News process: red flags and abort criteria
Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2026 6:37 am
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.
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.