Chapter 3: USA: This Is Where the Music Plays

Which US economic indicators are in the focus of financial market participants? An overview should provide an insight into which sectors are covered by which indicators (Table 2):

A recurring schedule for the publication of the indicators exists in the monthly schedule (Table 3).

Even the time of day for the releases is specified in detail. The decisive times are basically 2:30 p.m. CET (8:30 a.m. EST), 4:00 p.m. CET (10:00 a.m. EST) and 8:00 p.m. CET (2:00 p.m. EST). The following table compiles the data – together with the (subjective) assessment of the significance for the capital markets.

It should be noted that in the United States the time change takes place on the first weekend of March and November in the spring and autumn, respectively, and thus the data announcements are made one hour earlier in Europe than normally for one week (or several weeks) at a time (Table 4).