With Brexit and the FOMC announcement coming up pretty soon, is there official word on how to deal with news? My intent at the moment is to shut everything down for the 14th-15th and 28th. Does that seem like a good idea?

I avoid official statements - I fear to get teared and feathered for a bad advice. I won't shut down my own systems, but for reducing risk this might be not a bad idea. It's up to you.

I'm sure that you've justified your decision not to shut down your own systems, maybe that reasoning would make an interesting Financial Hacker post?

Not really, since there's no deep financial consideration behind it. It's just for curiosity, and for being able to compare results.

It would be interesting, though, to know if over time there's been any correlation to scheduled news events, to the (supposed) direction of those events, and if significant enough of a move to profit from them... Or on the other hand, if there have been significant enough adverse effects to close all (related?) trades prior to a scheduled news event...

Of course, as I understand it news history is hard to come by - so maybe this isn't feasible...

I think most of the news we're interested in can either be summed up generally into "sentiment" or "fundamentals". The former may be difficult to attain but the latter is available in public datasets I believe.

I've decided to leave everything running today for FOMC but I think I'll shut it down next week for Brexit.

Curiosity question: By "shut it down" do you mean:

Stop Trading but leave positions open (to prevent being whipsawed out)?

or

Close all open Trades & either Stop Trading or put Risk -> 0 to prevent opening new trades?

Thanks.

Panic slider?

The latter. If Brexit goes through I expect it to be about as bad as the CHF mess.

Well the trading range of GBPUSD today was ~1.5000 to ~1.3200 and there was a crash on m1 from 1.47513 to 1.43241.

How the Z Systems cope for those brave enough to leave them running? Were any holding any EUR or GBP?