Courses / How to Read an Economic Calendar / Mastery

Educational notice

This is general educational and factual information about finance and economics. It is not financial product advice, is not personalised to your circumstances, and does not recommend any product, security, or course of action. Examples use real market data records to illustrate concepts only. Consider your own situation and seek licensed advice before making financial decisions.

Mastery task

Six items on a released U.S. calendar event no lesson in this course used, chosen at render time from the newest such release. Read the row named below — its title, agency, release date and time, reference period, state, impact tier and the line printed where a consensus would sit — and work each item from it. Pass mark 80%.

Pass mark 80%. This attempt’s record: Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, August 2026 (as of 2026-09-16) — not used in any lesson.

1. This row's state field reads “released”, and its release moment is 2026-09-16 at 08:30 EDT. On a Kitalpha calendar row, the state field records:

Source record: Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, August 2026 (as of 2026-09-16)

Before you answer: how confident are you? Sure Fairly sure Guessing

Options Whether the scheduled release moment has passed — scheduled before it, released once it has, withdrawn if the agency cancelled the slot Whether the published figure came in above or below a consensus estimate Whether the impact tier for this indicator has finished computing Whether the reference period the figure measures has come to an end

Choose your confidence first.
2. This row's reference period reads August 2026 and its release date is 2026-09-16. Reading the two fields together, the figure published on the release date describes:

Source record: Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, August 2026 (as of 2026-09-16)

Before you answer: how confident are you? Sure Fairly sure Guessing

Options The reference period, a span that had already closed before the release date; the gap between the two is the agency's compilation time Conditions on the release date itself, since that is the day the figure is published The span the next release covers, so the row previews the coming figure The window of past release days over which the impact score was computed

Choose your confidence first.
3. This row's impact fields read tier “low”, score 0.74 basis points, computed from 44 clean past release days. Express the score in percentage points of yield (100 basis points = 1 percentage point). Enter the figure to three decimals.

Source record: Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, August 2026 (as of 2026-09-16)

Before you answer: how confident are you? Sure Fairly sure Guessing

Your answer (pp) Tolerance ±0.001 pp

Choose your confidence first.
4. Where a commercial calendar prints an expected figure beside Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, this row from Census carries:

Source record: Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, August 2026 (as of 2026-09-16)

Before you answer: how confident are you? Sure Fairly sure Guessing

Options A line stating that no consensus estimates are shown, because Kitalpha licenses no survey forecasts of releases A consensus column giving the figure a survey of economists expects Kitalpha's own estimate of the figure, derived from the impact score The previous release's figure, standing in for an expectation

Choose your confidence first.
5. This row names U.S. Census Bureau (Census) in its agency field and Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services in its indicator field. The two fields are kept separate because:

Source record: Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, August 2026 (as of 2026-09-16)

Before you answer: how confident are you? Sure Fairly sure Guessing

Options One agency publishes several indicators, and one economic concept can be measured by two agencies on two separate release schedules The agency is the body that computed the row's impact tier The agency field records which data vendor supplied the row to Kitalpha The agency field names the survey whose consensus the row shows

Choose your confidence first.
6. This row prints its release time as 08:30 EDT on 2026-09-16, in the agency's own zone. To read the same moment on a Beijing clock, the sound step is to:

Source record: Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, August 2026 (as of 2026-09-16)

Before you answer: how confident are you? Sure Fairly sure Guessing

Options Add the offset between the printed zone and Beijing as it stood on that date, reading the zone abbreviation to see whether daylight-saving time applied that day Use the printed time unchanged, since agencies publish at the same clock time everywhere Add a fixed twelve hours in every month, since Beijing is always twelve hours ahead of New York Read the reference period, which gives the local time of publication

Choose your confidence first.

Completion page

How to Read an Economic Calendar

Mastery demonstrated on the transfer task: (pass mark 80%) on

Course author: Daniel Zhang, Founder, Kitalpha Finance · Passed Level I of the CFA Program

This is an unsigned, unnamed completion page recorded on this device only. A named certificate requires an account, which is not yet available. General educational information only; not financial advice.

General Information Disclaimer

This content is factual, general information only. It is not financial product advice and is not personalised advice. It has been prepared without regard to any person’s objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on it you should consider whether it is appropriate to your circumstances and seek advice from an appropriately licensed financial adviser (AFS licensee).

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