TIP: How to trade NFP
|Significant news events happen throughout the month and the biggest is Non-Farm payroll. Its impact on price action is usually dramatic, and there is little to tell which way it is going to go. The usual rule of thumb is to stay out of the market on big news event days, or at the very least manage running trades with caution. The other approach, by those using larger time frame strategies, is to embrace it! This is not really possible on the smaller intra-day time frames where the smaller bars are more susceptible to the idiosyncratic movements of news events and can typically be spiked in and out of the trade before frustratingly seeing it head in the hoped for direction.
However for larger time frames, such as the daily bars, the opportunity to play the odds can be very rewarding. It’s all about reward to risk ratio. Big news events can, and often do, cause big swings with a single movement going several percent in one direction. If this goes in you favour of course it’s very rewarding, but predicting the direction is the difficult part. So the approach is not to try and predict the news, and therefore the resulting direction price will take. It’s simply not worth the effort. Just think about the reward to risk. It’s literally a toss of a coin as to which direction price will go but if you’re targeting a reward to risk of say between 3 and 6:1 then with a 50/50 win probability the rewards are going to heavily outweigh the losses.
News trading must only be done where there is high reward potential with minimal risk, otherwise it’s a recipe for disaster. It can only be done on an end of day strategy where the larger daily bar has more chance of ‘soaking’ up the turbulence without getting spiked in and out before the big move. Don’t try and second guess the news or resulting direction, just focus on the technical, trading what you see with (and it can’t be overstated) maximum reward potential and minimum loss potential. Read More.
Do you want to learn more?
VIDEO: Trading the NFP - LittleFish FX
REPORT: NFP: The Fundamental Giant - Babypips
REPORT: News Trading - Rick Wright
REPORT:News and Economic Data That Affect Forex Market Movements - Mario Sant Singh
VIDEO: Does Forex News Trading really work? - Jarratt Davis
REPORT: Two Cases When Trading News Events Goes Wrong - Yohay Elam
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