Not every central bank speech matters, but some move markets as much as data releases. Filtering which ones to watch saves attention.
It also helps to keep a short list of speakers whose comments moved your pairs in the past, with the typical size of the move. That turns a vague "speech risk" into a concrete expectation for the session.
Factors that make a speech market-moving:
Speaker: the chair or governor and core members weigh most.
Topic: monetary policy outlook, not financial regulation or history.
Timing: shortly before a meeting or after surprising data.
Format: Q&A sessions produce more unscripted comments than prepared texts.
For short-term traders:
Headlines can cause fast spikes without warning.
Moves often reverse if the comment is later clarified.
Speech schedules are in most calendars, but the impact rating is not always reliable.
Which central bank speakers do you treat as high impact?
Timing has a hard edge on the Fed side that is easy to use. The blackout starts on the second Saturday before each meeting, so the last speeches before it often carry the message officials want priced, and I rate those higher than the calendar does.
The ECB has a similar quiet week before its meetings. Comments that leak through anonymous sources during that week can move EURUSD more than speeches on the record, because they arrive with no schedule at all.
On the speaker list idea, mine records the median 15 minute move in the main pair after each appearance. A chair or governor at a policy event often lands in double digits on EURUSD or GBPUSD, while most regional members stay under 10 pips unless they are new or known dissenters.
Prepared texts usually hit the wires at the scheduled start. That first burst is the text, and the second, often thirty or forty minutes later, comes from the Q&A.
I avoid fading the first spike. Clarifications do come, but usually hours later or the next day, which is no help on a stop sized for M1.
Do you treat governors on panels differently from solo speeches? Panels seem to produce more unscripted lines in my experience.
