Abstract Tick data and newswire searches are used to find events that led to large and rapid price changes in a stock future, a bond future, and three exchange rate futures. Knowledge of these events may be useful in future work. They have the advantages that they are truly surprises and that the sign of their effect on each financial instrument is known. The events are used in this study to analyze the effects of three types of events (monetary, price, and real) on the five instruments.