The most common way to trade news is to look for a period of consolidation or uncertainty ahead of a big number and to trade the breakout on the back of the news. This can be done on both a short-term basis (intraday) or over several days. Let’s look at the chart in Figure 2 as an example. After a weak number in September, the euro was holding its breath ahead of the October number, which was to be released to the public in November.
In the 17 hours before the release, EUR/USD was confined within a tight 30-pip trading range. (A pip is the smallest measure of change in a currency pair in the forex market, and since most major currency pairs are priced to four decimal places, the smallest change is that of the last decimal point.) For news traders, this would have provided a great opportunity to put on a breakout trade, especially since the likelihood of a sharp move at this time was extremely high.