Every trader is at least aware of major news announcements like NFP, interest rates, CPI. Some try to trade them by predicting where the price will go based on economic data.
However, during the announcement, forex market doesn’t always move the way it’s written in the “textbook”. Why is that?
Let’s look at a couple examples. You can click on images to enlarge them.
The first example above is GBPUSD interest rate announcement which happened at 14:00 in broker’s timezone, on June 19th 2025. I marked the exact news candle on M1 chart.
According to the textbook, “a higher than expected figure should be seen as positive (bullish) for the GBP while a lower than expected figure should be seen as negative (bearish) for the GBP”.
But the Bank of England didn’t change the interest rate on that day. It remained 4.25%, as it was before. Also, the prediction consensus was 4.25% as well, so it matched market’s expectations 100%.
So why did the market move? The textbook says it shouldn’t have moved at all because all expectations that are fulfilled in reality were already priced in.
Another example above is USDJPY NFP announcement which happened at 15:30 in broker’s timezone, on March 7th 2025. I marked the exact news candle on M1 chart.
The prediction consensus was 160K and the actual number announced was 151K. According to the textbook, “a higher than expected figure should be seen as positive (bullish) for the USD while a lower than expected figure should be seen as negative (bearish) for the USD”.
So the market should have moved down, but it actually moved up a lot before going down. Why did this happen?
When such things happen, people often say: “ah, it’s just the markets acting irrational”, thinking that it’s too complicated to look deeper.
But if Albert Einstein managed to explain space, time and gravity, then explaining how the market works must be easier. Market was made by man, and everything that is made by man is far simpler than God’s creations.
The Answer
So the actual answer is that news announcements do not move the market. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there’s no cause-and-effect relationship between news and market movements.
Forex market always moves to where the money is. It has to, and there’s no other way around it, and it’s that simple. And it’s the only reason the forex market moves, if it moves at all.
I can’t reveal who moves the forex market because it’s confidential information only available to my mentees, but to put simply: there’s always a price to be paid for market movers to move the price, and they only do that when it’s profitable for them to do so. The profits may come immediately or after some time, but the movements are always logical and never random.
How I Trade News
I don’t look at news announcement figures at all. I only check the news calendar every morning to understand when the market is likely to move and plan my trades accordingly.
I prefer to make entries after news announcements. But sometimes I’ll enter before news as well, if I have a good setup.
To protect my trade, I usually expand my stop loss during news because there’ll be increased volatility and spreads.
I don’t trade news for the sake of trading news (i.e. based on economic data). That would be gambling and I don’t think such a strategy could be profitable long term.
Hope this article was helpful, thanks for reading and happy trading.