How do I read the economic calendar?
Forex Factory or the calendar inside MT5. Look for red events on your pair's currencies. Module 8 walks through the workflow.
An economic calendar lists scheduled news events that move the market: rate decisions, jobs reports, inflation prints, central bank speeches. Red flags mean high impact. Yellow are medium. Grey or white are low.
We use Forex Factory because the layout is clean and the timestamps work in any timezone. Set the timezone to your local one, filter to the currencies you care about, and check the calendar at the start of every trading week.
What to do with the information
Red events on a currency you're about to trade are no-trade windows. Module 8 covers the specific buffers we use: skip the 1.5 hours before and 1 hour after a red event. This single rule prevents most of the bad surprises retail traders blame on bad luck.
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