Everything an EA knows is in the price history it reads. It does not know that a central bank meets on Thursday, that inflation surprised on the upside, or that a crisis began an hour ago. It sees the consequences arrive as price and reacts to them by its rules. Knowing what those forces are does not let an EA see them. It lets its owner understand what the EA is exposed to.
Interest rates and central banks
Central banks, the Federal Reserve through its FOMC, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, set short-term interest rates. Currencies tend to strengthen when their rates rise or are expected to, because they pay more to hold. Rate decisions are scheduled and move markets sharply; the statements and press conferences that follow often move them more, because they signal what comes next. A "hawkish" bank leans toward higher rates; a "dovish" one toward lower. Quantitative easing, a bank buying bonds to push longer-term rates down, weakens a currency over time. Bond yields, which move continuously, are the market's running estimate of where rates are going.
The data
Inflation, measured by CPI for consumers and PPI for producers, drives rate expectations most directly. Growth, measured by GDP quarterly and by PMI surveys monthly, shapes them more slowly. Employment, the US non-farm payrolls above all, is the most watched monthly release. The trade balance and the dollar index matter for longer moves. Each has a scheduled release time, listed in the calendar in MetaTrader 5, and each is a moment when spreads widen and price jumps.
Sentiment
Between releases, markets move on the balance of fear and confidence. In risk-on periods equities and higher-yielding currencies rise; in risk-off periods money moves to the dollar, the yen, the franc and bonds. This regime is the one most EA records were made in one half of, and it is the subject of the regime page.
An EA is long three stock indices on a Wednesday afternoon. At 7pm the Federal Reserve raises rates by more than expected and the chair's remarks are hawkish. Indices fall 2 per cent in an hour. All three positions are stopped out. The EA did what its rules said. It could not have known the meeting existed, and its owner, who did, could not have known the outcome. The stops were the plan for exactly this.
An EA's blindness to fundamentals is a fixed feature, and two things follow. First, the news filter and the wide stop are the only protections available, and both should be present. Second, the owner's knowledge of the calendar is not a reason to intervene; it is a reason to expect that some weeks will be worse, and to have sized for them. An EA that trades through a rate decision on a stop loss is behaving correctly. An owner who closes the position beforehand has made a discretionary trade, and the record no longer belongs to the EA.