After a news spike, what do you do with an open trade in the next hour?

A news spike can leave an open trade in profit one minute and at a loss the next. The hour after a release is often when traders make their most costly decisions, because prices move fast, spreads can stay wide, and the plan can feel uncertain. How to trade the news covers planning around a release, including what to decide before the event, so that the first hour is not spent deciding from scratch.

Members who manage well through that hour usually have a short written rule: whether to hold, reduce or close, and what they check first. The useful checks are the price, the spread and the reason for the move, in that order. A move that comes from a surprise in the data is different from a move that comes from a stop being hunted in a thin market, and the two call for different responses.

We would like to hear your routine:

• Do you leave the trade alone, reduce it or close it after a spike?
• What do you check first: the price, the spread or the reason for the move?
• Have you changed a stop during the first hour after a release? What happened?
• What rule do you write down in advance for the first hour after a release?

Please share your own approach and reasoning, not calls for others to copy. Posts that promise a direction or sell signals will be removed.