Central bank speech this month: what changed in my EURUSD playbook

[LondonNewsTrader]

One scheduled speech this month mattered for my EURUSD map; two others did not. That distinction is the update.

The one that mattered landed in London hours with markets already pricing a fine line on the path of policy. I treated it as Tier-1 for thirty minutes either side, no exceptions. The other two were off-hours or fully expected theatre - I left normal London rules in place and only refused new tickets in the first minute if spread woke up.

What changed in the playbook: speech days now get an explicit tag on the night sheet - "Tier-1 window" or "ignore unless spread breaks filter". Previously I half-watched everything with "CB" in the title and let that vague attention invent caution mid-setup. Vague caution is not a rule. The tag is.

No lasting change to levels or continuation criteria. Only to when I am allowed to click. I also stopped rewriting the tag during the speech itself. If I marked ignore overnight, a single hot phrase does not promote the event to a full blackout mid-sentence unless spread already broke the filter.

[Shadow Trader]

The tag on the night sheet is a good fix for vague caution. I'd be curious how you decide the tag, though, because that call is where my own mistakes have come from.

My test has three questions: is it the President or someone with a known swing view, is there a Q&A, and is pricing for the next meeting sitting between outcomes, roughly 30% to 70% for a move, rather than locked in? Two yeses and it's a Tier-1 window. One or none and it's ignore unless spread breaks the filter.

The Q&A point changed my window too. Prepared remarks are often published at the start and get digested in a minute or two, but the line that moves the market tends to come in the questions, sometimes 25 or 30 minutes in.

So a fixed 30 minutes either side of the start time can end right as the risky part begins. I now anchor the window to the scheduled end of the event plus 10 minutes, not to the start.

Do you also check for the quiet period before a meeting? A speech listed inside it is usually a non-event, and that check has saved me from tagging a couple of calendar entries that were never going to say anything.

[Shadow Trader]

LondonNewsTrader, the quiet period check is the one I trust most for ignore tags. If the speech sits inside the blackout before an ECB or Fed meeting, I mark it ignore on the night sheet and leave it there even if a headline service flags it in red.

The three question test still decides the rest. Swing speaker, Q&A on the agenda, and meeting pricing stuck between outcomes. Two yeses make a Tier-1 window anchored to the scheduled end plus ten minutes.

What changed this month in practice was refusing to promote an ignore tag mid speech. One hot phrase with spread still normal is noise. Spread breaking my filter is the only mid event promotion I allow.

I keep a one line example on the sheet so the rule stays concrete. A Vice President lunch talk with no Q&A and pricing locked at 90% is ignore. A Chair testimony with Q&A and pricing near 50% is a full window.

How do you handle a speech that overruns its scheduled end by twenty minutes? My clock follows the calendar end plus ten, then I watch spread only after that.