# How to Stay Calm During High-Volatility News > High-impact news events are where most retail traders make their worst decisions. Here is a practical approach to managing both the market and your psychology during these periods. **Tags:** volatility, news-trading, trading-psychology, calm **URL:** https://traderjournal.app/trading-psychology/how-to-stay-calm-during-high-volatility-news --- # How to Stay Calm During High-Volatility News NFP, CPI, central bank rate decisions, and other high-impact news events create conditions that are fundamentally different from normal market operation. Spreads widen. Slippage increases. Price can move 50-100 pips in seconds. And the psychological pressure to do something - anything - in response to large, fast moves is intense. Most retail trading mistakes during news events are psychological failures, not analytical failures. --- ## Why News Events Are Psychologically Difficult During normal market conditions, price moves are gradual enough that you can observe, analyze, and decide deliberately. During a major news release, that deliberation window collapses to seconds. When price drops 80 pips in 30 seconds: - If you are short, you are immediately experiencing a large unrealized gain and the urge to close and bank it - If you are long, you are experiencing a rapidly deepening loss and the urge to close immediately to stop the damage - If you are flat, you are experiencing FOMO about the big move you are missing and the urge to enter immediately All three of these urges push toward poor decisions: premature profit-taking, panic closing, or late-entry chasing. --- ## The Two Rational Approaches to News Events **Approach 1: Do not trade news.** Have a pre-defined rule that you do not open new positions within 30 minutes of a scheduled high-impact news release, and you allow existing positions with appropriate stops to run without intervention. This is the simplest approach. It eliminates the psychological challenge by removing the decision-making pressure from the high-volatility window. **Approach 2: Trade news systematically with predefined rules.** If news trading is part of your strategy, define exact entry and exit rules before the event and execute them mechanically. What price levels trigger entry? What are your stop and target? These decisions must be made before the release, not during it. If you do not have predefined rules for news trading, approach 1 is the right choice. --- ## Managing Existing Positions Through News If you have positions open when a news event occurs: **Do not manually intervene unless price reaches your stop or target.** The instinct to "protect" a profitable position by closing early or "manage" a losing position by adding to it or moving the stop are both driven by emotional reaction to volatility. Let your orders work. The stop loss is already in the market. The take profit is already in the market. These orders are there precisely because you knew you would be in an emotional state if price moved strongly. --- ## Post-Event Review Every significant news event is worth a journal review. For any trade open during the event: - Did price hit your stop, hit your target, or are you still open? - Did you make any manual interventions during the event? If so, what triggered them and was the action rational or emotional? - What was your emotional state during the event? Over time, this review builds a record of how news events affect your specific strategies and psychology. You may find that certain events (CPI releases, for example) consistently cause you to make reactive mistakes, while others do not affect you. This is useful information for defining which events you trade through and which you avoid. --- Log your news event experiences in Trader Journal at android.traderjournal.app or ios.traderjournal.app.