Forex Factory is the name of a popular forex trading online forum. The Forex Factory website is indeed a great resource for all categories of traders. Here you get to see traders and market players from the retail and occasionally from the institutional side of the market. The Forex Factory online forum also provides traders with several tools that are built to enable them profit from the market. One of these tools is the forex calendar, also known as the economic news calendar or simply the economic calendar.

The forex calendar is simply put, a schedule of news releases impacting the socio-economic and political sphere of several globally important economies. The news releases that can be found on the forex calendar include news about interest rate statements, inflation data, data on housing, employment and trade. These releases are displayed for various countries at various times and dates displayed on the forex calendar. As far as the forex calendar on Forex Factory goes, traders can get a good number of benefits from using this tool.

Forex Factory’s Forex Calendar: Key Features

It is important for news traders in forex who want to use the forex calendar on Forex Factory to understand the features that are available for maximization of its use.

The forex calendar on Forex Factory looks just like the snapshot shown above. On the left, there is the navigation tab showing the current month, as well as various links which can be used to display the forex calendar for the next day, the next week, month and even the previous day, week or month. There are various arrows on the left of the monthly calendar display on the ForexFactory.com calendar. You can use these arrows to make the selections for the dates you would like to see on the forex calendar.

The section in the middle of the interface shows the news events that are released at specific times and dates. We also see the numbers for the news items on the interface as well as tabs which conceal the news details.

The News Events Interface

In the middle of the screen lies the listing of the news events. There are several important keys here. Moving from left to right, the forex calendar on forex factor shows the date on which the news will be released, as well as the time of release. Traders have the option of changing the time zone that will be displayed by clicking on the time tab located directly above the time column. This provides the trader with the option of changing the time listing from the default display of Eastern US time (which is 5 hours behind GMT or 4 hours behind GMT when the Daylight Savings Time setting is on between the months of March and October) to another time zone.

The next item displayed is the currency of the country that will be affected by the news trade. This is usually a function of the country that the news is released from. For instance, if the news is to be released out of Australia, then AUD (Aussie Dollar) is the currency symbol that will be displayed.

The next item as we keep moving to the right of the interface is the market impact colour codes. This is a very important component of the forex calendar found on Forex Factory. It shows three colour codes to demonstrate the market impact the news event is likely to have on the market. Yellow stands for low impact. Low impact news have very low market impact and do not provide enough tradable volatility. Orange stands for medium impact, and red is for high impact. High impact news are what traders love to trade as they create a lot of market volatility.

The title of the news release is shown next to the market impact buttons, as well as the news detail. Clicking the news detail tab located just to the right of the news title on the Forex Factory forex calendar gives some insight as to what the news is all about, why it is of importance to the market as well as a hint on how often that piece of news is traded in a calendar year.

Closing out this section is the numbers. Four sets of number columns are seen: the actual (shown after the news is released), the consensus (forecast) and the previous numbers are shown on a constant basis, with a revision to the previous figure (if any) making up the last numbers column.

 

Reading the Numbers

The trader’s ability to read the numbers of high impact market news listed on the Forex Factory forex calendar is key to succeeding in a news trade. The trick is in being able to interpret the deviation; which is the difference between the actual number and the consensus. The larger the deviation of the actual number from the forecast, the larger will be the price movement of the currency. A deviation has to be tradable in order to create a market opportunity. To detect a tradable deviation, check the difference between the forecast and the previous figures. If the difference between the actual figure and the forecast surpasses the difference between the forecast and the previous numbers, then the deviation is tradable and there will be a market opportunity to trade the news release.

Taking the example of the news releases out of Canada at 8.30am EST on September 23, 2016, we can see that the difference between the previous Core Retail Sales figure (0.6%) and the forecast (0.5%) as shown on the Forex Factory forex calendar is 0.1%. The actual figure came in at -0.1%. Not only is this a negative for the Canadian Dollar (CAD), but the deviation of the actual from the forecast number (- 0.6%) is much higher than the difference between the forecast and the previous number of 0.1%. Therefore, we would expect to see a strong movement to the downside for the CAD.

This manifests on the USDCAD as a strong gain for the USD against the CAD as seen on this 1-minute chart taken from the FXCM platform.

Conclusion

The forex calendar from Forex Factory is one of the best forex calendars to use for news trading in forex as it has all the features to enable traders understand what to trade. Simply visit Forex Factory to study the forex calendar available on the site using this article as a guide.

Forex Factory is the name of a popular forex trading online forum. The Forex Factory website is indeed a great resource for all categories of traders. Here you get to see traders and market players from the retail and occasionally from the institutional side of the market. The Forex Factory online forum also provides traders with several tools that are built to enable them profit from the market. One of these tools is the forex calendar, also known as the economic news calendar or simply the economic calendar.

The forex calendar is simply put, a schedule of news releases impacting the socio-economic and political sphere of several globally important economies. The news releases that can be found on the forex calendar include news about interest rate statements, inflation data, data on housing, employment and trade. These releases are displayed for various countries at various times and dates displayed on the forex calendar. As far as the forex calendar on Forex Factory goes, traders can get a good number of benefits from using this tool.

Forex Factory’s Forex Calendar: Key Features

It is important for news traders in forex who want to use the forex calendar on Forex Factory to understand the features that are available for maximization of its use.

The forex calendar on Forex Factory looks just like the snapshot shown above. On the left, there is the navigation tab showing the current month, as well as various links which can be used to display the forex calendar for the next day, the next week, month and even the previous day, week or month. There are various arrows on the left of the monthly calendar display on the ForexFactory.com calendar. You can use these arrows to make the selections for the dates you would like to see on the forex calendar.

The section in the middle of the interface shows the news events that are released at specific times and dates. We also see the numbers for the news items on the interface as well as tabs which conceal the news details.

The News Events Interface

In the middle of the screen lies the listing of the news events. There are several important keys here. Moving from left to right, the forex calendar on forex factor shows the date on which the news will be released, as well as the time of release. Traders have the option of changing the time zone that will be displayed by clicking on the time tab located directly above the time column. This provides the trader with the option of changing the time listing from the default display of Eastern US time (which is 5 hours behind GMT or 4 hours behind GMT when the Daylight Savings Time setting is on between the months of March and October) to another time zone.

The next item displayed is the currency of the country that will be affected by the news trade. This is usually a function of the country that the news is released from. For instance, if the news is to be released out of Australia, then AUD (Aussie Dollar) is the currency symbol that will be displayed.

The next item as we keep moving to the right of the interface is the market impact colour codes. This is a very important component of the forex calendar found on Forex Factory. It shows three colour codes to demonstrate the market impact the news event is likely to have on the market. Yellow stands for low impact. Low impact news have very low market impact and do not provide enough tradable volatility. Orange stands for medium impact, and red is for high impact. High impact news are what traders love to trade as they create a lot of market volatility.

The title of the news release is shown next to the market impact buttons, as well as the news detail. Clicking the news detail tab located just to the right of the news title on the Forex Factory forex calendar gives some insight as to what the news is all about, why it is of importance to the market as well as a hint on how often that piece of news is traded in a calendar year.

Closing out this section is the numbers. Four sets of number columns are seen: the actual (shown after the news is released), the consensus (forecast) and the previous numbers are shown on a constant basis, with a revision to the previous figure (if any) making up the last numbers column.

 

Reading the Numbers

The trader’s ability to read the numbers of high impact market news listed on the Forex Factory forex calendar is key to succeeding in a news trade. The trick is in being able to interpret the deviation; which is the difference between the actual number and the consensus. The larger the deviation of the actual number from the forecast, the larger will be the price movement of the currency. A deviation has to be tradable in order to create a market opportunity. To detect a tradable deviation, check the difference between the forecast and the previous figures. If the difference between the actual figure and the forecast surpasses the difference between the forecast and the previous numbers, then the deviation is tradable and there will be a market opportunity to trade the news release.

Taking the example of the news releases out of Canada at 8.30am EST on September 23, 2016, we can see that the difference between the previous Core Retail Sales figure (0.6%) and the forecast (0.5%) as shown on the Forex Factory forex calendar is 0.1%. The actual figure came in at -0.1%. Not only is this a negative for the Canadian Dollar (CAD), but the deviation of the actual from the forecast number (- 0.6%) is much higher than the difference between the forecast and the previous number of 0.1%. Therefore, we would expect to see a strong movement to the downside for the CAD.

This manifests on the USDCAD as a strong gain for the USD against the CAD as seen on this 1-minute chart taken from the FXCM platform.

Conclusion

The forex calendar from Forex Factory is one of the best forex calendars to use for news trading in forex as it has all the features to enable traders understand what to trade. Simply visit Forex Factory to study the forex calendar available on the site using this article as a guide.