Plain-language explanations of the numbers and terms used across Noir Måne — what they mean, why traders watch them, and how to read them without the jargon. This page assumes no prior background; if a term shows up elsewhere on the site, it's explained here.
An economic calendar lists scheduled releases of official data — employment figures, inflation reports, GDP, central bank decisions — at the date and time each one is due. Every entry carries a few consistent fields, and knowing what each one means is most of what you need to use a calendar well.
Impact level is a rough measure of how much a release historically moves markets. High-impact events (interest rate decisions, NFP, CPI) tend to produce the sharpest short-term price reactions; low-impact events (minor regional surveys, secondary revisions) usually pass with little notice. Impact is a historical tendency, not a guarantee — a normally low-impact release can matter a lot if it lands during an unusual news cycle.
Forecast is the median estimate from a poll of economists ahead of the release. Previous is the figure from the prior period, sometimes revised from what was originally reported. Actual is the real number once it's published.
Markets react to the gap between actual and forecast far more than to the actual figure in isolation — a number that misses expectations can move a currency sharply even if it's still a historically decent reading, because the forecast was already priced in before the release.
0.3% and actual comes in at 0.6%, that's a "beat" — often (though not always) read as a stronger economy and, depending on the indicator, can support the currency. A miss (actual below forecast) tends to work the other way.
Noir Måne's calendar merges four independent sources (ForexFactory, Trading Economics, Financial Modeling Prep and FRED) so that a gap in one provider's data doesn't leave a release un-tracked — see the live calendar for what's scheduled next.
Non-Farm Payrolls is a monthly US employment report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost always on the first Friday of the month at 8:30am US Eastern time. It counts the net change in paid employment across the economy, excluding farm workers, private household employees, and a handful of other categories — hence "non-farm."
It's one of the most closely watched releases in forex specifically because employment is a leading indicator the Federal Reserve weighs heavily when setting interest rates. A run of strong payroll growth can shift expectations toward a more hawkish (rate-hike-leaning) Fed; a weak report can do the opposite. Since interest rate expectations are a major driver of currency strength, NFP surprises often produce some of the sharpest single-day moves in USD pairs all month.
The headline payrolls number usually isn't read alone. Two companion figures matter almost as much:
Prior months' figures are also revised at every release, and a large revision to the previous reading can move markets almost as much as the new headline number — it's worth checking both.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks the average change in prices paid by consumers for a fixed basket of goods and services over time. It's published monthly and is the most widely cited inflation gauge worldwide, even though it isn't the only one.
Headline CPI includes everything in the basket. Core CPI strips out food and energy prices, which swing for reasons — weather, geopolitics, seasonal demand — that often have little to do with underlying inflation trends. Central banks generally pay closer attention to core readings for that reason, even though headline CPI is what most people feel day to day.
Most major central banks target inflation around 2% per year. When CPI runs persistently above target, it raises the odds of interest rate hikes (or fewer/slower cuts); when it runs below target, the reverse. That's why a CPI release that beats or misses forecast can move currency markets almost as sharply as a rate decision itself — it's effectively new information about what the central bank is likely to do next.
In the US specifically, the Federal Reserve has said it weighs the PCE Price Index (Personal Consumption Expenditures) — a separate, related measure published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis — slightly more heavily than CPI in its own policy decisions, because PCE adjusts its basket more frequently as consumer habits shift. Noir Måne's calendar tracks both.
A central bank's policy rate is the interest rate it charges commercial banks (or pays them, in some cases) for very short-term lending. It's the single lever central banks use most to influence borrowing costs, spending, and inflation across the whole economy.
Higher rates tend to attract foreign capital seeking a better return, which increases demand for that currency and can push it stronger — this is the basic logic behind carry trades, where funds are borrowed in a low-rate currency and invested in a higher-rate one. Lower rates tend to work in the opposite direction.
In practice, the rate decision itself is rarely a surprise — markets usually price in the widely expected outcome well ahead of time through futures pricing. What actually moves currencies on decision day is more often the tone: the accompanying statement, press conference, and any updated economic projections.
Noir Måne's Central Bank Rates panel shows the current policy rate for major central banks, sourced live from FRED (the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
A currency is always quoted against another — you can't buy or sell a currency in isolation, only in exchange for a different one. EUR/USD means euros priced in US dollars: the first currency listed (EUR) is the base, the second (USD) is the quote. A price of 1.1750 means one euro buys 1.1750 US dollars.
A pip (percentage in point) is the standard unit for measuring a price move in forex — for most pairs, the fourth decimal place (0.0001); for pairs involving the Japanese yen, the second decimal place (0.01), since yen prices are quoted with fewer decimals to begin with.
1.1750 to 1.1765 is a move of 15 pips. USD/JPY moving from 151.20 to 151.45 is a move of 25 pips.
The money value of a pip depends on the size of the position — measured in lots. A standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency; a mini lot is 10,000; a micro lot is 1,000. On a standard lot of most USD-quoted pairs, one pip is worth approximately $10; on a micro lot, about $0.10. Because that value scales directly with position size, it's the basis for the position-sizing math in Noir Måne's Risk Calculator, which converts a chosen dollar risk into a specific position size given your entry and stop-loss.
The Commitment of Traders (COT) report is published weekly by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and breaks down open futures positions by trader category — commercial hedgers, large speculators, and small traders — for currencies, metals, and other futures markets.
For forex, the figure most commonly watched is the net position of large speculators: the difference between their long and short contracts. A large net-long position means speculative money is broadly betting on that currency (or asset) to rise; net-short means the opposite.
Positioning data is a sentiment gauge, not a price predictor. Two things it's used for in practice:
Because it's a weekly report covering data through the preceding Tuesday, it's always a few days old by the time it's published — useful for gauging medium-term sentiment, not for timing an entry. Noir Måne's Positioning panel pulls this directly from the CFTC's public data feed, with the week-over-week change alongside each reading.
Support is a price level where an asset has previously found buying interest strong enough to stop or reverse a decline. Resistance is the mirror image — a level where selling interest has previously capped an advance. Neither is a hard floor or ceiling; they're zones where price has reacted before, which traders watch because it sometimes reacts similarly again.
Pivot points are one standard, purely mechanical way to calculate reference support and resistance levels from a recent price range, without any subjective chart-reading involved. The classic formula uses the recent high, low, and close:
These levels don't predict anything on their own — they're landmarks, not signals. Price crossing a pivot level cleanly is sometimes read as a shift in short-term bias; price repeatedly failing to break through one is sometimes read as the level holding. Noir Måne's Technical Read calculates this same formula for each major pair from recent price action, labelled clearly as reference levels rather than entry or exit instructions.
Position sizing is the process of deciding how large a trade to take, and it's arguably more consequential to long-run outcomes than which direction you trade. Two traders can have the same win rate and the same average win/loss ratio and end up with completely different results purely because they sized their positions differently.
A common approach is to risk a fixed, small percentage of total account equity on any single trade — often somewhere in the 0.5%–2% range — rather than a fixed dollar amount or, worse, an arbitrary lot size picked by feel. Position size is then a function of three things: account risk, the distance between entry and stop-loss, and the pip (or point) value of the instrument being traded.
An R-multiple expresses a trade's result as a multiple of what was risked, rather than in raw currency. A trade that risked $100 and made $250 is a +2.5R result; one that hit its stop is -1R, by definition. Tracking results in R makes performance comparable across trades of different sizes and different instruments — a $50 win on a small position and a $500 win on a large one can represent the exact same underlying edge if both were 2R. This is the basis for the R-multiple field in Noir Måne's Journal, and for its equity curve, which plots cumulative R rather than raw account balance.