As you are probably aware, news has a significant impact on forex pricing. Some economic events can have an immediate impact on the value of an asset (for example, news such as the NFP or FOMC). Traders can ignore the release of less important news at first glance. However, your disinterest in calendar news events may cause you to miss a large-scale repositioning of positions by the majority of forex market participants. As a result of the unpredictability of price reactions to news releases, keeping track of economic calendar events becomes an essential component of a trader’s trading system.
Although the news sites for tracking the Economic Calendar may be unavailable at times due to technical issues. The human factor also plays a role: if you get caught up in business, you may forget to review the news calendar before the upcoming trading week. To avoid such situations and to always be aware of future events in the forex market, you may want to familiarize yourself with the Calendar indicator to see if it will be a useful addition to your trading system.
How the Economic Calendar Indicator Works
The Economic Calendar Indicator automatically displays the basic information of the forex economic calendar on the MT4 terminal chart, namely the date and time of the news event, the currency for which the publication is expected, and its significance. The publication date is indicated by vertical lines, and the importance of the news is indicated by stars, which increase from 1 (less important) to 3 stars (more important).
Thus, by displaying basic information on news events, the Economic Calendar indicator completely fulfills its task – it does not allow the trader to miss important news. The indicator displays both future and historical events. This allows you to not only analyze price behavior during previous news releases, but also apply the results to your future news trading strategy.
The Economic Calendar Indicator’s Features
The functionality of the indicator allows you to learn more about the news events in greater depth and clarity. To do so, you could hover your cursor over the currency’s name, and a tooltip on the published news will appear. When you left-click on the currency name, information about the news event will appear in the lower-left corner (the location can be changed in the indicator settings) as a table.
The indicator data is updated every hour by default. However, this interval can be reduced manually in the indicator settings up to 5 minutes if desired. You can switch between recent economic events and those that will be published soon by using the forward and backward buttons below the table.
The economic calendar events displayed by the indicator are always up to date because the news reports are sourced from two trustworthy websites – Investing.com and ForexFactory.com.
If one of the sites is unavailable, the indicator will rely on data from the other. If you trade one or more currencies, you can manually specify a short name for the currencies in the indicator settings. Following that, the MT4 terminal chart will only display economic calendar events corresponding to the currencies you specified in the settings.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the economic calendar is an essential tool for anyone who trades or invests in financial markets. It provides valuable insights into the current state of the economy and its impact on financial markets. Traders and investors can use the information provided in the economic calendar to make informed decisions about buying or selling assets. While the economic calendar is not a crystal ball and cannot predict the future, it is a valuable resource that could be used by anyone who wants to stay up to date on the latest economic news.
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