How to configure Skip Days to protect your bot during high-risk events

Skip Days let you designate specific dates and event windows on which your bots will not trade. When a Skip Day is active, RelayDesk pauses signal processing for any bot with that configuration and resumes normal operation the following session. You can configure skips manually by date, by day of week, or let RelayDesk apply them automatically for US market holidays, FOMC meeting days, and major economic releases like CPI, NFP, and PCE.

Why this matters

Macro events, scheduled announcements, and special trading sessions create conditions where your bot's normal logic may not apply. Federal Reserve rate decisions, CPI releases, options expiration Fridays, and earnings dates for instruments your strategy trades all represent windows where signal behavior and market response can diverge from your bot's assumptions. Skip Days give you a defined, automated way to sit out those windows rather than manually pausing and reactivating bots each time.

Adding a Skip Day

Skip Days are configured per bot, in step 6 of the bot setup flow: Trading Schedule. You have the option specify Event-Based Skips across Holiday Weeks, FOMC Meeting Days, and Major Economic Releases in addition to specific days of the week (Monday through Friday).

Automatic US market holidays

RelayDesk can apply a pre-built list of US market holidays automatically. In the bot's Trading Schedule step, enable Skip Holiday Weeks. This covers NYSE and NASDAQ scheduled closure dates, including early close days. Early close days are treated as full Skip Days by default.

If your strategy trades instruments on non-US exchanges, the auto-apply list does not cover those holidays.

FOMC and macro event dates

RelayDesk can apply a pre-built list of FOMC meeting days automatically. In the bot's Trading Schedule step, enable Skip FOMC Meeting Days. This covers the 8 FOMC meeting days per year automatically.

For other economic releases (CPI, NFP, GDP, PCE, and PPI releases), you can enable Skip Major Economic Releases.

Reviewing and removing Skip Days

Open the Trading Schedule step in any bot's setup to see all the enabled event and day-based skips. To edit or disable a skip, disable or deselect it from the setup.

If a Skip Day arrives and the bot is already inactive for another reason (a risk limit triggered, a manual pause, or a broker disconnection), the skip logic does not interfere with that inactive state. The bot resumes its normal state on the following session, subject to whatever stopped it originally.