# How much does the range actually widen at NFP? > What 1,820 scheduled-release windows across 28 pairs were measured for — and why the range-expansion factors stay unpublished until their artifact ships. - Canonical: https://hadalinstruments.com/research/the-nfp-range/ - Published: 2026-07-31 - Author: Hadal Research --- ## Prerequisite Knowledge Understanding this analysis requires familiarity with [Order Book Censoring](/glossary/censoring/) and how brokers throttle update frequencies during extreme volatility. ## The Observable Mechanism I measured price-range and tick-volume expansion across 28 currency pairs over 1,820 scheduled-release windows — 867 Non-Farm Payroll and 953 CPI prints — drawn from sixteen years of hourly data. **PROVENANCE — NOT YET PUBLISHED.** Every count on this page — 1,820 windows, 867 NFP prints, 953 CPI prints, 28 pairs, sixteen years — describes the dataset the study was run over. **That dataset is not published.** Until it is, these counts are a declaration by me and not a measurement you can check: there is no file to download, no `sha256` to compare against it, and nothing here a stranger can re-derive. The artifact publishes with its hash, and every number on this page becomes checkable at that moment and not before. Read them as scope, never as a result. ## The Non-Farm Payroll Range Expansion Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) consistently generates the largest scheduled volatility events in retail FX. But how much does the price range actually widen in the window around the release? I analysed 1,820 scheduled-release windows — 867 NFP and 953 CPI prints — across 28 currency pairs to measure how the trading range and tick volume expand relative to ordinary hours. Those counts carry the status above: `NOT YET PUBLISHED`. ### The Findings **NOT YET PUBLISHED.** The per-pair range-lift and tick-volume-lift factors publish together with the raw, content-hashed dataset, and not one of them appears on this page. This article ships the question and the method; the numbers arrive only with the artifact that proves them. That restriction includes the shape of the result. Any sentence of the form "the expansion is systematic" or "NFP windows expand harder than CPI windows" is a finding, and a finding without its artifact is exactly the claim this house does not make — so it is not made here, in either direction. What publishes first is the artifact. The reading of it follows. ### What This Measures — and What It Doesn't, Yet This dataset measures range and tick-volume expansion from hourly bars. It does **not** measure bid-ask spread widening or top-of-book depth withdrawal — that is a separate study on captured tick data, which per my [methodology](/methodology/) pre-registers before it runs. It has **not been run**, and its pre-registration is **not yet published** either. When it runs, its result publishes as its own hashed artifact — whatever it says. Separating volatility-driven range expansion from liquidity-withdrawal-driven spread widening is precisely what that second study exists to settle. ## What This Does Not Establish (The Limits) Until its artifact publishes, this dataset establishes nothing a reader can rely on — that is the first limit, and it is the binding one. What it will be able to support, once published, is bounded to range and tick-volume expansion measured from hourly bars. It will NOT establish that you can predict the direction of an NFP spike; it will NOT describe spread widening or top-of-book depth withdrawal, which live in tick data and in a different study; and it will never imply that a strategy survives these windows. Any attempt to backtest directional strategies across NFP releases must account for extreme slippage regardless of what this dataset eventually says. --- ## Claims examined ### Claim 01 — canonical: https://hadalinstruments.com/refutations/#claim-17d1a8eb > "A perfect score in a backtest over NFP data means the strategy will work in live markets." — our reading: False A perfect score on historical NFP data is a claim about pipeline over-parameterization, not about the market. Historical ticks lack the liquidity-withdrawal dynamics present in live execution. **What is true:** Historical ticks over a news release lack the liquidity withdrawal, requotes and rejection clustering that price live execution in those minutes, so a perfect news-period backtest measures the pipeline's optimism — the live constraint it omitted is exactly where the money changes hands. Evidence: https://hadalinstruments.com/research/the-nfp-range/#claim-17d1a8eb ## Cite This Article APA BibTeX HTML Hadal Research. (2026). How much does the range actually widen at NFP?. Hadal Research. https://hadalinstruments.com/research/the-nfp-range/ Version 426b66a, 2026-08-25. @misc{hadal_2026_the-nfp-range, author = {Hadal Research}, title = {How much does the range actually widen at NFP?}, year = {2026}, url = {https://hadalinstruments.com/research/the-nfp-range/}, howpublished = {Hadal Research}, version = {426b66a}, note = {Published: 2026-07-31; version dated 2026-08-25} } Source: Hadal Research, How much does the range actually widen at NFP?. Original Research Copy Citation **Version 426b66a** identifies the commit that last changed this page in Hadal's content repository. That repository is not public, so the identifier does not resolve externally — it is published so a citation pins one specific state rather than a moving page. To obtain the exact version cited, use the [press and research route](https://hadalinstruments.com/press/). ## Explore further ### Instruments - [Broker Feed Auditor](https://hadalinstruments.com/instruments/broker-feed-auditor/) ### Concepts - [Absorb/Sweep](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/absorb-sweep/) - [Censoring](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/censoring/) - [Spread Widening](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/spread-widening/) ### Research - [Do brokers hunt your stop losses?](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/do-brokers-hunt-your-stop-losses/) Asked as: do brokers hunt stop losses by widening the spread - [Why do two data feeds give different backtests?](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/why-do-two-data-feeds-give-different-backtests/) Asked as: why does my backtest give different results with different data feeds [All Hadal research](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/)[This article as plain markdown](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/the-nfp-range.md) --- ## Raw artifact — NOT PUBLISHED FOR THIS PAGE No downloadable artifact ships with this page. Eight published measurements do, each content-hashed so a reader can verify the figures independently. Where a measurement is published here without one, that is a gap rather than a policy, and it is stated rather than left to be noticed. [Measurements that ship their data](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/)