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The Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) data is often the most volatile economic data release of the month, usually occurring on the first Friday of each month. This month's data will be released one day earlier, at 0830 ET on Thursday July 3, 2008, due to Friday being the fourth of July. For those not familiar with NFP, it records the change in employment during the previous month(excluding the farming industry). It is highly watched, due to it being released so soon after the end of the month and due to it being considered a leading indicator of consumer spending. If you trade short term, especially forex, watch out on Thursday. The markets preceding the release are often (not always) contained in a narrow range, with reduced volume, and then massively exploding at release time. Consider standing aside, or tightening up stops (as per your trading plan). For those of you who haven't seen NFP before, I'll see if I can film it for you. I use a number of sites for basic fundamentals, but the most simple one for economic data is the forex factory calendar at http://www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php. It provides a very useful indicator of 'expected' volatility via yellow, orange or red flags. Here's an example I just grabbed from April this year, GBP/USD 5 minute chart: 
Lance Beggs Trading Website: www.YourTradingCoach.com Trading Blog: www.YourTradingCoach.blogspot.com YouTube Videos: http://www.youtube.com/YourTradingCoach 'Because You'd Rather Be Trading For A Living...'
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