How to journal and review your trades on FOMC days

The 2026 schedule, the stages of a meeting day, and how to review your trades around the decision.

Not financial advice. This page is educational information about how to prepare and review trades around scheduled events. It does not tell you what to buy or sell, it does not predict any market move, and trading leveraged products can lose more than you expect. Dates and times come from the official sources linked on the page and can change, so confirm them before you rely on them.

The US Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee, the FOMC, meets eight times a year, and each meeting ends with a decision that traders of dollar pairs, gold and indices watch closely. A meeting day is different from a data day. The calendar is known well in advance, the key moment is a statement and then a press conference, and the reaction can unfold in stages over several hours. This page covers the official 2026 meeting schedule, the parts of a meeting that matter for a trader's routine, and how to record your trades so you can review them later.

The 2026 schedule from the Fed

The Federal Reserve publishes the calendar on its own site. For 2026 it lists eight two-day meetings. The meetings marked with a Summary of Economic Projections, which contains the committee's published forecasts, are the March, June, September and December meetings.

Federal Reserve FOMC meeting calendars. The Fed states that minutes of regularly scheduled meetings are released three weeks after the policy decision. The decision is announced on the second day of each meeting.

The parts of a meeting day

• Day one is usually quiet for markets. The committee meets, and there is no announcement.
• Day two, the statement. The decision is published as a written statement, usually at 2:00 p.m. US Eastern time. Check the Fed's own release for the time on the day.
• The press conference. The Fed chair usually holds a press conference shortly after the statement. Markets can move on the statement and again on the questions and answers.
• Three weeks later, the minutes. They add detail on what was discussed and sometimes cause a smaller move.

Because the reaction comes in stages, a trader who closes everything after the statement may miss the later move, and a trader who holds through the press conference sits through two events. Neither choice is advised here. The useful thing is to know which one you chose.

Tag every trade near FOMC decisions

The first step is to be able to find those trades later. In the journal, give each trade you took close to the release a tag such as news: FOMC, and add a second tag for what you did: flat before, held through, entered after or faded the spike. Tags cost ten seconds and are the only way to compare news trades with ordinary ones afterwards. The tagging guide shows a simple scheme.

What to write in the notes

• Whether the trade was planned before the release or taken in reaction to it.
• Your size compared with a normal trade. Many traders find they trade bigger or smaller on event days without deciding to.
• The spread you saw when you entered. MetaTrader 5 history does not store the spread at the time of a trade, so a note or a screenshot is the only record.
• How you felt. A sentence is enough: calm, rushed, afraid to miss it.

Check slippage with the data you already have

AI Trading Journal records each closed position's stop loss and its exit price, and it keeps the last non-zero stop it found on the position's orders. For a trade that ended on its stop, the gap between the two numbers is a rough measure of slippage. If your stop was at 1.0850 and the exit price was 1.0842, the stop filled eight pips worse than planned. This only works when the stop was not moved after entry, so check the notes. For how stops show in history, see history comments sl, tp and so and stops level and freeze level.

Find the release in your broker's clock

MetaTrader 5 stamps deals in the broker's server time, and a journal built from that history shows the same clock. To find the trades around a release you have to turn the official time, usually given in Eastern, London or Tokyo time, into server time. The page on MT5 server time explains how to find your broker's offset, and the session times converter does the arithmetic. Check the conversion in the weeks when the United States and Europe change their clocks on different dates, because the usual gap between New York and London briefly changes.

A worked example (hypothetical)

A trader tags every trade opened or held between the statement and the end of the press conference with FOMC window. Over a year with eight meetings there are 14 such trades. Six won, eight lost. The six wins total +$540 and the eight losses total -$610, so the window result is -$70, an average of -$5 per trade. Fourteen trades is a tiny sample and the result is basically flat. What the trader learns is less about the number than about the pattern: nine of the fourteen trades were entered within five minutes of the statement, and seven of those nine were stopped out. That gives a specific habit to examine, not a verdict on FOMC days.

Planning around a meeting

• Put the meeting dates in your calendar at the start of the year, using the Fed's own list.
• Convert the statement time to your broker's server time ahead of the day.
• Decide in writing whether you will hold, flatten or trade the reaction, and what your risk limit is.
• Write down what you expect to feel. It is easier to notice the urge to chase a move when you have named it first.
• After the press conference, wait before the next trade and write one note on how the window went.

Counting meeting days in your results

AI Trading Journal reads your closed trades from MetaTrader 5 and shows a P&L calendar where each day is a coloured tile with its result and trade count, and weekly and monthly totals. Mark the meeting days in your notes and the calendar helps you see whether they cluster with your better or worse days. The app does not know the Fed's schedule, so the dates come from the official calendar above and the tags come from you. It never places or changes trades.

Limits

• This page does not forecast what the Fed will decide or how markets will react.
• The schedule is taken from the Federal Reserve's published calendar at the time of writing and can change.
• Statement and press-conference times can vary, so check the Fed's own release on the day.
• Nothing here is trading or investment advice.

See also GDP and PCE release days for the data that sits between meetings.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• A local trading journal for MT5
• P&L calendar for MT5
• Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
• Trading progress and goals
• Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
• An offline trading journal for Windows
• How to set monthly trading goals
• Import your whole MT5 history
• How to tag trades
• Trade screenshots for your journal
• All trading journal comparisons