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Fed at 18:00 London on 28 October 2026, ECB at 13:15 the next day: a plan for both

A busy few days ahead, and the clocks make it trickier than usual.

The FOMC meets on 27 and 28 October. The statement is due on Wednesday 28 October at 14:00 New York time, with the press conference at 14:30, according to the Fed's calendar. October isn't one of the quarterly meetings with new projections, so the statement wording and the press conference carry the weight.

The UK goes back to GMT on Sunday 25 October, but the US stays on daylight time until 1 November. So this week New York is 4 hours behind London, not the usual 5. That puts the Fed statement at 18:00 London and the press conference at 18:30. US data at 08:30 New York lands at 12:30 London.

The ECB holds its monetary policy meeting on 28 and 29 October, with the decision and press conference on Thursday 29 October. The decision comes at 14:15 Frankfurt time, which is 13:15 London now that Europe is back on winter time, and the press conference follows at 14:45, which is 13:45 London.

Counting from Wednesday 18:00 to Thursday 13:15 is 19 hours and 15 minutes between the two decisions. The windows I'd mark in a calendar are 17:45 to 19:15 on Wednesday and 13:00 to 14:15 on Thursday, about two hours and 45 minutes in all.

Thanks for laying out the timing. From Hong Kong the Fed statement lands at 02:00 on Thursday and the press conference at 02:30, then the ECB at 21:15 the same evening. That makes it a long day for anyone in Asia who trades both. I plan to stay flat through the Fed and pick up the Tokyo session after it, when the first reaction has settled and the yen pairs show where the market landed.

After 1 November the offsets change again. When US clocks go back, the gap returns to 5 hours, and a 14:00 New York time lands at 19:00 London. So a US data alert set this week for 12:30 London will be an hour early the week after, when 08:30 New York is 13:30. If your broker's server is on New York close time, it also shifts on 1 November, from UTC+3 to UTC+2. Check which of your recurring calendar entries use a fixed London time and which use a fixed New York time, because between 25 October and 1 November they disagree with how they behaved before and how they'll behave after.

The rollover window is separate. Most brokers' daily rollover sits at 17:00 New York, which is 21:00 London this week. The Fed statement at 18:00 London is three hours before it. So the statement hour is in a liquid part of the day, unlike the thin rollover period, and spreads should normally come back within minutes of the release. What tends to happen in the half hour of the press conference is another matter: the statement is a text, the press conference is a stream of remarks, and price can reverse on either one, which is why the 30 minutes between the two are often treated as a separate risk window.

Count the cost in trading time. If you scalp from 07:00 to 17:00 London and avoid 13:00 to 14:15 on Thursday, that's 75 minutes out of 600, or 12.5% of the day, and then 17:45 to 19:15 on Wednesday falls outside your session anyway. For someone trading the New York afternoon, it's the reverse. It's a sum anyone can do for their own hours. Knowing in advance that an event removes 12% of a day is a concrete number that beats an anxious feeling about the calendar, and it shows when sitting out is nearly free.

What to watch afterwards is simple to record. For each event, note the pair, the spread a minute before, the largest one minute range in the following 30 minutes, and where price was 60 minutes later against the pre-event level. After four or five events that's a small table showing how your instrument behaves. It also shows whether the first reaction tends to hold or reverse, though a few events can't settle that. Next week has its own date, with the US midterm elections on Tuesday 3 November, and the same record can be kept for that.