news listing has become outdated long time ago. Originally Henry Liu worked as a real news trader and FPA’s “free newstrade signals” specialist, but then he started marketing his own “super profitable” technical trading’s system and ended his FPA involvement.

News trading, done alongside regular trading, requires sufficient time to prepare for a release and a full attention during the release moment. If this happens to be problematic for a day trader, then news releases should be avoided altogether. Specific trading approach and routine, which suit trader’s mentality, are required for a success in news trading. From my own experience, I would suggest the following routine for (spike) trader to start with:

These steps will definitely set the beginner trader on the right path. News trading activity can be optimized and made more convenient by using the right tools alongside MT4 platform. First off, the computer’s time synchronizer is a crucial tool for news trader. Windows’ own synchronization is far less precise and the clock is usually off by several seconds. MT4’s own clock is also not very accurate, but its biggest issue is that the time is updated only when the price chart moves. Millisecond precision is especially important when using automatic order script to set buy/sell pending orders only few seconds before the release. Another tool that I use is AutoHotkey keyboard macro program; great versatility and extremely low memory load. Before the release, it is convenient to open required webpages, tools and notes by a press of a button. For instance, the volume of ForexLive newsfeed service can be adjusted by mouse wheel, without going to the actual tab and dragging the cursor. There are plenty of time/effort saving possibilities. Here is my .ahk template with instructions. Another important tool for news trader is a screen video-recording app CamStudio. Video recording is the best and actually the only way to store analyzable date of a fast (1st minute) price spike’s nature and trading platform’s technical performance (spread, execution). Those videos also help to identify own mistakes and bad habits during strategy execution. Generally, recorded material improves all the aspects of own news trading. I suggest starting recording approx. 15-20s prior news and to stop around a minute after the release, when the most volatile price behavior has settled down. Here are the CamStudio settings that I use. More conventinal screen capture is done a few hours after the release, to store an analyzable picture of news’ long-term effect. Last but definitely not least are the personal notes on all followed releases every time they occur: chosen strategy and SL/TP/TS values, platform’s performance (spread, execution), spike behavior, own actions and implementation of strategy, improvement suggestions for trade parameters and own mentality. You will find own convenient way to make those notes (e.g. into text or spreadsheet file) and it will eventually become a pleasant, self-refining routine.

In addition to regular calendar-news, there are also surprising large scale events occasionally affecting the global markets: S&P’s downgrades, Japan’s Forex interventions, Switzerland’s bank’s (SNB) Forex interventions and e.g. setting a 1.2000 floor for EUR/CHF, Euro-zone’s debt and exit issues, oil crises and nature disasters like earthquakes. As past years have shown, consequential surprises usually cause price shifts of hundreds of pips in a matter of seconds/minutes and the trend continues for several hours or even days. If trader reacts to these in time and in a correct manner, capital gets multiplied with extremely low risk and simple trade management. Trailing stop setting, even numbers and Price Action help to maximize the profit and to find a reasonable exit point.

Somewhat anticipated and predictable major news are being discussed on most Forex news sources. In our MarketView section there are several good alternatives. It is wise to try them all and selecting 2-3 that suit you the best; more than one source gives right away a broader perspective. Personally, I am used to following the updates of ForexLive, FXStreet and ForexTalk. MarketView section contains also a live stock-market’s view, which tells the ongoing risk sentiment. Strong risk appetite or risk aversion might affect the news-time price action even more than the deviation itself. On the other hand, the results of certain releases can change the risk sentiment. In general, price movements caused by risk sentiment should never take the trader by surprise, because they may proceed for hours and up to 100-200 pips.

Successful news trading requires solid experience in (MT4) trading platform and solid functionality of the platform itself. Spread widening around the news release moment is a widely known challenge and it happens with all brokers to some extent, as far as I know. Fraudulent market makers will, of course, offer a fixed spread option, but still they will intentionally widen their spread during news. On a contrary, also a reliable DMA/ECN broker can have spread widen by 5-15 pip or even by over 20 pips momentarily, depending on release, time of day and currency pair. This is solely due to broker’s liquidity provider(s) situation, which broker itself cannot control. During the initial spike, price can sometimes “jump” even tens of pips in under 1 second. Order set during this “jump” will actually open only where the price stops for the first time; same goes for pending orders. In those cases, slippage is totally normal, since the DMA/ECN broker can offer a best available price only when the fast price jump stops somewhere. My own experience with Tickmill UK, which has fast servers and deep liquidity, showed very low (if any) slippage with all types of trading, except for early Monday-morning market opening gap, when the price information from liquidity providers comes with a delay. In demo practice, which should be done for at least two months, spread fluctuation is realistic, but slippage cannot be represented nor experienced. This is due to the fact, that for demo accounts market prices are not taken from broker’s liquidity provider. A general solution for news trading’s spread & slippage challenges is having experience in price behavior for each release and choosing suitable trade parameters based on that experience.

For the Extra section, I have compiled a thorough release-specific summary. It has suggestions for currency pair, deviation and trading approach, as well as personal notes on spread and price behavior around the release time. With the extra content comes my news trading template, position management tool (making SL/TP usage much faster) and a program for setting opposite pending orders on a desired distance, automatically with 1 second precision. News result program, which instantly shows news release deviation, is also included.