Medium-impact releases that move price like high-impact ones
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 8:13 am
Calendar colours are an editorial label, not a measurement. Someone at the calendar provider decided long ago that a release deserves orange or red, and that rating rarely follows what the market is currently obsessed with.
When traders are fixated on one theme, say whether a central bank will cut, a normally ignored line suddenly becomes the main event. Flash PMIs, sub-indices inside ISM reports, the control group in retail sales, regional inflation figures and speeches from a single governor have all produced 15 to 25 pip moves on majors while sitting in the "medium" bucket. Some small-currency events behave the same way: a dairy auction for NZD, a local inflation survey for CHF.
Rather than trusting the colour, build a personal impact list from data:
- Pull the last 30 occurrences of each release you might trade near
- Measure the five-minute range after the print against the typical five-minute range at that hour
- Rank them by the ratio, and treat anything above roughly 2 as a no-entry window
That list will disagree with the calendar in a few places, and those disagreements are the useful part. It also needs refreshing every quarter or so, because the market's focus drifts.
Which medium-rated release has caught you out most often, and what did the five-minute range look like afterwards?
When traders are fixated on one theme, say whether a central bank will cut, a normally ignored line suddenly becomes the main event. Flash PMIs, sub-indices inside ISM reports, the control group in retail sales, regional inflation figures and speeches from a single governor have all produced 15 to 25 pip moves on majors while sitting in the "medium" bucket. Some small-currency events behave the same way: a dairy auction for NZD, a local inflation survey for CHF.
Rather than trusting the colour, build a personal impact list from data:
- Pull the last 30 occurrences of each release you might trade near
- Measure the five-minute range after the print against the typical five-minute range at that hour
- Rank them by the ratio, and treat anything above roughly 2 as a no-entry window
That list will disagree with the calendar in a few places, and those disagreements are the useful part. It also needs refreshing every quarter or so, because the market's focus drifts.
Which medium-rated release has caught you out most often, and what did the five-minute range look like afterwards?