Guide3 min read
What is red folder news? A guide for prop traders
Red folder news is the high-impact data that moves the market fastest and triggers most prop firm news rules. Here is what counts, when it lands and how to plan around it.
Open the Forex Factory calendar and every event carries a small folder icon. Yellow means low impact, orange means medium and red means high. Traders call the high-impact releases "red folder news". These are the events most likely to move price hard in a few seconds, and they are the events almost every prop firm builds its news rule around.
If you trade a funded account, red folder news is not just something to watch. It decides when you are allowed to open and close trades.
Which releases are red folder news?
The calendar changes from week to week, but the same names come back every month:
- CPI (Consumer Price Index), the main inflation number for each economy.
- NFP (Non-Farm Payrolls), the US jobs report, usually on the first Friday of the month.
- FOMC rate decisions and the press conference from the US Federal Reserve.
- Rate decisions from the other central banks: ECB, BoE, BoJ, RBA, BoC, SNB and RBNZ.
- GDP, retail sales and PMI releases for the major economies.
- Speeches by central bank chairs, which can move the market as much as any data release.
What happens to price when it lands
In the seconds around a red folder release, liquidity thins out. Spreads widen, price can jump several points at once and stop losses can fill far from where you placed them. A move that normally takes an hour can happen in one candle.
That is why prop firms treat these minutes differently. The firm carries the risk of those jumps, so many firms restrict opening or closing trades for a short window before and after each high-impact release.
Why it matters on a funded account
The cost of trading inside a news window depends on your firm and your account type. On many accounts the profit from that trade is removed before your payout is calculated. On stricter accounts the payout request is refused, or the account is closed.
Most of these trades are not planned. A clean setup forms, you take it, and only afterwards you see that US CPI was two minutes away. Weeks of careful trading can be undone by one click.
News only hits the currencies in the release
A red folder event is tied to one currency. US CPI moves USD pairs, gold (XAU/USD) and US indices like NAS100. UK CPI moves GBP pairs. A pair with two currencies, like GBP/JPY, is exposed to red folder news from both of them. So the question is never just "is there news today?" but "is there news for the pair I am about to trade?"
How to plan your trading day around it
- Check the week ahead on Sunday and note the red folder releases for the currencies you trade.
- Convert each release time to your own time zone. Calendars often show a different zone by default.
- Mark the days with several releases, such as NFP Friday or a central bank day, and trade lighter or wait.
- Before every entry, check how long you have until the next release for that pair.
Let a tool watch it for you
Doing all of this by hand before every trade is exactly where mistakes happen. The free QuarkFX Economic Calendar shows the week’s releases from Forex Factory and Myfxbook in your own time zone. Prop Firm News Shield goes one step further: it loads your prop firm’s news rule, follows the pair on your chart and counts down to the next restriction, so you know if it is safe to trade before you click.