News Rules

### The window, exactly - **2 hours before** a red-folder event, and **during** it: no new setups. - **1 hour after**: back to normal. - **Already in a trade: you close 30 minutes before, whatever the P&L says.** That last line is the one people negotiate with, so be clear about why it is not negotiable. Being up 1.5R does not change the state of the order book at the release. Open profit is a number on a screen, not a buffer. When liquidity thins, a green trade and a red trade sit in exactly the same book, and OANDA's execution guidance is explicit that a stop hit in a fast market or a liquidity gap becomes a market order and can be filled well past your level. Your defined risk stops being defined at the exact moment you were relying on it. ### Knowing what actually counts as news The big US releases run on a published clock, which is what makes the rule enforceable rather than vague. - The Bureau of Labor Statistics embargoes its Employment Situation report (the jobs report) until **8:30 a.m. ET**. The CPI release carries the same 8:30 a.m. ET embargo. - The FOMC statement is stamped **"For release at 2:00 p.m. EDT"** on the Fed's own press release, and the Chair's press conference follows it. Both halves can move price, so the second one is not a free window. Meeting dates are published in advance on the [Fed's FOMC calendar](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm). And this is why the rule says *check the calendar every morning* rather than *memorise the pattern*. The jobs report is commonly called a first-Friday event, but BLS moves it: the June 2026 report was released on **Thursday, 2 July 2026**, not the Friday. A trader running on habit rather than the calendar would have been sitting in a position when it landed. ### What breaking it actually costs The trap is not that gambling news always loses. It is that it sometimes wins, and the win teaches you to do it again. Meanwhile the loss is the one loss in your whole system that your stop does not size for, because it can slip through. You can be paid several times and refunded once, permanently. So: check the calendar before the session, mark the red folders, flatten 30 minutes ahead, and let the spike happen without you. Whatever setup is worth trading after the news will still be there an hour later, drawn on a book that actually has orders in it.