News events and automated trading

A scheduled release can produce fast price movement, spread widening, gaps, rejected requests, and fills far from the requested price. The direction of the first move is not the only risk; the path to the fill and the behaviour of the stop matter as well.

Some strategies are designed to trade these conditions. Others are not. Do not assume that a session filter or a historical timestamp fully captures the live liquidity conditions around an announcement.

Decide whether the system may open new positions before, during, or after a release. If it must pause, define the calendar source, timezone, blackout window, and behaviour for positions that are already open. A manual rule that is not represented in the configuration will eventually be applied inconsistently.

Separate ordinary-session results from event-window results. If the strategy only appears profitable because of a few news candles, that concentration deserves special scrutiny. If news is excluded from the test but present in live execution, the comparison is not like-for-like.

There is no universal answer to whether automation should trade news. The right answer depends on the strategy, broker, account rules, execution quality, and evidence.