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Economic calendar
Data releases are the scheduled part of volatility. Almost every one lands at a fixed local time, which means that once you know the hour, you know when the day is likely to get loud.
The calendar below shows its times in your device's timezone, so no conversion is needed. Filter by importance to strip out the noise.
The hours that matter
Releases are not spread evenly through the day. They bunch into a handful of slots, and those slots are what turn a quiet session into a fast one.
- 08:30 New York time. The single busiest slot in the calendar. US inflation, payrolls, jobless claims and GDP all print here — a full hour before the NYSE opening bell at 09:30, which is why the cash open so often gaps.
- 10:00 New York time. The second wave: consumer confidence, ISM surveys, existing home sales. This one lands with the US equity market already open.
- 14:15 and 14:45 in Frankfurt. ECB rate decision, then the press conference. The decision moves the euro; the press conference moves it further, and often in the opposite direction.
- 12:00 in London. The Bank of England announces at noon on decision Thursdays, in the middle of the London session and before New York arrives.
Matching a release to a session
A number released while its home market is shut behaves differently from one released mid-session. Japanese data printing at 08:50 Tokyo time lands ten minutes before the Tokyo Stock Exchange opens, so the reaction shows up in the yen first and in equities only at the bell. US data at 08:30 ET hits a currency market that is wide open and an equity market that is not.
If you want to see which sessions are live when a release drops, the world clock shows all of them at once, and the hours guide lists the exact open and close of every exchange.
One caveat
Scheduled times are reliable; scheduled impact is not. A minor survey can move more than a headline release if it contradicts what the market already believes. Treat the importance rating as a prior, not a promise.
The recurring releases worth diarising
Most of the calendar is filler. A short list of releases accounts for the large majority of scheduled volatility, and each one keeps to a fixed slot.
| Release | When | Local time | Session it lands in |
|---|---|---|---|
| US non-farm payrolls | First Friday | 08:30 New York | London open, NYSE pre-market |
| US CPI inflation | Mid-month | 08:30 New York | London open, NYSE pre-market |
| FOMC rate decision | 8 times a year | 14:00 New York | NYSE afternoon, London closed |
| ECB rate decision | 8 times a year | 14:15 Frankfurt | Europe open, New York pre-market |
| Bank of England | 8 times a year | 12:00 London | London midday |
| Japan CPI / Tankan | Monthly / quarterly | 08:50 Tokyo | 10 minutes before the JPX bell |
Notice the pattern in the last column. The two most important American releases both land while the New York stock exchange is still shut but the currency and futures markets are wide open. That hour between the number and the bell is where the day's direction is usually decided.
Revisions, and why the first number lies
Headline figures are estimates built from incomplete samples, and most are revised later — sometimes substantially. US payrolls routinely move by tens of thousands of jobs in the following month's revision, quietly, with none of the attention the original number received.
This matters for reading the calendar: the entry marked high-impact is high-impact because of the reaction it provokes, not because the number is precise. A release that comes in close to expectations often produces more movement than a wild one, if the wild one is dismissed as noise likely to be revised away.
For the exchange schedules behind that last column, see the trading hours guide.