The Events Calendar: How Not to Miss a Date

The main thing to understand about an events calendar: the date of the event itself almost never coincides with the date by which you need to act. A dividend goes to whoever was on the register on the record date, but the security had to be bought earlier, because of the settlement cycle. A broker accepts an application to take part in a bond put offer within a window that closes well before the buyback day. That is why a calendar is read not as a list of holidays but as a list of deadlines: every line has an event and a last moment at which an action still counts. You can open the full list in the events calendar, and look into a specific security on its own page: {{instrument:SBER}}.

What actually goes into the calendar

The exchange calendar brings together events of different kinds, and they should not be confused: they have different consequences for the holder of the security.

Corporate actions. A dividend record date, a shareholders' meeting, a share split or consolidation, a buyback, a delisting, a change of depository. Here there is usually a deadline, and it comes before the date of the event.

Debt payments. Coupons, amortisation, redemption, a put offer. A coupon arrives by itself and requires no action; a put offer does require action, and silence is treated as a decision. Dates for government debt are convenient to check in the OFZ section.

Issuer reporting. The publication date is known in advance; the content is not. The earnings calendar is there so that you do not open a position blind on the eve of a release, unaware that it is due tomorrow.

The macro calendar and the regulator's decisions. Key rate meetings, inflation, statistics. These are events that affect not one security but entire asset classes at once.

Technical market dates. Expirations of derivatives contracts, index rebalancings, trading holidays. These are the ones missed most often, and their consequences are very much monetary, from a change in liquidity to the forced closing of a position.

The dividend record date: the deadline comes before the event

This is the most common mistake. The calendar shows the date on which the register is fixed, the reader buys the security on that day and discovers that there is no payout. The mechanism is simple: the right to a dividend belongs to whoever is already the owner on the date the register closes, and you become the owner not at the moment of the trade but at the moment it settles. The trading regime moves the last day to buy to a trading day before the record date. This refers to trading days, not calendar days, so long weekends widen the gap.

Upcoming payouts: {{dividend_calendar|limit=5}}

It is also worth keeping in mind that a recommendation from the board of directors is not yet a payout. Until the shareholders' meeting has approved the amount, the date in the calendar is provisional. Tax on the amount received is withheld by the issuer, and the base is calculated under the rules of 13%. A detailed breakdown of the dates is in the article on the dividend calendar, and a summary of payouts is in the dividend calendar. The term in full: dividend calendar.

A bond put offer: silence is a decision too

For many corporate issues the issuer has the right to reset the coupon at the put date. If the new coupon does not suit you, the bond can be tendered for buyback, but only by submitting an instruction to your broker within the allotted window. The window is short and closes before the buyback date; the broker usually has its own internal deadline, earlier still than the exchange's. If you did not submit, you stay in the issue with the new coupon, whatever it turns out to be. This is exactly why a put offer matters more in the calendar than a coupon, even though it looks more modest.

{{callout:warning}}Check the deadline with your own broker, not just the date in the calendar: the internal cut-off for accepting instructions almost always comes earlier than the market one.{{/callout}}

Reporting: what matters is not the figure but the distance to the date

A reporting date is the point at which the market learns what it did not know. Before it, a position is built on expectations; after it, on fact. The practical point of the calendar here is to understand how much time remains before the repricing, and not to mistake for "cheapness" a multiple calculated on an outdated period: 3,77. After publication the metrics on the security's page are recalculated, and the picture can change without a single trade on your part.

Macro data: events that act on everything at once

A rate decision reprices bonds, equities and currency expectations alike. The date is known in advance, the content is not, and this is a convenient case for not making a forecast at all but simply not opening a position that will not survive the uncertainty. What exactly is released, and which of it really moves the market, is covered in the article on the macro data calendar.

How to build a routine

A procedure that works without sitting in the trading terminal every day:

Step 1. Filter the calendar by the securities you hold or are considering, otherwise the feed turns into noise.

Step 2. For each line, write down not the date of the event but the date of the action: the last day to buy, the last day to submit an instruction, the day before publication.

Step 3. Mark separately the events where inaction is in itself a choice: put offers, conversions, voluntary buybacks.

Step 4. Once a week, check against the news feed: provisional dates get moved, and the calendar learns about this from the issuer's announcements.

What the calendar will not show

An honest caveat: the calendar is a schedule, not a source of truth. The dates of future reports and recommended dividends remain expected until the issuer confirms them officially. Decisions to postpone a meeting, not to pay, or to change the terms of a buyback appear in the issuer's disclosures, and the calendar reflects them with the delay needed for processing. The broker's internal deadlines are not known to the calendar at all. So for events involving money and a deadline, the scheme is this: the calendar suggests what to look at; the confirmation comes from the issuer's announcement and your broker.

The general definition is in the term investor calendar; the other concepts are collected in the glossary.