Economic and political events impact financial markets differently but are generally interpreted as discouraging or encouraging for investors. Financial traders, both technical and fundamental, track economic events globally with potential impacts on the markets. This makes an economic calendar crucial to investors looking to track market changes in the future. Most brokers and trading platforms today provide dedicated news hubs that deliver live news updates to traders. Beyond these are platforms like MetaTrader 5 that offer an economic calendar for traders, investors, and anyone looking to make critical financial decisions.
Introduction to MetaTrader 5 (MT5)
MetaTrader 5 is a third-party trading platform that offers broker integration for traders across all financial markets; forex, crypto, stocks, futures, and binary traders use MT5 extensively. MT5 is popular for advanced trading tools, charts, and features that provide traders with a rich trading experience. With over 16 million users, MT5 serves a diverse community of traders through features that allow monitoring live price data and placing trades.
MT5 Economic Calendar
The MT5’s economic calendar is a built-in feature that lets traders view upcoming economic events that can affect the market. The economic calendar is based on Tradays’, which tracks financial news and macroeconomic indicators across significant economies such as the US, UK, Eurozone, Asia, and Canada.
Tradays collects over 900 economic indicators and delivers news in real-time for traders. The MT5 economic calendar displays historical economic news data alongside current updates and forecasts to provide traders with enough data for fundamental analysis. The economic calendar is delivered in nine languages, improving accessibility for a diverse range of traders.
How To Add Economic Calendar to Charts on MetaTrader 5
The MT5 economic calendar is available on any device, whether desktop, smartphone, or tablet. The calendar feature is accessible from the side menu option on smartphones and the lower menu tab on the desktop web/trader platform. Here’s how to add the economic calendar on various platforms:
On the MT5 Web Trading Terminal
- Log in to the trading area and load a chart.
- Locate the calendar icon on the top menu bar and click on it.
- The chart automatically loads the economic calendar, displaying small flags of various countries on the period.
- Click on each flag to see the expected news, announcements, and events for the period. For example, click on the US flag at 11:00 am to see all expected news for the next two hours.
You can also locate an expanded version of the Tradays economic calendar:
- Click the left-side menu bar.
- Locate and click on “Economic Calendar.”
- Click “Tradays Website” from the list that pops out.
On the MT5 Mobile App
- Download the MT5 app and log in to your account.
- Locate the main menu button from the top left corner.
- Click on “Economic Calendar.”
- The app will open the App Store or Google Play store (depending on your device) and download a calendar app by Tradays.
- Install the app and access the economic calendar.
Staying Informed With the Economic Calendar
You can remain abreast of live market news from the MT5 economic calendar by filtering the events by Priority, Currency, and Country. When you filter events by priority, only the most urgent economic events are delivered and arranged in order of decreasing impact. Filtering by currency ensures that your calendar feed only shows the events that affect the selected currency or currencies. Finally, the country filter only shows country-specific news, not regional or global events.
Other customizable features include the data range, from weekly to monthly, and whether to display the calendar on the charts or in a new window. This allows you to customize your charts and economic calendar and use tools such as technical indicators for analyzing market news as they are dropped.
Making Financial Decisions With the Economic Calendar
Financial markets experience low or high volatility before and after economic news releases. For instance, the US Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) is released on the first Friday of each month and impacts the trading day, typically moving the market bearishly or bullishly. Therefore, you must understand how the market responds to news and affects the supply and demand of a currency pair, stock shares, etc.
Another example is the monetary policy rate announced by the Central Bank of India.
MT5’s economic calendar also provides investors with a valuable tool for tracking changes to important events affecting their investments. Before buying stock or going into REITs, for example, you can easily check the historical impact of the related economic events on shares and housing news and forecast how future news will impact your investment. Counting the costs early puts you in a better position to make informed decisions about investing.
Finally, the economic calendar helps traders to plan their trades, choose their trading days, and maximize their time. If this is you, leveraging the MT5 economic calendar is a great way to stay informed about financial decisions.
MetaTrader 5 offers financial market investors/traders a powerful third-party trading platform with dedicated advanced features that help traders become better. The economic calendar shows an organized reminder of upcoming announcements to watch. The MT5 economic calendar can be embedded on third-party platforms to display real-time news and data worldwide.
