Macro events and the release calendar

Markets do not only move on charts and headlines — they move on the calendar. A CPI print or an FOMC decision can invalidate a technical setup in one candle, and the only defence is knowing the release is coming. The platform tracks that calendar for you: upcoming US macro releases, the first-print values when they land, and your own one-off events, all feeding the dashboard, your strategies and your Squads.

The eight series#

Eight release series are tracked out of the box, each with an impact rating and the markets it typically moves:

Two honesty rules are worth knowing, because they shape every number you see:

• Values are first prints — the number as the world saw it on release day, not the revised figure published later. That is the number the market actually traded on.
• There are no consensus forecasts on these series, so "surprise" always means change versus the previous release, never versus an analyst poll. An event you add yourself can carry a forecast; the tracked series cannot.

The calendar#

Release dates come from the official release calendar, and where the calendar does not reach yet, the platform projects the next dates from each series' cadence — a projected date is replaced the moment the real one is published. The calendar refreshes every 15 minutes, which also means a release's first-print value is available to your strategies within about a quarter of an hour of the announcement.

You see the calendar in two places:

• The Event horizon panel in the dashboard's Market Snapshot band — the next few events inside two weeks, each with a countdown chip (T-3D, T-6H, NOW) and its impact.
• The Macro indicators' countdown line on any strategy chart that uses them (below).

Your own events#

The calendar is not limited to scheduled economics. A token unlock, a governance vote, a chain upgrade — anything with a date and a market impact can be added as a manual event, with an impact rating, the tickers it affects and, optionally, a forecast. Manual events sit in the same calendar, show in the same panels, and drive the same indicator lines. Adding them is currently an API and developer-tools affair rather than a form in the app.

Trading a release from a strategy#

Each series has a matching indicator in the strategy builder's Macro category — CPI Release, Core CPI Release, Nonfarm Payrolls Release, PCE Release, PPI Release, JOLTS Release, Leading Index Release and FOMC Decision.

The five lines#

Every Macro indicator outputs the same five lines:

• event — a chart marker on the release bar, above or below it by the print's direction. For reading the chart, not for rules.
• event_now — a 0/1 pulse on the release bar. The rule-friendly twin: event_now goes above 0 exactly when the release lands.
• hours_to_next — hours until the next scheduled release, counting down. When no future release is known it reads a deliberately huge 9999, so a "stand aside before the release" rule never fires on missing data.
• release_value — the most recent first-print value, carried forward between releases. For FOMC this is the fed-funds target's upper bound.
• release_change — the print minus the previous print, carried forward. This is the surprise proxy. For FOMC it is the rate move: 0 a hold, +0.25 a hike, -0.25 a cut.

The three patterns#

• Stand aside: gate entries on hours_to_next staying above a few hours, so the strategy is flat going into a print it cannot predict.
• React: fire on event_now going above 0, with direction from the sign of release_change — trade the print, not the guess.
• Regime: use release_value or release_change as a slow filter — for example, only take longs while the last FOMC move was not a hike.

There is no look-ahead: the value lines only change once the release bar has actually opened. Only the countdown legitimately knows the future, because release dates are public in advance.

What your Squads see#

The macro calendar reaches a Squad two ways. The Portfolio Manager can consult upcoming events while it reflects, so the macro backdrop informs the lesson it draws from its record. And any Macro indicator you add to a Squad's readings in its Config puts the countdown and the last print in front of every specialist on every deliberation — worth doing for any Squad covering a market the Fed can move.