News scraper?

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by SweetMoney, Aug 19, 2020.

  1. Hi guys,

    We all like to discuss and read news with comments etc.

    I'm a single father software engineer who wants to start my own startup. Spent 15 years working on the trading floors with traders.

    Question: would you suggest me develop a product which scans most important news sources (defined by a trader) and deliver it to that trader.
    The difference between this "NewsScraper" and say Bloomberg or Thomson is that they just bombard you with news flow. My software will be scanning market moving articles and tweets. This is not for HFT! This is so a trader controls and surveillance his position and market he's in.



    I'm thinking about making it free (ad based) or/and subscription based.

    Please forgive me if it's a wrong topic for this question. I'm very new to this forum.
     
  2. Bad_Badness

    Bad_Badness

    It is almost as if it could be after the fact. I.e. an index moving is the filter to find the news event that should be reported. You would have about 5 seconds to find and report to make it useful. Any faster is not being that useful for the people who you are targeting; because the ones that already known (not targeted), have a feed already or know what to watch.

    But to be actionable, is the key. Is this a shock-bounce or a trend starting, e.g.

    Personally, I never look for the "answer" to why something is moving, I just trade it or step aside, because I don't have such a feed that is highly filtered. Squawk box was the closest thing I used.

    Cheers

    PS: I worked software development too.
     
  3. maxinger

    maxinger

    Unfortunately most market movement is not due to economic data release.
    In fact, market could move due to unknown / hidden / secret news.

    even for major economic data release,
    most of the time, market hardly move after data release.

    after many years, I found that the best
    solution is to glue backside to the trading chair, and eyes
    to computer screens for many many hours

    regardless of whether there will be news / announcement /
    economic data release / presidential twitt / news conference .....

    There is simply no short cut.

    No point even to subscribe to paid news services.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2020
    apdxyk and toon like this.
  4. Thank you very much for such great answers! They are all very valuable to me.

    I'll try to explain more what I meant.

    From my experience working with professional traders they read tons of news articles, experts etc,, so they can infer their conclusions. One good case from top of my head was Muddy Waters report. So I was a witness for many traders who were short Luckin coffee hours or days before news became headlines.

    There are a few hundred sources like that Citron, DealReporter, Nikkei, wsj, business insider, Barron's, FT etc.

    So my value would be to deliver in almost real time analytical pieces about your interests.

    Let's say you have interest in oil or gas:
    1. You would create a topic of interest, then for that topic enter keywords, entity names or stock symbols.
    2. System is scanning all really important sources and gives you information about articles it found in near real-time.
    3. You read/skim articles and then make decisions should you continue holding that position or not.

    Basically it saves you ton of time. You don't have to switch back and forth between CNBC, wsj, nyt, Bloomberg, Twitter etc. You have everything in front of you. You know what's going on with your underlying companies/markets. You know what real market movers say. Basically it does for you the same stuff you do now. but now you do it manually, unsystematically and probably with confirmation bias.

    I know it's needed because I was previously an author of such systems in very top prop trading firms in NYC.

    But again I am just asking your fair opinion here.

    Thank you very much again
     
  5. Hey buddy thanks for your answer. What kind of software engineering you've done? What tech stack ?
     
  6. maxinger

    maxinger

    one good example is Taiwan index futures.
    5 hours ago, It dropped massively by 6%.
    This is the type of market where you don't want to miss the
    opportunity.

    There was no warning, no news about it
    (other than the F15 sales news few days ago).
    Even until now, there is still no news about it.

    similarly on 3 Aug 20, Natural Gas futures price went up massively.
    News came out many days later.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2020
  7. That's exactly what I meant: the software would simplify and organize that process.
    The problem with all the news providers that they bombard teaders with irrelevant news noise. Look at Interactive Brokers or other brokers news feed, or Bloomberg terminal. The news flow is endless to the point where it just gets ignored. Important stuff missed in that waterfall. Then some outlet like CNBC, Bloomberg etc. pick it up and it becomes a story.

    Again: it's not about competition with the monsters like wsj, CNBC. No. It's about surveillance of all of them and more and getting the feeling about your holdings.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2020
  8. Very true! But using the software I am planning to develop, you could have ALL information about Taiwan and especially Analytics about this market and could have predicted that drop. Or at least became market neutral or play on the volatility jump.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2020
  9. qlai

    qlai

    So in prop setting, they can subscribe to all the news feeds and distribute it to all their traders for no or minimal fee. If I subscribe to your service, do I need to subscribe to all these news/letters?
     
  10. El Trado

    El Trado

    What are you going to do that I cannot already do with Inoreader, which is a great RSS-reader, news-letter reader, twitter-filter ++ ?
     
    #10     Aug 20, 2020