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News & Economic Data

How to Avoid a News Spike

A news spike is one five-minute bar many times the day's usual size at a minute that was on the calendar days ahead: its direction is unknown, its time is known, and avoiding it means not being inside the minute rather than guessing the direction. This paper shows you the spike in five lines; the idea as a geyser with a timetable; the payrolls bar on the euro on 4 September 2026, 40.7 pips with a 9.6-pip wick on real bars; the week's spike minutes drawn on one map from the calendar; and the Calendar tab filtered to today's high-importance rows on your platform.

Difficulty
Advanced
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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A news spike in five lines

A news spike is one five-minute bar many times the day's usual size, at a minute that was on the calendar days ahead. Its direction is not known in advance; its time is, and that is the one thing about it a trader can use. Inside the bar an order does not get the price it was written at: a stop is run through in one tick and filled at the far end of the wick, where the wick is the part of the bar the price reached and came back from. So there are two ways not to be in it: no trade open across the minute, or a stop further away than the bar can reach. On 4 September 2026 the 15:30 bar on the euro against the dollar ran 40.7 pips, where a pip is the fourth decimal place of the price, on a day whose usual bar was 1.9.

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