What is a Forex calendar?
The Forex calendar, or economic calendar as it is more commonly known, highlights the schedule of economic events and data releases. They vary from growth figures to inflation or interest rate decisions and employment.
Depending on how ‘high impact’ the data release is, and how far the result deviates from the consensus, they can have a dramatic impact on the Forex markets.
How do I interpret the data from the Forex calendar?
An economic release will have a scheduled time, the country of origin, what data is due, and an explanation of that data being released. On the right-hand side of the calendar, you will see the data points.
Prior is the figure from the last data release. Forecast is what the consensus is for this data release and actual is updated when the data is published.
Looking at the prior and the forecast you may be able to decipher if the trend is getting better or worse. For example, the US CPI (consumer price index) is an inflation indicator. The prior figure was 5.9% with the expected 6.1%. The trend seems to be getting higher.
