Some days aren't like the others. An FOMC afternoon or a CPI morning can do a week's worth of moving in ten minutes, and a strategy built on quiet days usually has no business trading through one. The Event Day node knows when they are. It tells you whether today is one, whether you're inside a window around one, how many trading days away the next one is, and how long until the number drops.
- Takes
- Nothing. It reads the exchange calendar
- Gives
- Whether today is an event day or near one, the days to and since, and minutes to the release
- Reach for it
- A strategy should skip, or only trade, scheduled event days
How it works
Pick one or more events: FOMC (the Fed's rate decisions), CPI, NFP (the monthly jobs report), OPEX (monthly options expiration) and Roll (the quarterly futures roll). Choose several and the node treats a day holding any of them as an event day.
Days are trading days on the exchange calendar, so weekends and market holidays don't count, and on ES and NQ a day starts at the 18:00 open the evening before. An FOMC Wednesday begins on Tuesday night. An event that lands on a day the market is closed counts on the next trading day.
The Window widens the net: up to 5 trading days before each event day and up to 5 after. In window is true across that whole span. With both at 0, it's the same as Event day.
Where the dates come from
AlgoLift keeps its own event calendar. FOMC decision days come from the Federal Reserve's published meeting calendar, the two emergency actions of 2020 included. CPI and NFP are the Bureau of Labor Statistics' actual release dates, so the shutdown-delayed releases of late 2025 sit where they really happened. OPEX and Roll follow a convention: the third Friday of the month (the trading day before, if that Friday is a holiday), and the second Thursday of March, June, September and December. The node tells you when a kind you picked follows a convention, since one of those dates can be a day off.
The calendar covers 2017 through 2026 for every kind, with FOMC, OPEX and Roll running through 2027. A backtest outside the years your events cover is refused by name, rather than read as "no events happened".
Minutes to release uses the scheduled times: 14:00 for FOMC and 08:30 for CPI and NFP, New York time. It counts from each bar's close, goes negative once the release has passed, and is empty on any day without a timed release, OPEX and Roll included.
Example: sit out FOMC
You run a mean-reversion strategy on ES 15m, and the worst trades in its history cluster around Fed decisions: the day itself and the follow-through the day after.
Add an Event Day with FOMC selected and a Window of 0 days before, 1 after. Wire In window through a NOT node, then AND it with your signal through a Logic node into the Entry.
For a Wednesday decision, no new trades start from the session that opens Tuesday evening until Thursday's close. A trade already open when the window begins isn't touched: Event Day only gates entries, the way any condition does.
Settings
Outputs
Use something else when
When it doesn't behave
An OPEX or roll date looks a day off
Those two follow a convention rather than a published list, and the node says so under its settings. If one specific date matters to your result, check it against the chart: the strip along the top of the price panel shows exactly which days the run treated as event days.
A filter on Minutes to release blocks every normal day
Minutes to release is empty on days without a timed release, and a comparison against an empty value reads false. So "Minutes to release Greater Than 30" in an AND blocks every ordinary day too. Build the rule the other way round: describe the moment you want to avoid, then put it under a NOT, as in Going further.
My FOMC filter starts on Tuesday night
On futures it should. The session that opens at 18:00 on Tuesday belongs to Wednesday's trading day. If you only want to skip Wednesday's cash hours, AND Event day with a Time Window of 09:30 to 16:00 before the NOT.
Going further
"No entries in the 30 minutes before CPI" is three small nodes. Compare Minutes to release Less or Equal 30, and separately Greater Than 0, AND the two, and put the AND under a NOT before it reaches your entry. On a CPI morning the AND is true from the bar that closes at 08:00 until the release, so entries wait. On every other day both comparisons read false, the AND is false, and the NOT lets trades through. On stocks the 08:30 numbers come out before the 09:30 open, so Minutes to release is already negative when the session starts.
Days before and Days after can be swept; the events can't, because which days you skip is the idea itself. Be wary of a sweep that finds the perfect window around FOMC. There are eight scheduled decisions a year, and a handful of bad days can make any window look smart.
After a run, the chart shades the bars the engine treated as event days along the top of the price panel, so you can check the calendar against your trades.