Event risk is a daily classification of how heavy today's scheduled news-event slate is, in three buckets: HIGH (Fed decisions, NFP, CPI — releases that move markets violently within the same minute), MEDIUM (a couple of medium-impact prints, no headline event), and LOW (clear calendar, no major releases). It's strictly a risk-management input, not a directional or momentum signal. A day with no scheduled events can still trend hard; a day with FOMC can chop sideways for two hours then move 1% in 90 seconds. Event risk only tells you which type of day you're walking into.
The read is computed from two inputs: the macro event slate for your trading region (high- and medium-impact releases scheduled today) and the sentiment skew across recently analysed news for the same category. The compute pairs them — a high-impact release with strong directional skew across overnight headlines is materially riskier than the same release into balanced commentary, because the market is more likely to spike on a confirming print.
Important — what this is NOT. This is not a 'hot market vs. cold market' read in the trader-vernacular sense, where 'hot' implies trending and 'cold' implies dead. HIGH event risk means caution, not opportunity. LOW event risk means clear conditions to trade your plan, not 'the market is dead, sit out'.
For the trader-vernacular hot/cold read — bars expanding, range stretching, clean trend — see the Market Activity card directly under the event-risk read on the briefing page. The two are deliberately separate signals: event risk asks 'how loaded is the news calendar?', activity asks 'is the market actually moving?'. A trader's a-grade day is the rare combination of LOW event risk and HOT activity — clear calendar, clean trending tape.
The three levels and what to do with them: - HIGH — two or more high-impact events scheduled, or one high-impact plus a strong sentiment skew (≥60% bullish or bearish). Spreads widen at release time, stops can be hit by a 30-second whipsaw and recover. Action: cut size before releases, or sit out the release window entirely. Trades placed inside an FOMC spike are rarely the trade you planned. - MEDIUM — mixed slate. A few medium-impact prints, no headline event, no overwhelming sentiment skew. Action: trade your normal plan at normal size with normal stops. This is the default day. - LOW — zero high-impact events, light medium-impact slate (≤1), no sentiment dominance. Conditions are dictated by price action and order flow, not by news. Action: trade your normal plan. Quiet calendar does NOT mean 'sit out' — it means 'the move you take is the move that's actually there in the chart, not a news-spike artefact.'
The confidence number next to the level tells you how strong the inputs are. Anything under 0.5 means "the read is leaning this way but the data is sparse — treat as a hint, not a verdict." 0.75+ means multiple drivers agree (e.g. event count + sentiment skew both pointing the same way).
Event risk is the first thing to check when you open the dashboard in the morning, before the chart and before the watchlist. The reason: position sizing on a HIGH event-risk day should look different from sizing on a LOW event-risk day. A trader with a real edge can still lose money money if they push full size into the FOMC release window — that's not bad strategy, that's bad timing relative to news risk.
In TradeOnyx the Event-Risk card sits at the top of the Briefing tab. It shows the level (HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW), a one-paragraph trader-language read, the drivers ("2× high-impact events · bearish skew 7/12"), and a confidence percentage. Tap Deeper AI read for an AI-generated paragraph that names the specific time windows to watch and one concrete thing to keep in mind for the day — useful when the drivers list is dense and you want a one-paragraph synthesis to copy into your briefing notes.
Use the read as a risk-multiplier, not as a setup signal. If your default risk per trade is 1%, a sensible default is: HIGH days = 0.5R or skip the release window, MEDIUM days = full 1R plan, LOW days = full 1R plan. Over a year that single rule keeps your worst drawdowns out of news-spike whipsaws — and concentrates your full size on the days where the trade is actually about your edge, not about who got faster fills during a CPI release.