What You Need To Trade The NFP

Where to Find NFP Data

NFP data is released on the first Friday of each month at 13:30 GMT by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics and can be found here:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls/

The only exception to this is when the first Friday of the month is a US holiday. In that case, the data would be released the day before on the Thursday.

Where Can I Observe the Data Release?

The data release is announced live on financial news channels such as CNBC and Bloomberg. However, for trading purposes, these are not as good as they are typically slightly delayed.

A better choice would be to find a good “squawkbox” or financial news wire service. These are paid-for services, but are extremely necessary for trading news releases. As the news hits the Reuters terminal of the news desk, they announce the data over the wires – this is much quicker than free news channels.

Traders in Banks all have access to a Bloomberg terminal where they receive the data immediately upon its release. If you have the £1,500 a month needed for a Bloomberg subscription, then that’s fine. If, however, like us, you feel that £1,500 is maybe a bit on the expensive side (!) then the absolute next best thing is the Metastock Xenith platform, which at just $100 (for basic setup) gives incredibly powerful analytics and real-time news releases on a low latency data feed, meaning that, depending upon your internet connection, you can receive the news release almost as fast as traders in Banks do.

Find the Metastock Xenith platform using the link below:

In trading, we often talk about having “an edge”, meaning a situation where the odds are slightly tipped in your favour. In terms of trading a news release such as NFP, having an extremely prompt news feed gives you a big edge.