Three yellow flags

[Fairman]

Three yellow flags

Calendar impact ratings are crude. Red for high, orange for medium, yellow for low. Traders learn to ignore the yellow ones. Sometimes that is a mistake.

When three low-impact releases land within a few minutes, the combined effect can resemble a medium one. A quiet pair, thin liquidity, and a cluster of small surprises produce moves bigger than any of them would alone.

Another case: a low-impact release in a thin session. A yellow-flag number out of New Zealand at 22:45 GMT can move NZDUSD more than a red-flag number from the US moves EURUSD at noon, because nobody is there to absorb it.

The impact rating describes the average effect across all conditions. The effect on the specific pair at the specific hour is what counts.

A practical step is building a personal calendar with the releases that have historically moved the pair being traded, regardless of the colour code.

Which low-rated releases have caused a surprising move on the pairs being traded?