The economic calendar

Module 1 kept saying the same thing about news: dealers pull quotes seconds before scheduled releases, the book thins, and prices can gap. Every part of that sentence except the release itself is on a public timetable. The calendar is that timetable, and reading it is the last basic instrument this module has to hand you.

What does the calendar actually tell you?

Three things, all about conditions. When: the exact minute a release lands, which is the minute the book around the affected currency changes state. What kind: calendars grade events by expected impact, which reads as how hard dealers will step back - a central bank decision empties books that a minor survey barely ripples. And which currencies: a US employment report is weather for every dollar pair at once, which the next lesson's shared-leg arithmetic makes expensive to forget.

Notice what is missing from that list: the numbers themselves. For reading conditions, the release's content does not matter - spreads widen before the figure exists, and the book thins for good news and bad alike. The weather arrives on schedule whatever it turns out to contain. What a release means for a currency's value is analysis, and it lives in module 5 with its difficulties honestly stated. This lesson's instrument works without any opinion about the number: it is the timetable of when your pair's market gets thin, expensive and gap-prone.

What this means for you

Check the calendar the way you check the session clock: before the trading day, for the currencies you hold or watch. Its whole value is mechanical - the minutes when spreads widen, stops stop capping, and the gauge from the last lesson will spike on schedule. Holding a position through a listed event is a decision about weather you were warned about, and the gap tool below prices that decision's mechanics with your own numbers. What the release means for the currency is a different question for a different module - the calendar never answers it, and neither does this lesson.