News process: red flags and abort criteria

[LondonScalper]

My process card has a section of red flags for post-news trades. Any one of them means skip or abort.

Before the release:
- I did not write down the event the night before. If I only noticed it in the morning, I do not trade around it.
- I have an open position correlated with the release currency. It gets closed before the blackout.
- I am already at or near my soft stop for the day.

After the release:
- Spread has not returned to near normal within five minutes. I wait or skip.
- The first move has reversed twice already. Two-way chop after data is not a setup.
- The move is so large that my normal stop would need to be twice its usual size.
- A second release or a speaker is due within fifteen minutes.

During a trade:
- An unexpected headline appears. I close the trade, whatever it shows.
- Price returns to the pre-release level within the time stop. The reaction has failed.

Abort means close and stop trading that release completely. No second attempt in the opposite direction.

Most of these came from real losses. The one I broke most often in the past was trading after two reversals, because it felt like the market was about to choose a direction. Usually it did not.

[Shadow Trader]

LondonScalper, the abort after two reversals is the rule I break least often now, because that pattern cost me three days last spring. Once price has flipped twice inside the first ten minutes after a print, I close and leave the release alone.

My card also flags an open correlated position as a hard stop before the blackout. If I am long EURUSD into a US CPI, that ticket is flat by five minutes before the number, no exceptions.

The soft stop point on your list is one I added only recently. When the morning is already at 70 percent of the daily loss, I skip post news setups entirely rather than hoping the reaction will rescue the day.

I disagree slightly on the fifteen minute speaker rule. If the speaker is only a secondary official, I still trade after the main print, but at half size and with a tighter time stop.

The two reversal abort has fired most often for me this quarter. Did aborting actually save your session when it fired, or did it mostly feel better after the fact?