A financial calendar (also referred to as an economic calendar) is used by traders, shareholders and the media alike, in order to track the important events of the economy. The majority of the time, this is to check for market-moving events, such as monthly jobless claims, factory orders and debt auctions which are all found in the economic calendar. Several high-profile sites and forex brokers are publishing release dates for forthcoming economic reports each week.

It is a creation of economists who forecast economic statistics and values according to previous month’s historical data. Upcoming economic figures are predicted before they are announced and once announced the figures are compared to the consensus forecast. In the economic calendar, each events announcement has an importance factor. The market will be more volatile immediately after the news release if the data has higher importance.

Data releases are categorized into low, medium and high impact. Low and medium impact data may cause a few wiggles in the price but shouldn’t disrupt trading much. High impact data releases are noteworthy and do affecting my trading practices. When a high impact data release is coming out you shouldn’t have any orders to enter positions near the current price. The reason is that price can become very erratic once the data is released, and it is gambling to jump into a trade right as data is coming out.

Macroeconomic indicators are important economic reports published at fixed time interval that illustrate the detail of a country's economic performance whether it has improved or reduced. Some lists of macroeconomic indicators that have most significant impacts on the market and as well always available in the calendar are: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross National Product (GNP), Non-farm Payrolls / Employment rate, Inflation report, Trade balance, Housing Data etc.

The market expectation of an indicator is also a significant thing in economic calendar. When certain new information is announced then it will has a large impact on the market only if it is different than expected. In particular, the economic data regarding US indicators tends to have the greatest impact on market as the US dollar is involved in 80% of all forex trades. As a result, a trader must be ready to react to when a figure is published. Therefore, traders should take into account the upcoming economic news announcements and analyze how they could affect his trades.