NFP and PPI: The Misunderstood Reports That Set Up the Real Move
Everyone watches CPI and FOMC. Smart traders pay attention to these two first.
By Glenn & Reid | Hawaiʻi Trading Academy
If CPI is the main event and FOMC is the heavyweight fight, then NFP and PPI are the undercard that secretly determines the outcome. Most retail traders either skip them or trade them like CPI. Both are mistakes.
We backtested years of NQ futures reactions to all four macro events. The results for NFP and PPI were the most counterintuitive of the entire dataset. What most traders assume about these reports is flat-out wrong.
PPI: The Leading Indicator Everyone Ignores
Producer Price Index measures what businesses pay for inputs — raw materials, wholesale goods, services. Think of it as upstream inflation. It usually drops a day or two before CPI, and that timing matters more than most traders realize.
Here’s the key insight from our data: PPI has the highest fade rate of all four macro events. The initial reaction to PPI tends to reverse. Not always, but often ...
The 4 Macro Events Every Futures Trader Must Know
And the framework we built from 142 data points to trade them.
Every month, four reports drop that move NQ futures more than any earnings call, any Fed speaker soundbite, or any geopolitical headline. CPI. PPI. NFP. FOMC.
Most retail traders either ignore these events entirely or panic-trade them with zero framework. We used to be in that camp. Then we backtested 142 macro events across three years of NQ futures data — and what we found changed how we approach every single one of them.
This post breaks down each event, why it matters, and the framework we use at Hawaiʻi Trading Academy to prepare for them. No guessing. No CNBC hot takes. Just process.
Why Should You Care About Macro Events?
Here’s the thing most traders miss: scheduled macro events aren’t random volatility. They’re predictable volatility. You know the date, you know the time, and if you’ve done the homework, you have a statistical framework for how NQ tends to react.
Think about that. In a market where most days ...