Tag news-window trades in the journal and see what they really cost
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 8:18 am
A typical journal lumps every trade together, so the effect of news never shows up separately. Win rate looks fine, average result looks fine, and the damage is spread thin across hundreds of lines.
A simple tagging scheme fixes that. Mark each trade as one of three types: inside five minutes either side of a high-impact release, caused or affected by an unscheduled headline, or clean. For news-tagged trades, also record the spread at entry, the gap between planned and actual fill, and the result in R multiples rather than pips.
After 40 or so tagged trades, compare buckets. A common finding is that the win rate looks similar but the average R is lower in the news bucket, because slippage and spread eat the planned reward while losses stretch past the planned stop. Sometimes the opposite appears, and the news bucket is where the whole month's profit came from, which is worth knowing before any rule bans it.
Either way, the decision to avoid or embrace news trading then rests on a measured difference instead of a mood after one bad Friday.
It takes a minute per trade and no special software, a spreadsheet column is enough.
Has splitting trades by news window ever changed which sessions or events you actually trade?
A simple tagging scheme fixes that. Mark each trade as one of three types: inside five minutes either side of a high-impact release, caused or affected by an unscheduled headline, or clean. For news-tagged trades, also record the spread at entry, the gap between planned and actual fill, and the result in R multiples rather than pips.
After 40 or so tagged trades, compare buckets. A common finding is that the win rate looks similar but the average R is lower in the news bucket, because slippage and spread eat the planned reward while losses stretch past the planned stop. Sometimes the opposite appears, and the news bucket is where the whole month's profit came from, which is worth knowing before any rule bans it.
Either way, the decision to avoid or embrace news trading then rests on a measured difference instead of a mood after one bad Friday.
It takes a minute per trade and no special software, a spreadsheet column is enough.
Has splitting trades by news window ever changed which sessions or events you actually trade?