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Every economic release is measured against the candles that followed it, from 30 minutes before the print to four hours after. Impact is the maximum excursion from the release price rather than the net close, so an event that runs 100 pips and gives half of it back is recorded as a 100-pip event — the move that actually reached stops and targets. Maximum favourable and adverse excursion are reported separately across 30-minute, 1-hour, 2-hour and 4-hour windows, alongside how consistent the move is and how often the event recurs, so you can see at a glance which releases are worth trading on which pairs.
Most event studies report where price finished, which quietly understates every release that spiked and reversed. This one measures the maximum excursion from the price quoted at the print: a release that runs one hundred pips and hands fifty back is recorded as a hundred-pip event, because a hundred pips is what actually reached stops, targets and margin calls while it was happening.
The net close is reported alongside it rather than instead of it. Read together the two answer different questions: the excursion tells you how much room a trade needed to survive the release, and the net tells you whether holding through it was worth anything at all.
Every release is split into maximum favourable excursion, how far price travelled above the release price, and maximum adverse excursion, how far it travelled below. Both are reported as positive distances, so a release with a large figure on each side is a whipsaw rather than a directional move, and the two columns are what tell those apart at a glance.
That distinction matters more than the average. An event that reliably runs one way is tradeable directionally; an event with the same average impact but a fifty-fifty split between up and down is a volatility event, where the edge is in the range rather than the direction, and position sizing has to respect both sides of the print.
Each release is measured over thirty minutes, one hour, two hours and four hours, plus the thirty minutes before it so pre-positioning drift is visible separately from the reaction. Central bank decisions show this clearly: the decision itself moves price, then the press conference half an hour later frequently moves it further, and only the longer windows capture that second leg.
Comparing horizons also shows how quickly an event is absorbed. A release whose four-hour figure barely exceeds its thirty-minute figure is priced in almost immediately, while one that keeps extending is being repriced by the market over the session, which are very different things to trade.
News impact is heavily skewed: most inflation prints are a non-event and a handful re-rate the whole curve, so an average on its own misleads. The median, the ninetieth percentile and the largest move on record are shown next to it, along with a consistency score that falls when the average is being carried by a few outliers rather than a repeatable move.
Frequency completes the picture. An event that moves a pair eighty pips twice a year is a diary entry; one that moves it thirty pips every month is a strategy. Every row therefore carries how many distinct releases it is built from, how often they recur, and the span of history behind them.
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