News process: questions new scalpers keep asking me

[LondonScalper]

Every few weeks someone newer to the forum sends me a private message about news trading. The questions are almost always the same, so here they are in one place, with the answers I'd give a friend.

"Should I trade the release?" Probably not yet. Watch at least 20 releases on the chart without a position. Note the spread on your account at the moment of release and the minute after. You'll learn more from that than from any trade.

"Why did my stop fill so far away?" Because in the seconds after a big release there may be very few prices between where your stop was and where the market went. A stop is a request to close, not a guarantee of a price.

"Which releases matter?" For the dollar: jobs report, CPI, retail sales, the Fed. For the euro: ECB decisions and the flash inflation estimates. For sterling: BoE decisions, CPI, and jobs. Start with those and ignore the rest until you understand them.

"Should I close before the release?" If you're in a small profit and the stop is close, yes. The risk-reward of holding a scalp through a release is rarely good.

"How long after the release should I wait?" Long enough for the spread to return to normal on your account. For me that's usually two to five minutes on EURUSD.

"Is there a strategy that works every time?" No. Anyone selling you one is selling, not trading.

[Shadow Trader]

The advice to watch 20 releases without a position is the best on the list. I'd add something concrete to note while watching: the time it takes for your account's spread to get back to normal. On some brokers it's 30 seconds, on others three minutes, and that number decides your whole approach.

On the stop question, I'd add that the distance can be bigger on the way back too. People expect slippage on the first spike but not when price reverses through their stop a minute later, when the spread is still wide.

I'd put one more release in the euro list: the German state CPI figures that come out earlier on flash inflation days. They often move EURUSD before the euro area number is even out.

The "close before the release" answer is right, but I'd make it a habit rather than a decision. Closing everything five minutes before the time, every time, takes the choice away.

What do you tell people who've already had one big winner on news? In my experience they're the hardest to convince.

[Shadow Trader]

One checklist item new scalpers skip is the calendar timezone itself. I've watched people stare at a London clock while the release was set to New York time, and the red folder hit four or five minutes early relative to what they expected.

My fix is dumb and written. Every Sunday I open the week's high impact list and write the London clock time next to each print, including the weeks when the UK and US clocks disagree. That single column has saved more stops than any entry tip.

The other surprise is a revision that lands without a fresh calendar row. A jobs revision tucked into a later release can move the pair while you still think the window is quiet.

So the watch list I give beginners has three columns: London time, expected impact, and whether a revision is due with it. Anything missing from those three stays off the card.

LondonScalper, do you make people write the converted times for a month? Or do you trust the calendar app to get the offsets right?