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Which dates and news events are mandatory to be aware of?
I'm fairly new to trading futures and I only found decent success when I stopped focusing on news when I traded stocks. My question isn't about frivolous things like Trump's daily tweets but what dates or events should I consider absolutely imperative to be aware of? I've heard of people speaking about unemployment, FOMC(?) etc. Would someone school me on what is mandatory to be watching OTHER than charts or technicals? Should I be following the big S&P? The companies within and their earnings? Or in the grand scheme of things, is all of that irrelevant if the chart says otherwise?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Yes, FOMC is one most important. I use this news indicator, which import news event directly from forexfactory. This indicator is cool. You can set color of important to your liking. It has "high", "medium", and "low" as to how this news affects the market.
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The Econoday Calendar specifically for US markets news 2018 Economic Calendar
Be aware of the red dot "market moving indicator" events. Sometimes those have an effect and sometimes not, but if day trading and you see the order book for your product really thins out on the DOM then go flat.
There are of course some important news when one stays better at the sidelines...
But be aware of holidays and / or low volume days:
Then you may be trapped by bigger players
using the moment to dictate price(s).
I agree on Econoday -- I try to remember to check it every morning. There are others that can be helpful. I have sometimes found this one https://www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php to have a slightly different list (since it's for currency traders there are a lot of non-US stuff that won't matter to US equity index traders; look for USD as the currency.) The periodic, scheduled reports will be the same, but sometimes one or the other will not have something like a scheduled press conference or speech by the Fed chair or a Fed member, which sometimes can be important. But just check either or both in the morning. (If you're trading something besides ES, check whatever affects your market.)
I'm only looking for events that will happen during the time I will be trading, because they can disrupt the market if their outcomes are unexpected. Otherwise, I don't much care, on the principle that the chart will show their impact, if they have one.
Looking at the table @matthew28 posted, you can see that almost all the regularly scheduled events happen an hour before the regular ES open, except for the FOMC events, which are early afternoon. You absolutely cannot just rely "on the chart" for these FOMC events, because, sometimes, they trigger violent swings of several ES points that last for a minute or two, often first in one direction and then in the other, that will freak you out if you aren't ready for them, and which you will not have a warning about as to direction from the price action leading up to them. (Also, sometimes the markets will just be waiting for them and will be be kind of slow until they arrive. And, just to mess you up, sometimes nothing much happens when they do. )
Unless you enjoy a thrill and don't care much about your money, you may find it wise to just sit them out with no position. The others, for the most part, are not going to affect most ES traders unless they trade in the pre-open period -- which is the point: they are scheduled to not give the market a surprise before most traders are trading.
With any news event, I think the content of the event is of less value than the timing of it, because you are unlikely to really know what the rest of the traders will think of it or how they are positioned, so it's hard to know if "good" or "bad" news will be bullish, bearish or neutral. (There are some people who can do well trading based on news, which shows that no general rule is always right. )
I just realized something to add to the list: the rollover date of your contract.
This is not exactly "news," but it happens and you should be aware of it.
For instance, ES rolls the current (Sept. 2018) contract on 9/13/18, which is coming up in a week. (I woke up today to the fact that I didn't know when the current dates are.) The rollover date is not mandatory, but reflects the general practice of moving out of a soon-to-expire contract a little more than a week before expiration. The Sept. contract expires eight days later on 9/21/18.
During the day on 9/13 you can expect volume to start to shift out of the Sept contract and into the December, and steam will start to leave price moves. Sometime that day most people will switch over; I usually wait for volume in the next month's contract to exceed the current one. Over the next few days, if you haven't rolled, you may notice that price action gets more and more sluggish.
I notice that @JMoniker, the OP, is on TOS, which, if I remember right, automatically rolls their charts over unless you have specified an actual contract month code. (I think TOS uses a generic "/ES" code unless you specify the month, which will include "U" and the year for Sept.) But if you hold positions overnight, you will need to know to actually roll or close them. (Don't worry, your broker will close you before expiration if you forget .)
Platforms typically notify traders of a coming roll date, but it's another thing to know about.
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