Read the News Drivers First

Every session starts the same way. Open the economic calendar. George uses two free tools every morning, Forex Factory and Financial Juice, and this scan sits inside his Pre-Flight Checklist. The rule is simple. Find the week’s yellow, orange, and red folder events before you touch a chart.

Not every folder carries the same weight. The yellow folders are mostly Fed speakers, and they love a microphone. George reads them for what they are… “a lot of FOMC guys talking, well they love to talk don’t they” (Nov 29, 2024). Then he moves straight to the events that matter.

Red and orange are the real events. CPI, non-farm payroll, PCE, FOMC, GDP. These are the releases that inject volatility into ES futures in a single candle. Grade the week by them and you already know which days demand caution and which give you room to trade the Battle Plan.

Knowing an event exists does not help you at 8:29 in the morning when you are locked into a trade and forget the release lands in one minute. So George makes it physical. He drops a vertical line on the chart at the exact time of each scheduled News Driver. FOMC minutes, a press conference, Powell speaking, a Trump appearance. The line stares back at him so he cannot forget.

The vertical line works for anything that can move the puck. A press conference. A political speech. Anything scheduled that jolts the tape.

In the live futures trading room, the reminders run constantly. A countdown timer ticks toward each release so nobody gets surprised… “make sure those are on your chart, or if you’re in my group we’ll have a countdown timer going and we will make sure we are aware of when those news drivers are released” (Dec 2, 2024). The Trade Buddy alert now fires ten minutes ahead of every release, so the warning reaches you even if your line drifts off screen.

George grades every day and every week on a danger scale. The top of that scale is Level 10 Trading. A Level 10 day is a maximum-caution environment where the calendar is loaded with market-moving risk. Powell through the end of the week. The day before non-farm payroll. Quad Witch OPEX stacked on top of a red-folder release. When the day earns a 10, you size down and tighten up.

Treat the grade as information. A good system still works on a Level 10 day, you just respect the danger… “starting from Powell through the end of the week, it is officially level 10 trading… but if you have a real good system, it’s not that difficult” (Dec 4, 2024). Some weeks the whole week earns the label. George reads the full picture and calls it out.

Between a green day and a Level 10 sits the caution day. PCE at the bottom of the hour, Chicago PMI fifteen minutes after the open, and the whole session becomes a careful one… “it is a caution day” (Feb 28, 2025). Grade honestly. The scale tells you how aggressively to trade before you ever see a setup. This is the same discipline behind Level 10 Trading Conditions.

Some events are so violent that the right trade is no trade. FOMC decision day. A major tech earnings report after the close. A scheduled political meeting. George posts no Battle Plan into those releases and treats the window around them as off-limits. It is a no-trade zone by time.

When do you step back in? George waits for the tape to settle before he trusts a level again… “we do not trade during those times, I do not trade until price action returns to orderly conduct” (Nov 15, 2022). Chaos ignores your Strong Levels. Let it burn out, then trade.

The biggest events can even delay the plan itself. When a giant like Nvidia reports after the close, George holds the Battle Plan until he sees how the market digests it… “it might delay me publishing the battle plan… we’ll see what the candle does and then go look at it with a fresh set of eyes” (May 20, 2026). Respect the big event. Sometimes staying flat is the position. That is FLAT as a TRADE, and it is the same judgment you build in Close Your Trading Platform.

George does not hide from every release. For select high-impact drivers like CPI and PPI, he goes live and trades the news candle on purpose. The difference is preparation. Before the number hits, he pre-maps the level he expects price to reach so he trades a plan instead of a reaction.

Timing is everything on a news candle. George goes live roughly fifteen minutes before the release so he is in position when it fires… “we will be live for the CPI candle… hit that notification bell and you’ll be alerted to when I go live, which is typically 15 minutes before the news driver” (Mar 10, 2025). Two data points on the same morning multiply the danger. When CPI and Powell land on the same day, George calls it what it is.

And some drivers never show up on a calendar. A tariff tweet lands with no warning and squeezes the market in seconds… George saw the risk of short covering building all week and warned about it, then watched it come true off a fake tariff tweet on April 7, 2025 (“who knew the catalyst was going to be a fake tariff tweet?”). Read the scheduled News Drivers, then stay ready for the unscheduled one. “Trump tweets at any moment, and so you need to be prepared for that” (Feb 10, 2025).

This only works as a routine you never skip. Reading News Drivers is the first move of the AM Briefing, ahead of levels, ahead of setups, ahead of everything. George even plans structurally squirrelly weeks in advance, mapping contract rollover, FOMC, and option expiration before they hit.

The habit compounds. When you hear the same warning day after day, you learn to feel the danger before it fires… George points to short-covering risk as the classic example, repeated in the AM Briefing until it lands. Green trading day or Level 10 day, the process is identical. Check the News Drivers first.

Reading the calendar costs you five minutes and saves you the worst trades of your year. That is the trade. This routine slots right beside your Sunday Chart Prep and your written trading plan. Do the prep. Grade the day. Trade what the calendar allows.