![Futures News Indicator on a 1-minute ES chart, the transparent panel in the top-left corner: Tuesday and Wednesday releases with their times, colored by impact, the crude-oil report tagged [CL/NG]](/assets/images/indicators/news/crisp/fni-5-1260.png)
| The calendar | Average news tool | FNI |
|---|---|---|
| All news items this week every release, Sunday to Saturday | ✓ | ✓ |
| Impact filter high, medium and low, each on or off | ✓ | ✓ |
| Filtered by contract, not by country ES/NQ/YM · CL/NG · GC/SI · ZN/ZB | ✓ | |
| Session on every row PRE, RTH or AH, judged in US Eastern | ✓ | |
| On the chart | ||
| Vertical lines at release times labeled, colored by impact | ✓ | |
| Past events stay in view dimmed, up to 48 hours back | ✓ | ✓ |
| The panel | ||
| A panel in any corner the events ahead, where you put it | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live countdown on every row and a next-event header above them | ✓ | |
| Every column on or off day, session, time, countdown, impact | ✓ | |
| Every color yours each impact, past events, header, background | ✓ | ✓ |
| Transparent or table style your font, column gap and spacing | ✓ | |
| Day to day | ||
| Times in your zone 14 zones, 12 or 24 hour | ✓ | ✓ |
| Keeps running with the tab hidden countdowns and alerts do not pause | ✓ | |
| Works when the feed is down the last calendar cached for 14 days | ✓ | |
| Alerts before the release two stages, minutes of your choice | ✓ | ✓ |
In short: NinjaTrader 8 and an internet connection. That is all Futures News Indicator needs.
The calendar covers US-dollar events for the current week, Sunday to Saturday. The new week publishes on Sunday and the indicator picks it up by itself.
Futures News Indicator has 47 settings in seven groups of its properties panel. The names in bold are the names you will see there.
The week’s US-dollar releases, Sunday to Saturday, fetched with Enable Live Fetch on and refreshed every two hours by default (Refresh Interval (Min)), the last calendar kept on disk for 14 days. Look Ahead (Hours) shows 1 to 168 hours ahead (default 48) and Max Events Shown caps the panel at 15. No account, no API key.
Show Next-Event Header names the next release above the panel with a live countdown, and Show Countdown Column counts down every row. Both run on the indicator’s own 60-second timer rather than on bar closes, so they keep moving on a quiet chart and when the tab is hidden.
Show High Impact, Show Medium Impact and Show Low Impact switch each level on or off, each in its own color. Four contract groups do the rest: ES / NQ / YM — Core Macro, CL / NG — Energy (EIA, OPEC), GC / SI — Metals and ZN / ZB — Rates (Treasury Auctions), so the panel shows only what can move your chart.
Show Vertical Lines (off by default) draws a line at every release time, labeled and colored by impact, with Line Opacity (%), Line Width (px), Show Event Label on Line and Label Position — Bottom. Show Past Events (dimmed) keeps releases in view up to 48 hours back (Past Events Lookback (Hours)).
Enable Alerts (off by default) fires a NinjaTrader popup and sound at First Alert (Minutes Before) and again at Second Alert (Min Before), or once if the second is 0. High Impact Only limits them to the market movers. One alert per event however many charts you run, and they fire with the tab hidden.
Display Timezone prints every time in your PC clock or one of 13 named zones, Use 24H Time Format as you prefer; Show Session (PRE / RTH / AH) is judged in US Eastern because it describes the CME session. Panel Corner, offsets, Font, Column Spacing from Compact to Wide, and Panel Style transparent or as a table.
Use any color, and switch high, medium or low impact on or off.
Day, session, time, countdown, impact and past events: each column on or off.
Transparent or table style, your font, column gap and spacing, in any corner.
Every release marked where it lands, classified high, medium or low.
All plans give you instant access to Futures News Indicator, ready to use right away. No machine ID required.
Ends by itself. Nothing to cancel, nothing charged.
Start free trialLicensed through NinjaTrader’s vendor licensing.
One-time payment, lifetime license.
Buy nowSecure checkout via Creem. Price includes tax.
Billed monthly. Cancel any time from your account.
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Four ways to trade around the calendar. None of them predicts the number; the entries, the stops and the discipline are still yours.
The first alert fires minutes before the number. Flatten, cut size or tighten stops on your terms, instead of watching a spike do it for you.
High-impact release in ten minutes? No fresh entries. The countdown keeps you out of the window where spreads widen and stops get run.
The vertical line marks exactly where the release hit the chart. Let the first spike burn off, then trade the reaction with the event bar clearly marked.
One glance at the panel at the open shows the whole day: when the volatility windows land and when it is usually quiet in between.
New to trading around the news? Read the full guide →
Free trial on every paid product. Full refund within 14 days. Custom changes on request. Very few NinjaTrader 8 vendors offer all three. We do it for one reason: you should never have to pay to find out whether a tool works on your chart. Most of our tools are free. The paid ones are extensively tested, kept up to date and priced well below the usual rate. We would rather earn a customer who comes back than make a sale that does not last. Questions? Email [email protected]. We answer fast.
Question or idea for improvement? Email us, we reply fast.
Download the zip after checkout, then in NinjaTrader 8 go to Tools → Import → NinjaScript Add-On and pick the file. Add Futures News Indicator to any chart from the Indicators list and the panel fills within a few seconds — most traders are done in under a minute. The step-by-step guide covers every message NinjaTrader can show and the update rule.
From ForexFactory’s free public calendar feed — no API key, no account, no subscription. The indicator fetches it every two hours by default and keeps a copy on disk, so a dropped connection or a weekend without internet still shows the last calendar it saw.
The feed covers the current week, Sunday to Saturday, and the new week publishes on Sunday. After Friday’s last release there is nothing upcoming until then; the indicator picks the new week up by itself.
Yes. Every event arrives as a UTC timestamp and is printed in the Display Timezone you choose — your PC clock by default, or one of 13 named zones, from US Pacific to Sydney. The PRE / RTH / AH label is always judged in US Eastern, because it describes the CME session, not your clock.
The US-dollar releases: FOMC, CPI, NFP, GDP, PMIs, retail sales, jobless claims, Fed speakers, oil and gas inventories, Treasury auctions and the rest. Each one is sorted into an instrument group — ES/NQ/YM, CL/NG, GC/SI or ZN/ZB — and tagged high, medium or low impact. Turn off the groups and levels you do not trade and the panel shows only what can move your chart.
No, and we won’t pretend it is. It tells you when a release lands and how much it usually matters; it cannot tell you which way the number breaks — nothing can. The trade decisions stay yours.
No. Futures News Indicator never touches your orders, positions or account. It draws on the chart and can raise alerts — every order is yours to place, in your own order-entry window, exactly as before.
Yes. The countdowns and the alert check run on the indicator’s own 60-second timer, not on bar closes, so they keep working on a quiet chart and with the tab hidden. NinjaTrader plays its alert sound and shows the popup. One alert per event, however many charts you run.
It’s built lean — one shared engine does the fetching for every chart, the panel text is cached, and the live work happens once a minute rather than on every tick. If your chart ever lags with it on, email us: that’s a bug, not normal.
Not a free edition, but a free 14-day trial with every setting of the paid version — no card, nothing to cancel, it switches itself off. After that it is $29 once, yours to keep with free updates, or $2.99 a month.
Yes. Every release carries an impact level — high, medium or low, the grading traders call red folder news — shown in its own color and switchable with Show High Impact, Show Medium Impact and Show Low Impact. High Impact Only limits the alerts to the red-folder releases: FOMC, CPI, payrolls and the other market movers.
Yes. The Next-Event Header names the next release with a live countdown, and the Countdown column counts down every row in the panel. Both run on the indicator’s own 60-second timer, so they keep moving on a quiet chart and when the tab is hidden, and the alerts fire at the minutes you set before the release.
Yes — that is the feed this indicator reads: Forex Factory’s free public calendar of US-dollar events, fetched by itself every two hours and cached for 14 days, with no account and no API key. The panel lists the week’s releases with countdowns, the event lines mark them on the chart, and the high, medium and low impact grading is the calendar’s own.
Email support, answered by the traders who built it. Bugs get fixed, and updates are free.
Every event arrives from the free ForexFactory calendar feed as a UTC timestamp. The panel converts it to your Display Timezone, your PC clock by default with 13 others to choose from, so in winter an 08:30 New York release reads 14:30 in Oslo and 22:30 in Tokyo. The feed is fetched every 120 minutes and cached on disk, so a dropped connection shows the last calendar, not an empty panel.
The session label is decided in US Eastern whatever zone your chart runs in: before 09:30 ET is PRE, 09:30 to 16:00 ET is RTH, after 16:00 is AH. It tells you at a glance whether a release lands inside the cash session, where the reaction in the index futures is usually largest.
The countdowns and the alerts run on the indicator’s own 60-second timer, not on bar closes, so they keep counting on a quiet chart and with the chart tab in the background. Past events fall out of the list, or stay dimmed for a lookback window you set.
| Feed row (UTC) | Event | Impact | Group | Eastern | Oslo (CET) | Session | Countdown at 13:20 UTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tue 13:30 | CPI m/m | H | ES / NQ / YM | 08:30 | 14:30 | PRE | 10m 00s |
| Wed 15:30 | Crude Oil Inventories | L | CL / NG | 10:30 | 16:30 | RTH | 26h 10m |
| Wed 18:00 | 10-y Note Auction | L | ZN / ZB | 13:00 | 19:00 | RTH | 28h 40m |
| Wed 19:00 | FOMC Statement | H | ES / NQ / YM | 14:00 | 20:00 | RTH | 29h 40m |
| Thu 13:30 | Philly Fed Manufacturing Index | M | ES / NQ / YM | 08:30 | 14:30 | PRE | 48h 10m |
Only US-dollar events are kept, and each one is sorted into a group by its title: the macro releases are the ES / NQ / YM catch-all, oil and gas inventories go to CL / NG, metals reports to GC / SI, Treasury auctions to ZN / ZB. Duplicate rows the feed sometimes publishes are removed by date and title.
The free public ForexFactory calendar feed, no API key and no account. It covers the current week, Sunday to Saturday, and the new week publishes on Sunday. The indicator re-fetches every two hours by default, keeps a copy on disk for 14 days and, with the Updated line switched on, warns in the panel when the data is more than a day old.
PRE, RTH and AH follow the CME equity index session in US Eastern, whatever your Display Timezone says. A release at 08:30 ET is PRE in Oslo and in Tokyo alike, because the label describes the market, not your clock.
Two stages, 10 and 3 minutes before by default, both yours to set; the second can be switched off. Checked every 60 seconds, so an alert lands within a minute of its mark. One alert per event however many charts run the indicator, and they fire with the chart tab in the background. Off by default: you switch them on.
If the feed is unreachable, the panel shows the last calendar it fetched and says so. An empty answer from the feed never wipes the events you already have, and failed fetches back off gradually instead of hammering the connection. The first load after install needs the internet once.
This is the actual settings panel in NinjaTrader — numbered groups, plain-English names, no cryptic abbreviations. Every row in the table below is one of these.
| Setting | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|
| General | ||
| Look Ahead (Hours) | 48 | 1 – 168 |
| Refresh Interval (Min) | 120 | 10 – 1440 |
| Max Events Shown | 15 | 1 – 50 |
| Enable Live Fetch | On | On · Off |
| Display Timezone | Local | Local · UTC · Eastern · Central · Pacific · London · Central Europe · Moscow · East Africa · India · Singapore · Tokyo · Sydney · Brazil |
| Use 24H Time Format | On | On · Off |
| Filters | ||
| ES / NQ / YM — Core Macro | On | On · Off |
| CL / NG — Energy (EIA, OPEC) | On | On · Off |
| GC / SI — Metals | On | On · Off |
| ZN / ZB — Rates (Treasury Auctions) | On | On · Off |
| Show High Impact | On | On · Off |
| Show Medium Impact | On | On · Off |
| Show Low Impact | On | On · Off |
| Columns | ||
| Show Day of Week | On | On · Off |
| Show Session (PRE / RTH / AH) | On | On · Off |
| Show Time | On | On · Off |
| Show Countdown Column | On | On · Off |
| Show Impact Level (H / M / L) | On | On · Off |
| Show Next-Event Header | Off | On · Off |
| Show Past Events (dimmed) | Off | On · Off |
| Past Events Lookback (Hours) | 12 | 1 – 48 |
| Panel | ||
| Show Panel | On | On · Off |
| Panel Corner | Top Left | Top Left · Top Right · Bottom Left · Bottom Right |
| Offset X (px) | 14 | 0 – 5000 |
| Offset Y (px) | 14 | 0 – 5000 |
| Font | Arial 12 | Any font |
| Column Gap (px) | 14 | 0 – 40 |
| Show Background | Off | On · Off |
| Show Last Updated Time | Off | On · Off |
| Panel Style | Transparent | Transparent · Table |
| Column Spacing | Normal | Compact · Normal · Spacious · Wide · Custom |
| Vertical Lines | ||
| Show Vertical Lines | Off | On · Off |
| Line Opacity (%) | 70 | 1 – 100 |
| Line Width (px) | 1 | 0.5 – 4.0 |
| Show Event Label on Line | On | On · Off |
| Label Position — Bottom (unchecked = Top) | Off | On · Off |
| Alerts | ||
| Enable Alerts | Off | On · Off |
| First Alert (Minutes Before) | 10 | 1 – 60 |
| Second Alert (Min Before) (0 = off) | 3 | 0 – 30 |
| High Impact Only | On | On · Off |
| Colors | ||
| High Impact | Red | Any color |
| Medium Impact | Orange | Any color |
| Low Impact | Lime Green | Any color |
| Past Events (dimmed) | Dim Gray | Any color |
| Header Text (Countdown / Updated) | Silver | Any color |
| Error / Warning Text | Orange Red | Any color |
| Panel Background | Black at 24% | Any color |
Ranges are printed only where the indicator enforces one. Colors accept any color.
One shared engine per NinjaTrader instance does the fetching and parsing, so ten charts cost one download. The indicator calculates on bar close and does its live work on a 60-second timer, never per tick. Panel text is laid out once and cached until the font or the data changes, the network runs off the chart thread, and the feed response is capped at 5 MB. If your chart ever lags with Futures News Indicator on, that is a bug and we want to hear about it.
Panel times print in the Display Timezone you pick: Local (your PC clock), UTC, Eastern, Central, Pacific, London, Central Europe, Moscow, East Africa, India, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney or Brazil, with daylight-saving handled by Windows’ own zone rules. Session labels stay in US Eastern. Vertical lines are placed on the chart’s own time axis, so if you pick a panel zone that differs from your chart’s zone, the panel time and the line position can read differently; the line is always where the release lands on your bars.
The only connection the indicator makes is to the ForexFactory calendar feed, to read it. Nothing about you, your account, your charts or your trades is sent anywhere, and there is no telemetry. The only other check is NinjaTrader’s own license verification of your NinjaTrader account, done by the platform, the same as for every licensed add-on. The feed file is parsed with external references disabled, and the copy on disk lives in your NinjaTrader folder.
Fourteen days, every setting, no card. It switches itself off, and if you keep it, it is $29 once and yours to keep.
Not for you if you want the number itself, or a call on which way it breaks. Futures News Indicator shows you when a release lands and how much it usually matters; the data and the reaction belong to the market.
Pairs well with Free initial balance indicator (Live IB Range) · Key levels indicator (Intraday Reference Levels) · ProVWAP VWAP indicator
Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. Futures News Indicator is an informational and decision-support tool only — it is not a trade signal, recommendation, or financial advice. Economic calendar data is provided by a third party and may be subject to change or delay. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
NinjaTrader®, NinjaTrader.com and associated NinjaTrader marks are registered trademarks and the property of NinjaTrader Group, LLC. UsefulIndicators is listed on the NinjaTrader Ecosystem; NinjaTrader Group, LLC does not endorse or recommend any third-party product.
