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The impact label on the calendar is a guess

Economic calendars color events as low, medium, or high impact. The colors give a sense of order, but they're editorial opinions, and applied the same way regardless of conditions.

A "medium" release can turn dramatic when the market is focused on it. During a period of worry about inflation, a minor price index may move currencies more than a "high" employment report. The label doesn't change.

Conversely, a "high" label may carry little punch in a quiet period. Many traders stay out for events that end up barely moving price.

A more useful approach is empirical. Record the average move in the first five minutes after each type of release over the past year, for the pairs traded. Rank them by actual impact. The ranking differs from the calendar's.

It should be updated periodically, since the market's focus changes.

Also look at the surprise. The move depends on the gap between actual and forecast. An in-line number does little regardless of the label.

Building a personal calendar with reactions, not labels, turns the generic list into a tool that fits the pairs and the strategy.

Which releases move the pairs traded more than their calendar label suggests?

Economic calendars label events as low, medium or high impact, but those labels are estimates based on typical reactions. A medium impact event can produce a big move if the number is a surprise, and a high impact event can do nothing if the result matches expectations. Treating the label as a guide rather than a rule makes sense. The label is a starting point, not the whole story. Labels are set in advance and cannot reflect how surprising a particular number will be on the day, which is what moves price.

For about a year I kept a spreadsheet with the first five minutes of movement after every release I traded on GBPUSD and USDJPY, and it surprised me. UK retail sales and the Tokyo CPI figure, both labeled medium on the calendar I was using, produced a bigger average move than several of the high labeled releases. I also noticed that the weekly jobless claims usually did very little, but on two occasions in the same quarter they moved USDJPY by about 35 pips because the number sat far from consensus.

So my list is sorted by what happened, not by color. I mark each event with a letter: A for those which moved price at least 20 pips on average, B for 10 to 20, and C for the rest. Only A and B events get a blackout window of ten minutes either side of the release.

It takes around twenty minutes each quarter to update, and it has saved me from being caught on the wrong side of events that looked harmless on the calendar.