Economic Calendar

If you’re bored and looking for action in the market...or you're figuring out when to rebalance your portfolio and plan trades, you’ll want to take a look at the economic calendar. While it’s no crystal ball for what will happen in the stock market, it can still be helpful. The economic calendar is a calendar of events (ones that we know will happen) that might affect the stock market, either a small part of it or the whole lot.

Why would you care about said calendar? Because events happen on a scheduled set of intervals. Quarterly reports are given at a set time, on a set date, n months from now, and when they are given, they usually engender a ton of trading. People carry different views of the report. They trade their shares. They rethink. And in all of this reconsideration, volume or liquidity is generated, making it usually relatively easy for investors to then get in and out of their positions.

For the most part, the economic calendar shows when a bunch of reports come out (financial and economic reports, like from the Fed and specific market sectors), and predictions of financial or economic events that might happen based on observation.

Take a look for yourself: economic calendars are on a ton of financial websites across the web, for free. Keep in mind though...everyone else (well, for the people who are paying attention) are looking at the economic calendar too. This might make it part tracker and part self-fulfilling prophecy. But that’s not the economic calendar’s doing...it’s just aggregating information, making it nice and accessible to all. Hurrah for free things on the internet.