Today I’m going to show you exactly how to use the Forex Factory calendar to improve your trading.
Plus, I’ll share one of my favorite trading strategies to use following news events. It’s a strategy I’ve used for over a decade and still works amazingly well today!
So if you want to learn how to use the best Forex calendar on the web and profit from news events, you’ll love this guide.
Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Navigate to the Forex Factory Economic Calendar
The very first thing you want to do is navigate to the Forex Factory calendar. Once there, you should be presented with a screen similar to the one below.
Don’t be intimidated by all the activity on this page. By the end of the tutorial, it will all make sense.
Next, we will begin configuring the Forex calendar so that you can get the most out of it.
Step 2: Configure Your Time Zone
Now that you’re on the calendar tab, you want to set your time zone. To do pooli othis, simply click the time stamp in the upper right-hand corner.
After clicking the time stamp, you will be taken to a page where you can set your time zone. This will synchronize the time for each news event with your local time.
Don’t skip this step! If you do, it’ll be incredibly difficult to determine when these events are starting.
At this point, you also have the option to turn Daylight Saving Time (DST) on or off.
Lastly, you can toggle the time format to show either am/pm or 24-hour “military time.”
Once you are happy with the settings, click “Save Settings” to save yourself the trouble of doing this each time. One of my favorite features of the Forex Factory calendar is its ability to sync with your time zone.
After saving your settings, you should see the correct time displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
If not, repeat step 2 to ensure your settings were saved correctly.
Step 3: Set the Forex Factory Calendar Event Filter
At this point, you should have the Forex Factory economic calendar in front of you with each news event synchronized with your local time.
Next, we will set the event filter to determine the type of news and currencies to display. This is convenient if you only want to display certain news events or are interested in specific currency pairs.
To set the filter, click the “Filter” icon in the upper right-hand corner while on the calendar tab.
After clicking “Filter”, you will get a screen like the one below.
This screen gives you the ability to filter events by expected impact, event type, and currency.
Pro Tip: Hover your mouse over the colored boxes under “Expected Impact” to get an explanation of each one. In short, red equals high-impact, orange is medium-impact, and yellow represents low-impact news.
I like to focus on the medium and high-impact news events. This gives me a complete picture of what to expect over the coming days without cluttering the Forex Factory calendar with news that will have little impact on the markets.
Once you have everything set the way you want, click “Apply Filter” to begin showing only the events and currencies you selected. You can change this any time by repeating this step.
Step 4: Select Your Desired Dates
You should now have your time zone set and your filter configured the way you want.
Now it’s time to select the desired time frame.
This is the span of time that will be shown on the calendar.
The navigation pane you see below will allow you to set any time frame you desire.
From this window, you can choose a single day, a week or even the entire month.
Also note that you can quickly select predetermined time frames in the bottom half of the navigation pane.
Pro Tip:Choosing to see the entire week is often the best approach when trading the higher time frames. This allows you to prepare for the next few days rather than just the next 24 hour.
Step 5: Check the Forex Factory Event Details
In addition to seeing the “surface content” such as the event name, expected impact and scheduled time, you can also expand each event to see additional information.
Be sure to use this feature with caution.
It can be far too easy to get caught up in the nuances of each event.
As price action traders, we need to be more concerned about what’s happening on the chart and less concerned about the fundamental significance of news.
The image below illustrates how you can expand the details of a given news event.
Once the icon above is clicked, you will see additional details of the Forex news event.
From the screen above, you can see additional details such as the source, frequency and history of the event to name a few.
To close this window, simply click the “X” shown in the image above.
Before we move on, I want to reiterate how important it is to use these additional details sparingly, if at all.
The advantage to using the Forex Factory calendar as a technical trader lies in the scheduled time and expected impact of the news.
Anything more than that, and using a news calendar can become more of a distraction than an asset.
To Be Continued in Next post