It is very important to keep up to date with financial news releases. These news releases have a huge impact on the market. I would advise any new trader to make themselves aware of the time of these releases and stay out of the market during these times as they generally have high levels of volatility and the spread can increase dramatically.

A very useful tool that allows you to stay up to date with these key announcements is the Forex Factory Calendar. This Calendar allows you to change your time zone and has all the upcoming events listed for the current day. It lists key features involving the announcements such as:

1. Currency that is affected
2. Expected impact
3. Forecast Level
4. Previous Level
5. Further details

The best thing about this service is that you can subscribe to email alerts. You can filter by currency and event impact, you can also select when you would like to be notified about an upcoming event. As the image below shows:

Alternatively if you wish to get a quick rundown of upcoming events you can click on the news section at the top of this website. All events are listed in GMT time.