Keep new gold trades out of high-impact news with the news filter

The VIP group posts a gold buy, your bot takes it, and a few minutes later a high-impact release lands. Gold spikes straight through your SL, and because a triggered stop fills at the next available price, you can be closed a few points beyond where you set it.

You can't stop the spike. What you can do is stop a fresh trade being opened right in front of it.

How the news filter works on a signal group

Every signal group has its own news filter. To find it, tap Signals in the bottom bar (or More, then Signal Groups), swipe to the group's card and tap Edit. The settings open as Signal settings, and the filter is listed there as Pause around high-impact news.

When it's on, the group won't accept new signals for a set number of minutes either side of a high-impact economic event for that pair's currencies. You choose how many minutes before the event it stops, and how many minutes after it starts again. It is off by default. When you switch it on, it starts at 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after, and you can change both.

A signal that arrives inside that window is skipped. It is not saved up to place later. You can check this in the group's Feed (the speech-bubble icon on its card), where the skipped signal shows "news" as the reason. The news filter also appears in the card's conditions view among the things that can stop a trade, so you can see when it is holding the group back.

What it does not do:

• It never closes or changes a trade that is already open.
• It doesn't turn the group off. The group stays on Trade signals and trades as normal outside the window.
• It only covers the group you set it on. Each group has its own setting, so a group without it switched on will still trade through the news.

The same idea on an automation

Automations you add from the Automation Rankings have their own version, called News blackout. It is optional and off unless you switch it on. It pauses the automation for 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes before and after high-impact news. You choose it after tapping Use this strategy, and you can change it later from Edit on the automation's card.

News blackout is an extra you add on top of the tested strategy. That means your copy can skip a trade the leaderboard's test account took. That is the blackout working, not a fault.

The limits worth knowing

Trades already open ride through the news. The filter only blocks new signals. Say a trade opened 40 minutes before a release and your window is 30 minutes. That trade is still open when the number drops, protected only by its own SL. If gold jumps past the stop, it fills at the next price the market offers, exactly as it would without the filter. If you want nothing open during a release, that decision is yours to make by hand before the window starts.

Loss limits behave differently around news. If you use Equity Protection, its loss limit starts its close further ahead than usual around scheduled high-impact news for a pair you trade (from 5 minutes before the release to 15 minutes after). It lands inside your figure more often, and sometimes noticeably early. A Profit Lock is not changed. When the market gaps past a figure in one move, the close fills at the next price, just like a stop loss, and no limit can prevent that.

The filter only knows about high-impact events. Medium and low-impact releases don't trigger it. To see what's coming, check the news markers along the bottom of the chart. A red bell means high impact, and it pulses from 10 minutes before the event. The Calendar tab in the Newsroom lists upcoming releases, and you can filter it by impact, country and event type.