High-impact news in forex: what happens to spreads and stops

High-impact news in forex means the scheduled releases that economic calendars rate as most likely to move prices, such as US payrolls (NFP), US inflation (CPI) and central bank rate decisions. In the seconds around them, liquidity providers pull or widen their quotes, so the spread jumps, prices skip levels and a stop loss can fill well past the level you set.

Below are the mechanics, the US dates for the rest of 2026 and how an EA’s news filter works. Whether to trade a release stays your call.

What counts as high-impact news in forex

An economic calendar lists each scheduled release with its time and an impact rating, usually low, medium or high. MetaTrader 5 has one: open View → Toolbox (Ctrl+T) and pick the Calendar tab, where every indicator shows its release time, its priority and its current, forecast and previous values (MT5 help). An EA reads the same ratings through the MQL5 calendar functions, which grade each event’s importance as not set, low, medium or high (MQL5 docs).

Calendars differ in detail, but the same groups come up: rate decisions, jobs, inflation and GDP. FTMO’s list of restricted news events, as of October 2026, is a published example: for the dollar it names the Fed’s rate decision and statement, nonfarm payrolls, the unemployment rate and wages, advance GDP, the FOMC minutes and CPI.

The US releases this guide comes back to, and the rest in short:

Three details matter more than the list:

• The rating is an estimate. It says how much a release has tended to matter, as judged by whoever runs the calendar. It says nothing about how far the price will move this time.
• The day can move. NFP usually comes out on a Friday, but in 2026 the January report was published on Wednesday 11 February and the June report on Thursday 2 July (BLS schedule).
• An event belongs to a currency, not a pair. A US release matters to every pair that contains the dollar: EURUSD, USDJPY and gold quoted as XAUUSD alike.

Unscheduled news is on no calendar. On 15 January 2015 the Swiss National Bank discontinued its minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro (SNB), a move it later said “took the financial markets by surprise” (SNB speech). A calendar-based filter cannot see that coming.

US release dates, October to December 2026

The UTC column shifts by an hour because New York leaves daylight saving on 1 November 2026. Europe changes a week earlier, on 25 October, so for that one week London is four hours ahead of New York instead of five: the 28 October FOMC statement lands at 18:00 London time, not the usual 19:00.

What happens in the seconds around a release

Forex has no central exchange. The prices your broker shows are built from the quotes of banks and other liquidity providers, who stand ready to trade at their bid and ask. Just before a number comes out, a standing quote is a risk: whoever reads the release first can trade against it before it is updated. Economists call this adverse selection, and many providers respond by widening their quotes or pulling them.

Fewer quotes means a thinner market. The gap between the best bid and the best ask grows, and the next available price can be several levels away from the last one. A study of the interdealer FX market found “a significant reduction in market liquidity following macroeconomic announcements” (Tham, Erasmus University Rotterdam).

The real figures depend on the broker, the pair and the release, and you can watch them on a demo account: MT5’s Market Watch shows the live spread (pick its columns in the context menu), its Ticks tab draws a tick chart, and the symbol’s Specification says whether the spread is floating (MT5 help).

A candle hides most of this. On an H1 chart the release is one bar, and a wick formed in ten seconds looks like part of an hour of trading. A smaller version of the same widening happens every day at the 17:00 New York rollover: see spreads at rollover.

Why your stop can fill far from where you set it

A stop loss is a trigger, not a price. When the price reaches the level, “the entire position is closed automatically” by a market operation (MT5 order types), which fills at the next price available. In a quiet market that is at or near the stop. In a thin one, the next price can be many pips away. The difference is slippage.

Which side of the quote triggers the stop matters as much:

• A long (buy) position’s stop loss is checked against the Bid.
• A short (sell) position’s stop loss is a buy, and is checked against the Ask.
• A pending Sell Stop triggers on the Bid, and a pending Buy Stop on the Ask.

MT5 builds forex bars from Bid prices (MT5 chart settings), so a spread that jumps from under a pip to several pips lifts the Ask away from the line you see. A short position’s stop can then trigger while the chart never touches it. The post on stop losses, bid and ask walks through it with numbers.

The position size calculator does the first half of that example. No calculator can do the second half, because slippage is only known after the fill. The extreme case is a gap, where the price jumps over your level with no trading in between, as it can over a weekend.

Why automated strategies are especially exposed

An Expert Advisor follows rules written for normal conditions, and a release breaks several of their assumptions at once:

• Costs. The rules and the backtest assume a normal spread. An entry in the spike pays the wide one.
• Indicators fire on the spike. One release candle can produce a moving-average cross, a breakout or an extreme RSI reading. To the rules it looks like a signal; it is one bar of thin liquidity.
• Volatility measures lag. A stop based on ATR (average true range) is measured on the bars before the release, so it is sized for a quieter market than the one the trade opens into.
• The size assumes the stop holds. Risk-based sizing turns a stop distance into a lot size (how to calculate lot size). If the stop slips, the loss is larger than the risk you set, as in the example above.
• Nobody is watching. A person can check the calendar and step away. An EA on a VPS at 08:30 New York time does not, unless it has a news filter.

Backtests on bar data understate all of this. A test on hourly bars sees the release bar’s open, high, low and close, not the ticks inside it or the spread at each one.

If your EA takes no trades for an hour around a release, that may be its news filter at work: see why an EA is not taking trades.

How EA news filters work

A typical news filter has four steps:

1. A calendar. Either MT5’s own economic calendar, read through the MQL5 calendar functions, or an external calendar fetched over the internet. An EA that fetches one itself needs its address allowed under Tools → Options → Expert Advisors → Allow WebRequest for listed URL (see WebRequest).
2. An impact filter. Usually high impact only. Adding medium-impact events blocks much more of the week.
3. Currency matching. A US event blocks pairs that contain USD, XAUUSD included, and leaves EURGBP alone.
4. A window. New entries are blocked from a set number of minutes before the event to a set number after it. That window is the news blackout.

Time zones are where filters go wrong. The MQL5 calendar functions return times in the trade server’s time zone, not in UTC or your local time (MQL5 docs). A filter that mixes server time with UTC or New York time blocks the wrong hour.

Trades that are already open

For positions already open when the window starts, filters take one of three approaches:

None of them is right in general. Which one fits depends on the strategy, the timeframe and any rules you trade under.

How long the window is

Published windows vary widely:

The prop-firm rules are as of October 2026. They change often, so check the firm’s own page before you rely on them.

Choosing a blackout window

There is no correct window, only a trade-off:

• Wider means more skipped signals, including some that would have worked. On a day with several releases, the window can cover most of a session.
• Narrower means more trades opened close to the spike, while spreads are still wide and the price is still settling.

The minutes before keep new positions out of the release; the minutes after let spreads settle. Three things narrow the choice:

The timeframe matters. An EA that decides at each H1 candle close, with candles closing on the hour, makes its last decision before an 08:30 release at 08:00. A 15-minute window before the release does not stop that entry; a window of more than 30 minutes does.

Prop-firm rules set the floor. If you trade under a firm’s news rule, a window narrower than the firm’s leaves room for a breach. Under a rule like FTMO’s, where a stop loss or take profit triggered inside the window also counts, blocking entries is not enough on its own: open trades with orders near the price matter too. Prop firm EA rules compares the firms.

The clock has to be right. US releases are scheduled in New York time, calendars often show UTC or your local time, and MT5 runs on the broker’s server time. The forex market hours tool shows the sessions in your time zone next to typical MT5 server time, daylight saving included, and counts down to the next high-impact release on PipWarden’s calendar.

What PipWarden does around news

PipWarden trades through an Expert Advisor that runs in MT5 on a Windows PC or VPS, with a broker that allows EAs. It cannot run on a phone. Around news it works like this:

• On by default. The news filter pauses new entries from 60 minutes before to 30 minutes after each high-impact event. You can change both numbers per account, or switch the filter off.
• Matched by currency. An event blocks each of your pairs that contains its currency, metals included: a US release pauses XAUUSD as well as EURUSD.
• Logged. A trade signal that the news filter stops shows in the signal log as “Blocked”, with the reason “High-impact news”.
• Open trades are left alone. The filter blocks entries only. Positions already open keep their stop loss and take profit at the broker, and the EA keeps managing them as usual. To close them before a release, you close them yourself or use the kill switch, which closes every position the bot opened.
• Spread as a second check. If you set a maximum spread for a pair, in points (on a five-digit EURUSD quote, 10 points are 1 pip), it is checked before the order is queued and again by the EA on the live spread right before sending. A trade that fails is skipped and logged as “Spread too wide”, whether or not the calendar knew about the cause.
• Scheduled events only. The calendar is refreshed every six hours, and the filter can only block events that are on it. It cannot see a surprise like the SNB’s in 2015.

These filters and limits are checked before every order. They do not cap the loss on a trade that is already open: it runs to its stop, and prices can gap. The feature list and how it works cover the other checks.

Forex and CFD trading is high risk, with or without news, and you can lose money. The risk disclosure covers gaps, slippage and thin markets in more detail.