NFP announcement is coming up this Friday, are you ready?

Fundamental trading is one half of the trading equation and this week we are approaching one of the most volatile economic events of the month, the NFP report announcement. If you are primarily a technical trader you may not be so familiar with what this announcement entails or how to prepare for it, so today we will look at why this economic event is of importance and how to take advantage of the massive volatility as traders.

If you are planning to take advantage of the incoming volatility that this announcement is likely cause you are going to need a regulated broker with very small fixed spreads so as to reduce the cost of entering a trade and reduce your chances of losses. To find such a broker I recommend you look using WikiFx. This app is your number one broker research tool as it shows you a list of all the regulated brokers globally. They also show you which brokers are known scammers so you can avoid them and keep your money safe. So for any broker-related inquiry you may have, always protect yourself and use WikiFx.

What is the NFP Report？

Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) report refer to the monthly announcement which releases the data of 80% of the US workforce which is employed under manufacturing construction and goods. As the name suggests, this only features data from the US workforce that is not involved in agriculture/farming. This announcement is made on the first Friday of every single month at 8:30 New York time.

This report is one of the most volatile economic events for the US dollar as the implications of this announcement affect the economic outlook of the country. The US dollar is among the most powerful currencies across the world as it has the most traded volume. As the most lucrative currency pairs feature the US dollar, e.g EURUSD GBPUSD this announcement is bound to cause volatility across the market.

How to trade NFP

If the report is positive one should be long on the USD and if it is negative, one should go short. This announcement is known for causing a massive uptick or windfall of pips in a space of 5 to 10 minutes on the USD currency pair. You can expect upwards of sixty to eighty pips volatility and it is this massive volatility that can either earn a trader massive profits or losses in a space of minutes.

We want to make sure that we find pairs with the lowest cost of entry so I suggest you trade only the major pairs when trading NFP. Ensure that the trades you enter are protected with a stop loss and that any trade which you have open when the announcement is made is fully protected with a stop loss as your trades may turn against you pretty quickly. Enter only one to two trades at the start of the announcement, entering whilst the announcement is possible but you may get whiplashed with volatility, and if you are over risking you can lose your account in a matter of minutes. Do not be greedy, take profits once you have gained a good number of pips as the massive volatility may still turn against you and stop you out.