Our market calendar displays a wide range of global economic data releases along with the relative potential impact on financial markets. Find out how to configure alerts to notify you in advance of an announcement.
Video transcript
Hi there, guys, welcome to this short video having a look at the economic calendar in a bit more detail. This is one of the most essential tools in the trading platform, something that I like to utilise a lot and this basically gives you all the major macro-economic data from right across the world. You can actually see there that I've got a selection of announcements right here. And I've got some UK- and US- based announcements. You can see the time and date; the market impact, you get low, medium, and high; the announcement; and details of the actual forecast and previous.
If I just go to Edit for a second, what you'll see there is a whole bunch of different options on here. I've actually got some of these countries turned off. It really does depend on what it is that you're interested in. I tend to like to have a lot of the major ones on there, but depending on your region, some of these will be more important than others. I tend to turn off the low important market impact events. But again, it depends (on) what you're after yourself. There's also an alert timer here, which will become quite apparent in a second. I usually always have this set to ten minutes, but you can choose any of these other selections here as well. I tend to look at medium and high important level events and these are the countries that I like to be aware of. Particularly useful regardless of what asset class you're trading, because it can impact global markets.
So, when you've got an announcement on here, for example if we have a look at the unemployment rate in the UK, you can see there that the actuals come out, there's a forecast that's been provided by Dow Jones Live Newswire in this instance, and you also have the previous data as well. There will always be an information button attached to the core major updates. If you click on this, you'll actually be able to see what it measures, why traders care, the frequency and who it comes out with. And you can obviously set alerts as well.
Now, it's the alerts section here that is particularly useful. If I just go ahead here and select this little icon right here, it's going to pop open a box with a countdown clock that's going to give me a forecast, the previous, and the time left to actual. When that gets down to zero it's going to say due, and as soon as Dow Jones sends information through there, it's going to pop up directly on this tab and inform me of what's going on. This feature is also available on the mobile platform, on the iPad, Android, and iPhone. You just have to go ahead and set it on that specific device, because it actually sets it via push notification. At this point you can set the two of them separately, but it's such a useful, great feature.
What I tend to do is, you can look at this from a daily, a weekly, or a monthly standpoint. So monthly, obviously, gives you access to a whole bunch (of) more information. Then you've got weekly. I do tend to look at this on a day-by-day basis. Though you can utilise the calendar function here, select whatever dates that you want, which is equally useful. Today's date will always be highlighted in blue. So if you get a little bit ahead of yourself, it's very easy to click here and go back to today's date and see exactly what's coming up.
Now, I tend to pay most attention to anything that's red impact level. That means it's going to have quite a decent impact on quite a wide variety of different markets. So, usually, if it's an American flag, anything that's US dollar denominated, like FX pairs, or major US industries such as the Dow, sorry, the US 30 or the SPX 500 is something you might want to look at. Conversely, if you're looking at the UK data, there's something like the UK 100 or GBP/USD or any Sterling denominated FX pair, that's the type of stuff that traders might tend to go ahead and tend to have a look at.
Anything on here that's red, I usually set an alert to. I look at today, and I always fast forward on to the next day. Again, anything that's red that's impacting the products that I'm looking at and as long as it's got a forecast on here, I'll go ahead and set an alert on there as well. So, I make sure that I don't forget any major announcements as they come out because this can have a big effect on your current open positions.
