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Noting what news was due within the hour for each trade

Here's a column that doesn't take long to fill in and can be surprisingly revealing. For each trade, note any scheduled release in the hour after entry that affects the pair.

Many traders already avoid trading right before news. But an hour before is a different question. The release isn't imminent, so the trade feels safe, yet the market often starts positioning, spreads begin to drift, and the move you're trying to catch can stall as participants wait.

After a few months, filter the journal for trades with a release due within the hour. Compare their results with trades that had no release nearby. Some traders find the trades with news ahead are clearly worse, not because the news hit the trade, but because the market was quieter and more hesitant in the lead up. Others find no difference. Either way, the column answers the question with your own data.

Keep it simple. The release name, the time and how important it's usually considered. Tier one, tier two, or minor. That's enough.

Also note whether the trade was still open when the release came out. That's a separate risk, and it's useful to see how often it happens without being planned.

The hour before a release is the case most journals miss, as you say. One further split worth trying is by type of release. Positioning before a central bank decision usually looks different from the drift before a data release such as CPI or payrolls, where the market tends to stall more than trend. On London mornings with UK data at 07:00, the hour before is mostly the Asian close, which is quiet anyway, so it may also be worth tagging whether the release came before or during your session.

A related column is the release that came out in the hour before entry. Trades taken shortly after news behave differently from trades in a calm market. The spread may still be recovering, the direction may still be unclear, and the market can reverse its first reaction within the hour. Noting both, the news before and the news after, gives a fuller picture of the environment each trade was taken in. It also makes it easier to see if your results after news differ from your results before news, which is often where the real difference lies. Some traders find their worst trades cluster in the twenty minutes after a release, when the first move is often reversed.

Central bank speakers are harder to schedule than data, but they matter just as much. A speech by a senior official can move the currency as much as a release, and it's often listed on calendars with a start time but no clear point where the market moving comment arrives. Including speeches in the column, marked separately from data, makes the record more complete. You might find that speeches have more effect on your trades than you assumed, because they're less obvious when glancing at the calendar during the morning prep. Speeches often get added to calendars late, so a quick check on the morning of the session is a good habit.

Using one calendar source consistently helps. Different economic calendars rate the same release differently, and some show more events than others. If you switch calendars, the importance ratings in the journal stop being comparable. Picking one source and sticking with it keeps the column consistent. If you do change, add a note in the journal with the date, so that later analysis knows the ratings before and after that point came from different places and might not be directly comparable without some adjustment. Most calendar sites allow filtering by currency and importance, which keeps the daily check quick. Most calendars also allow exporting the week's events, which can be pasted straight into the journal to save typing.

For pairs with two currencies that both have scheduled news, note both sides. A trade on EURUSD might have a German release and a US release within the same hour. The column then needs both entries, or at least the more important one. Many traders only check the calendar for the currency they think matters most and miss the other side. Writing both down for every trade builds the habit of checking both, which is useful during live trading as well as for the record afterwards. Crosses like EURGBP make this even more important, since there are often releases from both sides in the same morning.

Around 11:30 to 1pm London, European desks thin out and the New York crowd has not arrived yet. Books get shallower, and price starts doing things that look like signals but are really just a lack of participation.

A breakout during lunch is usually a bet on thin liquidity, not on direction. Small orders move price farther, levels get tagged and abandoned, and indicators designed for active markets produce garbage.

The popular advice is to trade more when the market is moving and less when it is not, and then people ignore it because lunch ranges feel easy. They are easy until a single resting order gets lifted and a 6-pip candle appears from nowhere.

If the strategy depends on follow-through, the lunch hour is simply not its habitat. Waiting for New York to wake up costs nothing and removes a whole category of false starts.

Is there any pair where the lunch lull does not hurt, or does it show up everywhere on your charts?

The hour before news is an underrated risk. Spreads often start widening several minutes before a release, and some brokers lift margin levels before the big events. Recording the time to the next release in minutes, rather than just a yes or no, makes the column more useful. It would show whether trades opened, say, 45 minutes before news behave like normal trades, while those opened in the last 15 minutes behave differently.