This is a reference post for the economic calendar and settings I use.
The calendar I like to use is the FXStreet Economic Calendar. It identifies all upcoming news, the date and time of its release, and has great filtering options for you to keep up with the areas you are interested in. The app works well and I recommend it for doing this on the go.
High Impact Filter
The first filter setting is a general setting for the largest 8 financial markets in terms of forex liquidity.
We filter for only “High” impact events.
The 8 major currencies are
United Stated
United Kingdom
Japan
European Union
Switzerland
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
These are the majors simply because the forex market as it currently exists was set up to support western banking interests, and as such the countries with the deepest liquidity in these markets are an artifact of who set it up and for what purpose. As many of you know, China has set up its own International Monetary Exchange system in competition with SWIFT called CIPS. CIPS and SWIFT have an agreement to finalize exchanges between the two, and if CIPS were to overtake SWIFT in terms of liquidity and demand, we might see some changes in terms of what the top 8 countries are, but until that happens, the above list has the most impact on the financial markets.
Bond Auction Filter
The 2nd filter is set to capture all treasury bond auctions. I typically only look at US Treasury auctions, and US auctions tend to be the most frequent (lol we run massive deficits), but from time to time you will see auctions from other governments as well.
Slow News Week Filter
Rarely we may have a week with no relevant FX events and I will also filter for “Medium” impact events as well.