Forex Factory Calendar and Other Free Tools to Trade Better

What is Forex Factory?

Forex Factory is one of the oldest trading communities on the Internet. As a part of the wider Fair Economy Inc. family that focuses on different investment markets, Forex Factory is dedicated to the foreign exchange market. This web project is home to thousands of traders with varying degrees of experience, and the website owners want to be one of the premier sources for forex trading information on the Internet.

There are plenty of reasons why we can safely say they’ve already reached that goal. For one, their forum is tightly moderated with strict community guidelines — allowing only a friendly, constructive exchange of opinions and ideas. There is no trolling, flaming, fake news, or any of the other issues that generally plague online communities. The traders who are active on Forex Factory are highly supportive of their peers.

On the other hand, their Trades section provides a great window into the brokerage accounts managed by thousands of traders. This Forex Factory tool has plenty of innovative and useful features — like its member leaderboard that shows the highest returns among traders each month, the real-time feed showing member trades, and the aggregate-positions analyzer. All of these allow astute traders to capitalize on the community’s insights and activities.

Also, the News tool is a great place to find the most up-to-date news that affects the Forex market. Unlike many other news aggregates, this tool efficiently gathers only the most relevant market news on minute-by-minute, hourly, and daily drivers. And even when there isn’t any breaking news, this tool provides a great curation of the most interesting and current insights from the wider financial media. Forex Factory has a round-the-clock editorial team that ensures maximum quality and minimal noise.

Traders are also aided by the Forex Factory Calendar tool — a standard-setting economic calendar that’s been constantly updated and improved since 2005. It contains economic data charting, as well as data-source linking, event filtering, event detail news, adaptive timestamps, and event impact rating features. However, the true power behind this Calendar tool is Forex Factory’s financial economists that work every day to ensure this web software is current, reliable, and accurate — helping traders make their most crucial decisions.

Furthermore, their Market tool is powered by a complex software infrastructure that aggregates data from various sources. It has received constant updates for over a decade, and Market has allowed Forex Factory to share prices with an exchange-level integrity. Also, this tool is unique for its inclusion of synthetic instruments like Gold/GBP, WTI/EUR, and even crypto — BTC/JPY.

Forex Factory also contains a Brokers Guide that helps beginner traders research potential brokers more thoroughly — with real-time spreads, extensive details, and in-depth information, all packaged in a clean and versatile interface. The editorial team that handles their News section also frequently maintains the Brokers guide, meaning all listed brokers are constantly checked for new information.

Finally, their Trade Explorer interface empowers intelligent traders who are looking for tools to help them analyze their current and previous trading performance. It can be synchronized with any connected brokerage account — and while this is their newest application and is still in early development, it has already proven to be useful for Forex Factory users.

Forex Factory Calendar — Key Tips to Use It Better

One of the simplest tools you’ll be able to use to make better informed trades is the Forex Factory Calendar. As mentioned above, this tool provides a clear overview of all current and short-term global events that can have an impact on the forex market. And we’re going to tell you all about how you can use it to maximise your chances of making a profit!

Forex Factory Calendar

Forex Factory Calendar Overview

At first, the Forex Factory Calendar tool may seem complex. However, in reality, you won’t need more than a couple of minutes to get the hang of it — their design team has made sure that all necessary information is available to you at a glance.

The main part of the Calendar tool is this calendar table itself. For each given date, you can see all currency-affecting events — and for those with specific times, you can even see the hours at which they occur. On the left, you can see the currency each event impacts, its name, as well as the expected level of impact. On the right, there are impact projections, which you can also see depicted visually through auto-generated graphs.

To the left of the event list, you will find a tiny calendar which lets you pick a precise date to examine — as well as easy navigation through all the currently analyzed dates.

If the interface seems confusing to you at first, don’t worry — all of the icons have a practical purpose, and you can see a neatly packed legend for all elements on the bottom right.

How To Set Up Forex Factory Calendar

When it comes to using the Forex Factory Calendar, its benefit is pretty obvious — but it’s there only provided you’ve got the correct time. Especially when it comes to financial events that have specific hours, you need to be certain you’ve got the correct settings.

Seeing as the Forex Factory is used by users all around the world, you need to make sure you’ve got the right time zone set on the website. If you’ve correctly chosen your location while making your account, this should already be set by default — but if you change your location or you’ve made a mistake while registering, you’ll need to correct it before using the calendar.

Luckily, you can access the general Forex Factory “clock” by clicking on the time displayed in the header of all pages. This will lead you to the time zone settings, and you can set the correct one there. There’s a handy “Match Automatically” feature that links your device’s time zone to Forex Factory, or you can simply pick the right time zone from an old-fashioned drop-down list.

How to Use Calendar to Earn More

As you can see, the Forex Factory Calendar allows you to see every possible currency-related news event, in sync with your local time. However, when you first access the calendar, it can definitely seem overwhelming — there’s an entire world of in-depth financial information displayed from all around the world.

That’s because the default view displays all of the events related to all major currencies. Realistically, you won’t need to see or use all of that information on a daily basis. You simply need to track the events related to the currency pairs you’re trading, in a time frame that’s relevant to your activities. Also, the events are graded by (among other things) their level of impact — depending on how experienced you are with trading, you may not need to see every small event at first.

In the beginning, we recommend setting the event filters to just one or two currency pairs and major events — after that, you can slowly start exploring the calendar in more depth as you become more comfortable with its interface.

How Does Market Scanner Tool Work?

The tools that we’ve described above allow you to analyze upcoming data and try to make predictions on how the market will move. However, the most detailed analysis depends on more than current and future events — you also need some historical context. And that’s where the Market Scanner tool comes in.

Market Scanner Tool on Forex Factory

This is an incredible tool that ties in neatly with the rest of the Forex Factory offer. You can use it to gain a better understanding of the interaction between all types of market-related events and prices on specific currency pairs. Soon enough, you will learn to read the news and make informed predictions on how each event will set off a price hike or drop.

Once you click on the Market tab in the Forex Factory header, you will be greeted with the screen above — a simple price graph at first glance, but actually an immensely powerful tool. You can set it to display the price changes for any currency pair over time — the EUR/USD is the default. It can display multiple time frames — from a minute-by-minute showcase to the entire previous month.

However, once you look closely at the bottom, you will see there’s a small section where this tool pulls data from the Calendar and News. Yes, it shows what forex-related events happened at any point when the market changed — allowing you to draw clear conclusions on how any kind of event will impact the prices in the future.

For example, the screenshot above shows how a 1.1% rise in industrial producer prices has resulted in a short slump for EUR/USD. When the next similar event happens, you’ll know what forex trend to expect as a result.

Automated Trading Reporting

Once you create your own Trade Explorer, all of your historical trading data will be imported from the brokerage account you’ve connected to the Forex Factory. The best part about this is that Forex Factory automatically and securely connects to your brokerage account and gathers new data — so it’s always up to date, in real time.

Even if the automatic synchronization doesn’t happen due to a lack of an Internet connection or some other bug, you can always use the manual sync button to bring it up to speed. As a trader, it’s incredibly useful to have an objective perspective of your performance — and this tool can help you do that better than most broker-specific web interfaces.

Brokers Monitor Tool

For beginners who are still looking for the best possible broker, Forex Factory provides help in the form of their Brokers Monitor tool. It contains broker information maintained and updated by the Forex Factory staff, who perform daily research to provide ultimate value to users.

Besides the basic information shown on this page, you can expand every section by clicking on the appropriate icon at the top. Also, most column headers on the page have icons that you can hover over and see more information about the column and its methodology. You can also sort these brokers and individual columns as you see fit.

Crucially, the “spreads” part pulls all of the rates from the standard live accounts of every broker — showing you their current spread displayed in pips. This doesn’t include demo accounts; you’ve got a clear-cut view of what each brokers’ standard traders see.

Is Forex Factory Free?

This is actually one of the best parts of Forex Factory — it contains all of the valuable tools we’ve described above, as well as an active community of experienced traders. And all of that for absolutely free! Any beginner can benefit from learning how to trade with more advanced information and seeing what their peers are up to — and you can do that on Forex Factory without paying a dime.