> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.metacopier.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.metacopier.io/features/economic-calendar.md).

# Economic calendar

The **Economic calendar** shows the scheduled macroeconomic releases that move currencies, together with what the market expected and what was actually published. You find it inside a project, in the left-hand menu under **Economic calendar**.

{% hint style="info" %}
The calendar is part of your subscription. It unlocks as soon as at least one account is connected to the project, because it is a trading tool and not a public news page.
{% endhint %}

All times on the page are **UTC**, including the times shown in the event dialog. This is deliberate: brokers sit in different server time zones, and an event time that silently shifts is worse than no event time at all.

## The event table

| Column         | Meaning                                                                                                                  |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Time (UTC)** | Scheduled release time.                                                                                                  |
| **Impact**     | How strongly a release of this kind usually moves the market: High, Medium, Low or Holiday.                              |
| **Currency**   | The currency the release belongs to. Some events (OPEC meetings, G20, geopolitics) have no currency and count as global. |
| **Event**      | The name of the indicator.                                                                                               |
| **Actual**     | The number that was actually published. Empty until the release happens.                                                 |
| **Forecast**   | What analysts expected before the release.                                                                               |
| **Previous**   | The number from the previous release of the same indicator.                                                              |

Actual, Forecast and Previous are printed with their unit and scale, so `0.3 %`, `250K` or `1.2B` instead of a bare number. Where the source does not publish a unit, the plain number is shown.

Above the table you can filter by text, impact, currency and a date range. The search covers the event title, its description, the currency and the country code, so `unemploy`, `USD` and `US` all work.

## Insight cards

* **Next event:** The next scheduled release across your filters.
* **Surprise index (90d):** How the last 90 days of data compare with what was expected, per currency. Positive means the data has been beating forecasts. The direction is corrected, so rising unemployment counts as a miss rather than a beat.
* **Week ahead:** An impact weighted heat map of the next seven days. A high impact release counts three times a medium one, and the busiest cell of the week is the reference. It shows when the week is loaded, not how this week compares with other weeks.
* **Rate outlook:** The current policy rate and the next scheduled decision per currency. The rate comes from the last released decision in the calendar archive, for EUR from the ECB open data portal. The expected change is the market forecast, not ours.

## Event details

Clicking a row opens the event dialog:

* **Actual, Forecast and Previous** as three tiles, with a plain sentence underneath saying whether the release beat or missed the forecast and by how much.
* **Surprise** expressed in standard deviations (sigma), which tells you whether a miss was unusual for this indicator or business as usual.
* **Revisions:** Data providers correct published numbers. Every correction we have seen is listed with its timestamp.
* **Past releases:** The recent history of the same indicator, with a chart of the surprises around a zero line. Bars above the line are beats, bars below are misses. The chart appears only once there are at least three scored releases, because two bars say more about the scale than about the indicator.

## Reminders

* **Bell icon on a row:** Arms a single reminder for that one event. You pick the lead time in minutes and where it should be delivered.
* **Standing rules:** A rule arms every matching event automatically, so you do not click forty bells. A rule matches on minimum impact and currencies, can carry several lead times, and can additionally announce market headlines. Editing a rule drops the reminders its previous version had already created.
* **Pending alerts:** Everything that is armed and not yet sent, including your own bells, what the rules created, and the warnings of the News filter and News protection features.

Reminders are delivered through the notification channels of the project (Telegram, e-mail, webhook and so on). Leaving the target list empty sends them to every channel of the project.

Reminders belong to the **project**, not to the individual member. Everyone with access to the project sees the same rules and the same pending alerts.

## Calendar subscription

The **Calendar subscription** button creates an iCal (`.ics`) feed you can add to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. Each subscription carries its own filters (name, currencies, minimum impact, bank holidays), so you can keep one link for high impact USD only and another for everything.

* The link is shown **once**. Only a hash of it is stored, so a lost link cannot be recovered, it has to be revoked and created again.
* Anyone holding the link can read the feed. Treat it like a password and keep it out of shared calendars.
* The feed carries the last 7 and the next 60 days and allows 60 requests per hour, far more than a calendar app needs.
* Revoking a link stops the feed at once.

{% hint style="warning" %}
The feed is meant for your own calendar, not for redistribution.
{% endhint %}

## How current the data is

* The schedule is refreshed every 30 minutes.
* Published actuals are picked up every 10 minutes.
* Reminders are dispatched every minute.
* Bank holidays and the statistics behind the surprise index are rebuilt weekly.

Event titles and descriptions are restated in plain English automatically. They are a summary, not the wording of any particular data provider.

## Acting on events automatically

The calendar itself only informs. If you want your trading to react to it, use the two features that read the same calendar:

* [**News filter**](/features/pro-features/news-filter.md) on a copier, which skips new trades around an event.
* [**News protection**](/features/pro-features/news-protection.md) on an account, which closes affected positions before an event and can re-open them afterwards.