News filter

This feature is added at the copier level. It reads the same data as the Economic calendar.

The News filter stops new positions from being copied on a symbol while a calendar event that affects that symbol is inside its blackout window. Spikes around a release are where slippage, widened spreads and requotes live, and a copied entry into that spike rarely matches the master's fill.

The filter never blocks a close. Closes, partial closes and exits are always copied, so the slave is never left holding a position the master has already exited.

How it works

1. The copier knows which currencies a symbol depends on. EURUSD depends on EUR and USD, XAUUSD on USD, and you can override this with your own symbol mappings.

2. From the calendar, every event that matches your event selection and touches one of those currencies is turned into a blackout window: blackout before minutes ahead of the release until blackout after minutes past it.

3. While a symbol is inside such a window, new opens on that symbol are skipped and, if enabled, written to the log.

4. Outside the window the copier behaves exactly as it does without the feature.

Event selection

Both news features share the same event selection block.

• Minimum impact: High, Medium, Low or Holiday. High only is the usual choice, everything else quickly blocks most of the trading day.

• Include global events: Events without a currency (OPEC, G20, geopolitics) apply to every symbol. Enabled by default.

• Include bank holidays: Treats bank holidays as events. Off by default, holidays are handled separately, see below.

• Category blacklist: Event categories to ignore. Bond auctions (bnd) are ignored by default because they are noise for a trade copier.

• Currency whitelist: If set, only these currencies count. Empty means the currencies are derived from the symbol, which is what you normally want.

• Event title blacklist / whitelist: Case insensitive title fragments, one per line. A whitelist is the sharpest tool available here: filling it with Non-Farm, CPI and Rate Decision reduces the filter to the three releases that actually matter to you.

• Symbol mappings: Manual pattern = currencies overrides, evaluated top to bottom, for instruments whose name does not reveal its currencies, for example US30 = USD.

Settings

• Blackout before / after (minutes): The window around the release. Maximum 240 minutes on each side. Longer windows are indistinguishable from switching the copier off.

• Skip market orders: Market opens are skipped during the window. Enabled by default.

• Skip pending orders: Pending orders (limit, stop) are skipped as well. Off by default, since a pending order placed before the window is usually intentional.

• Block modifications: Stop loss and take profit changes are blocked during the window. Off by default.

• Log skipped trades: Writes every skipped copy to the account log with the symbol, the event and the remaining window.

Bank holidays

Liquidity on a bank holiday is thin, and thin liquidity turns an ordinary trade size into an outsized risk.

• Enable holiday mode: Turns on the holiday handling.

• Holiday countries: ISO-2 country codes whose holidays count. Empty means the countries are derived from the traded currencies.

• Holiday action: Reduce size (default), Skip new opens or None.

• Size factor: The percentage of the normal lot size used when the action is Reduce size. Default 50 %.

Warnings

The filter can tell you before it acts, through the notification channels of the project.

• Warn before (minutes): One warning per entry, for example 360 and 60 for a six hour and a one hour heads-up. Empty disables the warnings.

• Warn only if exposed: Stay silent when nothing is open on the affected symbols. Enabled by default, otherwise a busy calendar produces a lot of irrelevant messages.

• Daily agenda: One digest per day at a fixed UTC time instead of many single warnings.

• Notification targets: Where the warnings go. Empty means every notification channel of the project.

Warnings created by this feature also appear under Pending alerts in the Economic calendar.

Per-symbol configuration

You can define a different configuration for individual symbols, for example a 30 minute window on XAUUSD and 15 minutes everywhere else.

A per-symbol entry replaces the whole configuration for that symbol, it does not merge field by field. Set every value you want that symbol to use.

Notes

• The filter applies to opens. It does not close anything. If you want existing positions protected, add News protection on the account.

• A skipped open is not caught up later. The trade idea is gone, exactly as it would be with any other filter.