Do you want to keep track of the fundamentals? Try the FTMO News Indicator free for MetaTrader

Do you want to know when important data on inflation, interest rates, gross domestic product, or unemployment will be published? Is technical analysis your primary source of input, but you don't want to neglect the influence of fundamentals? The FTMO News Indicator is here for you, and you will no longer miss important macro data.

The vast majority of forex traders use technical analysis when entering positions. At the same time, however, those who take trading seriously must also have an overview of the fundamentals. These can have a quite significant influence on the price development of traded instruments.

At FTMO, we provide our clients with an economic calendar that clearly identifies important news that can impact the markets. However, at the same time for clients who trade on FTMO Accounts with a leverage of 1:100 (and therefore do not have a Swing account), certain restrictions apply on selected major news. This means that it is not allowed to open or close trades 2 minutes before or 2 minutes after the publication of these highlights.

These are mostly reports on gross domestic product, inflation , or the labour market (especially in the USA, where NFP is monitored), which then influence central bankers' decisions on interest rates. Unexpected readings on these important fundamental reports can then cause a significant increase in market volatility, widening spreads and possible slippages, which most Forex traders try to avoid at all costs. We have written about most of these important events and their impact on the markets as part of our series on our blog.

FTMO News Indicator for MetaTrader

However, some of FTMO's clients may for some reason be unable to follow the news and pay the price either by entering the market at the wrong time or by incurring higher losses due to rising volatility. For these clients we have developed our new MetaTrader 4 and 5 widgets as part of our efforts to continuously improve our services and customer support.

The main goal of the FTMO News Indicator app is to alert clients about the occurrence of all important market events directly in the MetaTrader 4 or 5 platform. Thanks to this application, traders will no longer miss important fundamentals that could negatively affect their trading. They can also avoid possible violations of FTMO rules on not trading macroeconomic news.

Installation

Similar to our other MetaTrader indicators, installing the News Indicator is quite easy. In the Client Area, under Downloads, download the .zip file (separately for MT 4 and 5), which contains the Experts folder.  In the MetaTrader window, open the File tab in the top menu and click Open Data Folder.

In the Explorer window, click on the MQL4 folder (MQL5 for MetaTrader 5).

In it, you need to navigate to the Experts folder, where you copy the folder named FTMO News Indicator.ex4 from the Experts folder from the downloaded .zip file.

For proper functionality, open the Tools tab in the top menu and click Options.

In the Expert Advisors window, check the Allow automated trading option and leave all options below that unchecked.

Also, check the Allow DLL imports and Allow WebRequest for listed URL options. In the window below this option, enter the address https://app.fftrader.cz.

Now restart MetaTrader or right-click Expert Advisors in the Navigator panel and select Refresh.

Once the indicator is running, check the Common tab to make sure you have DLL import enabled and the EA is allowed to trade.

In the Inputs tab, you can then specify the color of the messages to be displayed according to their importance. Of course, you can set the option to only show certain types of messages (for example, only those with high impact and restricted news). If you want the application to alert you to an upcoming message, set the UseAlert line to True and the AlertBeforeMinutes line to the number of minutes before the alert to appear. Every time the announcement of a particular message that appears on your chart is is about to occur, MetaTrader will warn you with an alert.

Indicator window

The layout of the window has been modified so that you can have a one-click trading option running in the chart. The number of the page you are on will then be displayed below the FTMO logo and the name of the indicator. By default, this is set to show you the current news that will follow. If you move the arrow to the right, you will see news that has already been published in the last seven days. If you move the arrow to the left, you will see messages that have not yet been published in the current week. You can then get to the current page even if you change the timeframe on the chart.

For each news event, you will then see the date and time of publication (these are displayed in platform time), the type of news, the importance (colored according to importance and settings in the Inputs), and the currency/commodity affected by that fundamental. Messages that have trading restrictions in the FTMO terms will include a Restricted Event label.

While most of the major fundamental news affect individual currencies or currency pairs, the indicator also alerts you to news that may impact stock indices traded in those currencies or individual commodities that are affected by those fundamentals.

The particular news are then displayed directly in the chart window in the form of vertical lines, and their colour is identical to the importance setting. So-called restricted messages are displayed in purple. There is also a Close all trades button at the bottom of the window, which allows you to close all currently open trades if necessary. However, if the Allow live trading checkbox in the Common window is not checked, this button will not work.

We believe that, when set up correctly, this simple indicator will help you navigate the multitude of fundamental news from the markets, understand what's happening in the markets, and become a tool that will make your Forex trading much more efficient. Trade safe!