Last updated 2026-10-19 · By William Simpson

Macro event playbooks: read, compare, and review

An event playbook defines what evidence to read and how to compare it with expectations. It supports consistent research before and after a release without prescribing trades or promising a market reaction.

How do I prepare for CPI day?

Before CPI, record the official release time, reference period, previous reading, and the definition of any consensus estimate. Identify components relevant to the research question and separate monthly from annual changes. After publication, inspect the original tables and revisions before interpreting the surprise or assigning a reason to the market response.

Use the BLS CPI page; a faster headline is not a substitute for matching definitions.

How do I prepare for jobs report day?

Before the employment report, define the questions about labor demand, unemployment, participation, hours, and earnings that matter to the analysis. Check the release calendar and prior revisions. After publication, distinguish establishment payroll jobs from household employment, and evaluate the components together rather than treating the headline job change as a complete economic verdict.

Read the BLS Employment Situation.

How do I prepare for FOMC day?

Before an FOMC decision, record the prevailing policy setting, the scheduled publications, and the expectations being compared. Read the decision, statement changes, projections when released, and press conference as separate evidence. A decision matching expectations can still move markets through guidance, so avoid reducing the review to whether the policy rate changed.

Use the Federal Reserve calendar.

How do I prepare for ECB day?

Before an ECB decision, identify the relevant policy instruments, release schedule, and euro-area evidence under review. Compare the statement with the previous decision and read the explanation of inflation, activity, and financing conditions. Projections and press-conference answers can change the interpretation, so distinguish the announced action from assumptions about future policy.

Use ECB publications, not a U.S. policy template applied unchanged.

How do I prepare for BoE day?

Before a Bank of England decision, review the UK data context, current policy setting, and expected publication package. After release, compare the decision, voting information, and accompanying explanation with prior material. Separate a policy action from forecasts and conditional guidance rather than assuming the headline rate captures the whole assessment.

Use the Bank of England monetary-policy page.

How do I prepare for BoJ day?

Before a Bank of Japan decision, check the current operating framework and meeting publications instead of assuming the same instrument set as another central bank. Read the official decision, outlook material when available, and subsequent explanations. Currency, yield, and financing reactions can differ, so state the mechanism behind any interpretation.

Use the Bank of Japan policy page.

What matters in a jobs report beyond the headline number?

Beyond payroll growth, inspect revisions, hours, earnings, industry breadth, unemployment, and participation, while recognizing that these can come from different surveys. Conflicting components can reflect sampling or genuine economic differences. Match the measure to the research question rather than averaging incompatible statistics into a single strong-or-weak labor-market label.

Compare household and establishment definitions before interpreting a divergence.

How do markets usually react to surprises vs expectations?

Markets respond to new information relative to expectations, but there is no dependable rule that a positive economic surprise produces a positive asset return. Cash-flow implications, discount rates, positioning, and prior pricing interact. Identify the consensus source and instrument being studied, then distinguish observed reaction from a causal explanation.

A release can exceed a survey median while still disappointing expectations embedded in prices.

How do I read earnings season through a macro lens?

Read earnings season for recurring evidence about demand, pricing, wages, financing, inventories, and capital spending across companies. Compare reported figures with consistent estimates and distinguish broad patterns from sector-specific developments. Company commentary is a useful observation, but it is neither an unbiased economic survey nor proof that the same conditions apply everywhere.

Liminal’s earnings research can provide context; verify consequential figures in issuer reports and filings.

How do I track Treasury auctions, quarter-end liquidity, and funding stress?

Track official auction schedules and results alongside relevant funding prices, collateral conditions, and balance-sheet constraints. Quarter-end patterns can reflect reporting or settlement effects rather than a new economic regime. Define which measure supports the interpretation and compare it with a suitable historical baseline before escalating a routine calendar effect into systemic stress.

Use Treasury auction information and New York Fed market data.

What are the major scheduled risk events each month?

Common scheduled events include inflation and employment releases, activity reports, central-bank decisions, government auctions, and company earnings, but not all occur every month. Relevance depends on the portfolio and jurisdiction. Build the calendar from official schedules, check time zones and holidays, and avoid treating every listed release as equally material.

A calendar is a review schedule, not a forecast of volatility.

How do I build a weekly macro checklist?

A weekly macro checklist should identify scheduled releases, relevant exposures, prior assumptions, expected evidence, and review owners. After each event, record what changed and what did not. Keep the list small enough to use consistently, and separate official observations from commentary or scenarios that still require validation before entering the research record.

Liminal can support contextual reading, while the checklist remains specific to the team’s mandate.

How do I keep a macro journal?

Keep a macro journal with dated observations, source links, the interpretation made at the time, competing explanations, and conditions that would change the view. Review entries after new evidence arrives without rewriting the original judgment. This helps identify recurring reasoning errors while avoiding hindsight claims that the eventual outcome was obvious.

Record data vintages and the difference between an expected release and an actual observation.

What should I write down before a major release?

Before a major release, write the exact research question, prior reading, consensus definition, relevant exposures, and evidence that would challenge the current interpretation. Include the planned review window. This creates a contemporaneous baseline and reduces the temptation to construct a confident explanation only after observing the market’s reaction.

Keep scenarios conditional rather than assigning unverified probabilities.

How do I review a release when the headline and details conflict?

When the headline and details conflict, identify which components drive the difference, their weights, and whether revisions or measurement choices explain it. Preserve more than one interpretation until the evidence resolves the issue. A concise review should name the disagreement rather than forcing a mixed release into a single directional label.

Check the original tables before relying on a summary’s description of breadth.

How do I separate a release reaction from unrelated market news?

Define a narrow observation window, identify overlapping announcements, and compare relevant assets and benchmarks. Even then, an event study shows association under assumptions rather than proving the cause of every move. State competing explanations, especially when earnings, geopolitical developments, or policy comments occur near the same release time.

Do not attribute an entire day’s return to the first headline in the calendar.

How should I handle a postponed economic release?

When a release is postponed, update the calendar and mark the expected observation as unavailable rather than carrying an estimate forward as a new fact. Check the issuing agency for the revised schedule and methodological implications. Research conclusions that depend on the missing evidence should disclose the gap rather than silently substituting a headline.

An unchanged dashboard value can mean no new data, not economic stability.

What makes a good post-event research note?

A good post-event note states the new fact, the comparison baseline, the relevant mechanism, and the strongest contradictory evidence. It separates observed price behavior from explanation and identifies what remains unresolved. Preserve the timestamp and source so later reviews can evaluate the reasoning using the information actually available at that moment.

End with a research question or review condition, not an instruction to transact.

Informational only, not investment advice.