Automating News-Based Trade Entries with Calendar Filters and Timers

Summary

This article describes extending an MQL5 economic-calendar dashboard to place trades around scheduled news releases. Users choose whether to trade before or after an event, set time offsets and trade size, and filter calendar entries by currency, importance, and time window. In the example rule, the system compares forecast and previous values: a higher forecast triggers a buy, a lower one a sell, and missing or equal values are skipped. A chart countdown displays the time to the selected release, while event tracking aims to prevent repeated trades on the same item.

The article provides implementation guidance and says the logic was observed during live news-event testing, but it gives no quantitative performance results or controlled backtest. The forecast-versus-previous rule is a demonstration choice, not evidence that this comparison predicts price direction. The conclusion calls for further testing and stronger risk management; the described signal and its filters do not establish profitability or account for execution costs and volatility around announcements.

Key ideas

• Calendar events are selected using user-defined currency, impact, and time filters.
• The example enters before or after a release according to a configurable mode and offset.
• The demonstrated signal buys when forecast data exceeds the prior value and sells when it is lower.
• A countdown display and event identifiers support monitoring and help avoid duplicate entries.
• The article reports live-event testing but provides no quantified performance evidence and recommends further risk-management work.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.