Economic calendar · Beginner

Scheduled Vs Unscheduled News Events

One category gives you known timing and unknown content. The other gives you neither, and that decides which defences are even available.

Last reviewed 15 September 2026 by the MarketPro research desk · Editorial policy

In short

Scheduled events such as inflation reports, payrolls and central bank decisions have known timing and unknown content, so you can plan around them by reducing size or standing aside. Unscheduled events, including geopolitical shocks and surprise policy moves, have unknown timing as well, so the only defences are structural ones already in place: exposure limits per currency, leverage well below the maximum, and sizing that does not assume the stop holds.

What to remember

The risk in a scheduled event is the content. The risk in an unscheduled one is that no plan exists yet. Different problems, different defences.
A stop set 60 pips away filled 3,000 pips away in the 2015 SNB de-peg, turning a $600 planned loss into roughly $30,000 on one standard lot.
A calendar time is the earliest plausible time, not the exact one. Election counts run for hours, and a press conference is a second event 30 to 45 minutes after the decision.
The weekend is a scheduled gap with unscheduled content, so a position held across it should be sized as though the stop can be jumped.

Lesson 11 of 16 in Economic calendar and news

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Scheduled events have known timing and unknown content. Unscheduled events have unknown timing and unknown content, which removes every defence that depends on preparation. That single difference decides which tools are available to you, and it is why the second category is handled with structure rather than with a plan for the day.

Twenty minutes, 3,000 pips, and accounts below zero

On 15 January 2015 the Swiss National Bank abandoned the 1.20 floor it had defended under EUR/CHF for three years. There was no calendar entry. The pair fell from around 1.2000 to below 0.9000 in roughly twenty minutes, with prints near 0.85 on some venues before liquidity returned.

Work through what that did to an ordinary position. Long one standard lot of EUR/CHF with a 60 pip stop at 1.1940 is about $10 a pip and roughly $600 of planned risk. No trade occurred at 1.1940. The stop became a market order into a book with almost nothing in it, and fills landed thousands of pips lower. A fill near 0.9000 is 3,000 pips, about $30,000 on that one lot, on a position that was sized to lose $600. Client accounts went negative, a UK broker entered insolvency and a US broker required a $300 million rescue. Nobody's analysis was wrong. The event was simply not on anyone's list.

The two kinds of uncertainty, side by side

	Scheduled	Unscheduled
Timing	Known weeks ahead	None
Content	Unknown	Unknown
Spreads	Widen on cue, normalise in 15 to 30 minutes on majors	Widen without warning, can stay wide for hours
Can you be flat for it	Yes, by choice	Only by accident
Typical defence	Reduce size, stand aside, set alerts	Total exposure limits and leverage well below the maximum

Inflation reports, employment data, central bank decisions and GDP releases sit in the left column. Geopolitical escalation, a natural disaster, a surprise resignation, an emergency policy move and a large corporate failure sit in the right one.

A scheduled event can still surprise you on timing

The left column is less tidy than it looks. Referendum and election results arrive over six or eight hours as regions report, so the move is a series of steps through the night rather than one candle. A statement listed as "approximately 14:00" can land at 13:40 or 15:20. A decision has occasionally been published early by mistake. An emergency inter-meeting rate move is a scheduled institution acting on an unscheduled day.

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The habit worth building is to treat the calendar entry as the earliest plausible time, not the exact one, and to remember that a decision and the press conference that follows it thirty to forty-five minutes later are two separate events with two separate reactions.

There is a second wrinkle. Some scheduled events are certain to happen but uncertain in weight. A minor sentiment survey with a one-star marker can move a currency eighty pips if it lands in a week when the market is short of information and hunting for a reason. The schedule tells you when attention will be pointed at a number. It does not tell you how much the market has decided that number matters this month.

What protects you against the thing you cannot see coming

Because there is no lead time, the defences are structural. They have to be in place before the event, which means they have to be in place permanently.

Cap exposure per currency, not per trade. A long in gold, a long in AUD/USD and a short in USD/JPY read as three unrelated ideas and are three versions of one short-dollar position, so a single unscheduled dollar event hits all of them together. The position size calculator sizes an individual trade, the currency total is yours to police.
Use leverage far below the maximum offered. The reason is not caution, it is that a gap can move price further than your stop distance, and the only thing standing between that and a closed account is unused margin. The leverage calculator makes the requirement concrete.
Know whether your account has negative balance protection. It caps losses at the account balance and is mandatory for retail clients in some jurisdictions and absent in others. 2015 is what its absence looks like.
Do not size on the assumption that the stop holds. A stop guarantees that you exit, not the price at which you exit.

The weekend is a gap with unscheduled content

Between the Friday close and the Sunday open there are roughly forty-eight hours in which news happens and you cannot act on it. A 20 to 40 pip gap on a major pair is unremarkable. After an election or a geopolitical escalation, several hundred pips is possible, and your stop does not trade inside a gap: it fills at the first available price on the other side.

That does not mean holding over a weekend is a mistake. It means the weekend position should be sized as though the stop might be jumped, which usually means smaller than the same idea held intraday. The general treatment of gap behaviour is covered in risk management, and the arithmetic is the same whether the gap comes from a weekend or from a Tuesday afternoon headline.

The useful conclusion is not that unscheduled events are unmanageable. It is that trying to predict them is the wrong activity, and building an account that survives one without a plan is the right one. A trader who is flat through every scheduled release and running 20:1 leverage on a single currency has prepared for the category that was already visible and left the other one entirely uncovered, which is the more expensive of the two mistakes.

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MarketPro is a trading-signal and trading-education app operated by Harajuku Holdings LTD (Cyprus). Our signal desk publishes and tracks every trade idea in-app, and every page here is checked against the app's live behaviour before publishing. Last reviewed 15 September 2026. How we produce signals and content · About MarketPro

FAQ

Scheduled Vs Unscheduled News Events: questions

What is an example of an unscheduled market event?

The Swiss National Bank removing its 1.20 floor under EUR/CHF on 15 January 2015 is the standard case: no calendar entry, and a fall from 1.2000 to below 0.9000 within about twenty minutes. Other examples include sudden geopolitical escalation, an emergency inter-meeting rate move, a large financial institution failing, and a natural disaster affecting commodity supply. What they share is that stops fill far from their level because there is no liquidity at the level.

Can you plan for unscheduled news events?

Not individually, which is why attempting to predict them is the wrong activity. What you can do is keep the account in a state that survives one: cap total exposure to any single currency rather than counting trades, run leverage well below the maximum your broker offers, and avoid sizing positions on the assumption that a stop will fill at its exact price. Those defences only work if they are permanent.

Do spreads behave differently for scheduled and unscheduled news?

Yes. Around a scheduled release, spreads widen on cue and usually normalise within fifteen to thirty minutes on major pairs, because liquidity providers know when to step back and when to return. After an unscheduled shock there is no known end point, so quotes can stay wide for hours and in extreme cases pricing becomes intermittent while the market works out what the new fair value is.

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