I'm wondering what traders on this board use as their news source? I am not trading enough $$ to justify paying thousands for a bloomberg feed, but am getting frustrated seeing a big move in a stock price and not knowing the reason for 30 minutes. I know a lot of the breaking news is coming out of Bloomberg, but are there some secondary sources that are cheaper for an individual investor like me that can get me 90% of the way?
You do use a calendar of important data releases, don't you? At least 90% of violent moves happen around these times...
Firstly, you need to know when major economic/news events are due for the day. For that I use http://www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php which has color-coded "impact" flags so we look out for the red ones. Even though it says forex it is useful for equities/futures traders too. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/newsviewer refreshes their headlines automatically which is useful. http://www.bloomberg.com/tv/ you can tune in before the market opens but once trading begins I rather mute them to keep quiet. https://tradethenews.com/ is what many experienced traders use for realtime newsfeed as well as background "squawk". However I recently trialed http://ransquawk.com/ and find that their realtime newsfeed is equally fast (compared side-by-side TradeTheNews) and the audio is much clearer, not squawking on purpose. RANsquawk also allows you to continue using the service FREE but with 2mins delay. Yes, 2mins delay is not good for "realtime" but for FREE audio newsfeed it's better than nothing. TradeTheNews does not offer delayed public use. http://briefing.com/CorporateWebsite/Services/Traders.htm http://www.rttnews.com/Products/Services.aspx?Node=B14 are text-only realtime newsfeed for a lower cost than TradeTheNews (text + audio squawk).