The Forex Factory Calendar is one of the most popular and easy-to-use calendars to monitor news events that have an impact on the currency market. In this article, we will help you understand how to utilize the Forex Factory Calendar to your advantage.
Forex Factory Calendar
First things first, you need to open the Forex Factory calendar.
Once you navigate to the calendar, you should see a screen like this:
Now that we’re here, let’s start setting up the calendar to suit our needs.
First of all, you need to set the correct time zone. This is a very important step in order to determine the right time zone for each news event. To set it up, click on the time clock in the upper right-hand corner.
This will navigate you to a page where you can set the correct time zone. Performing this step will sync the time for every news event with your local time. The time zone settings page will let you change settings for Time Zone, Daylight Savings Time (DST) as well as the time format which can display either am/pm or 24 hours “military time”.
Once you’ve set it up, click “Save Settings” to make sure your time zone settings are set correctly each time you visit the calendar page. Now that you’ve done that, you should be able to see the correct time shown in the upper right-hand corner.
Choose the Event Filters in Forex Factory Calendar
Once you have synchronized the news events with your time zone, let’s move on.
Another great option that we can utilize on the calendar is the event filter which will make the calendar display only the events and currencies that you choose.
This is really helpful if you don’t want to track all types of news events and currencies as it will show only the things that you’re interested in. To do this, click on the “Filter” icon in the upper right-hand corner below the search bar. Doing this should present a screen like this:
As you can see, you can filter the news events by expected impact and event types as well as choose the currencies you want to monitor.
If you’re happy with your filter settings, click “Apply Filter” in order for this action to take effect. Once you’ve applied the filter, you will only see the events and currencies you selected on the calendar. You can go back to filter settings and make additional changes whenever you want.
Now that we’ve configured our time zone and filter settings, let’s go and choose our preferred time frame. This refers to the amount of time that will be displayed on the Forex Factory Calendar.
As you’ve already noticed on the image above, the navigation panel on the left of the calendar will let you choose any time frame you want.
Make Sure You Follow Major Events in Forex Factory Calendar
When configuring your filter settings, don’t forget to select the high-impact news events that have the greatest potential to move the market.
Below we’ve listed a couple of high-impact news events that you should certainly monitor when trading Forex:
- Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)
- U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP)
- Unemployment rates
- Final Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
- Consumer Price Index (CPI)
- Monetary policy news releases
- Central banks announcements
In conclusion, the Forex Factory calendar will help you spot Forex trading signals from fundamental announcements that will directly affect your trading results.
If You Want to Become a Successful Forex Trader, You Must Join AndyW Club.