NFP: what the first hour does to a prop account
The US jobs report (Non-Farm Payrolls) is one of the few releases that can use up a whole daily loss in one candle. Here is what the first hour did in the last six releases, and what it would have meant at your size.
Test your size
The range is high-to-low of the first hour: the move you would sit through with no stop, or the worst slippage a stop could see. It is not a forecast.
| Release | First-hour range | In $ at your size | Share of daily loss |
|---|
How to get through Friday
- Check your firm's news rule first. Some firms forbid opening or closing trades a few minutes around high-impact news; others allow it but count any loss in the daily limit. Read it on the firm's own page.
- Size for the range, not for your stop. If 1 lot of gold can move $64 in an hour, the size that keeps the median inside half your daily loss on a 100k is just under 0.4 lots.
- The clock moved. US daylight saving ended on 1 November, so NFP is at 13:30 UTC (14:30 Madrid, 08:30 New York) this time.
- Copied or multi-account trades. One entry copied to five accounts hits five daily limits at the same second.
- Know who you are trading with. Before a news day on a new firm, check whether it is still paying out: Prop Firm Briefing keeps a public prop firm closure tracker.
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Method and source
Prices: TradingView, OANDA feed (OANDA:XAUUSD, OANDA:EURUSD). For each release we took the two 30-minute candles from 12:30 to 13:30 UTC (the first hour after the 12:30 UTC release in summer time) and measured high minus low. Release dates from the TradingView economic calendar / US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Gold: 1 lot = 100 oz, so $1 = $100 per lot. EURUSD: 1 pip = $10 per standard lot. Six releases is a small sample; ranges are not predictions and do not include spreads or slippage. You are welcome to cite these numbers with a link to this page.
Educational information, not financial advice. RetryLab does not give signals and is not affiliated with any prop firm. Trading on margin carries a high risk of loss.