First Candle After CPI: What to Write Down

CPI releases arrive with predictable chaos in the first minute and often surprising calm by minute five. Rather than chasing every tick, I teach students to log four fields before doing anything else: actual versus forecast headline, direction of the first one-minute close relative to the pre-release midline, whether volume on that candle exceeded the prior five-minute average, and whether price immediately returned inside the pre-release range.

Those four notes tell you more than any oscillator overlay. A beat with a close back inside the range suggests absorption. A miss with a close holding outside suggests continuation is more likely — though not guaranteed.

Keep the log in a notebook, not a spreadsheet, during the first month. Handwriting slows you down enough to observe rather than react. After twenty CPI sessions you will see your own bias patterns in the margins.