An economic calendar is a chart or schedule of past, present and future key figures, economic sets, and data releases from various countries around the world that reflect economic conditions. It will have data and information on various aspects of economic activity including job employment rate, Interest rates, Retail Sales, GDP, CPI, PPI and a mix of important and other not-so-important indicators.
Information in Economic Calendars
Economic calendars will contain many things for traders and investors to research. Some of the more important information traders will be looking for are the following:
Consensus: Most calendars will show the name of the release, which country is releasing the data, implied volatility and also a consensus or predicted number for each release. The figures are important because missing or beating the consensus can have a high impact on market price. Often, there will be a colour coding where a beat of the actual figure will show in green text and a miss will show in red text for example.