1) For individual traders, what's the fastest breaking news service available, and at what price? 2) How much slower is it compared to those provided for institutional desks?
Are you looking for audio news or news that you have to read? Also, do you trade futures, forex or equities?
Futures mostly, not so much interested in individual equities (other than something like GM debt downgrade); text is fine.
I used to use Trade The News (TTN). They are expensive, often late and cover equities only. I scalp so I can't stop to read news items as they come out. I have switched to www.NeedToKnowNews.com and have been with them since last summer. It is a relatively new service, so there are some growing pains. They are the best audio news service for futures though. The great thing about them is that they are very accessible and very responsive. Cost is around $100 per month or so. They have certainly been instrumental and keeping me ahead of the curve this year on a few trades. I prefer them over most other services. If you want the fastest news (institutional quality), you are looking at a Bloomberg terminal at $1700 per month.
I have a Bloomberg terminal and a internet feed from Market News. The latter gets all the economic stats as fast as my Bloomberg terminal and just costs about $200 a month.
Which datafeed version of Market News do you use? I often saw the mkts moves before the economic number releases, so I suspect that on critical moment Bloomberg & Reuters are a bit ahead.
reuters is another expensive option - but as most traders know who have their eyes peeled, often the move starts (seconds) before the figure is released anyhow.
They released at the same time although on occasions one of the news services will be a second or so quicker than the other. However sometimes it is MNI being the first, other times Reuters or Bloomberg. I have my screenes configured so that I can view all the news sources at the same time for this very reason. It is sometimes a split second quicker to analyse them on Bloomberg as they have the page with the forecasts on it - when the figure comes out they drop the figure in the right place. This is obviously that bit easier on the eye than looking at the MNI or Bloomberg scrolling news, as you have to quickly spot the relevant line. (hope that makes sense) Market news is awful for all the PMI surveys though - for some reason they don't cover them. Not sure what version of market news it is. I dont go in via the URL though but instead through a desktop icon. If I look at the news via the URL I agree it is a second or so slower. Like anything though do a trial yourself - would be interested in any other experiences as a fast news feed is critical to my trading. Dow Jones via the web was too slow. I liked the audio tradethe news but was too equity and US based to be of much use to me.