Sources & methodology

This page explains where our data comes from and how our automated and data-driven products work.

Market data

Prices shown on MarketAlleys are cached snapshots from licensed or publicly available market-data providers (for example Finnhub, CoinGecko and other providers named next to the data). Every price display shows its source and the time it was captured. Data may be delayed and is refreshed on a schedule rather than tick-by-tick.

Where a provider plan does not license an index value directly, we may track the index through a widely held ETF that follows it (for example SPY for the S&P 500). When we do, the page says so (“via SPY proxy”) — ETF percentage moves closely track, but are not identical to, the underlying index.

We never display placeholder, simulated or stale values as if they were current. If data is unavailable, the page says so.

Calendars

The economic calendar combines provider data with official release schedules from institutions such as the Federal Reserve, BLS, BEA, ECB and Bank of England. Importance ratings (low, medium, high) describe typical market impact, not a prediction. Consensus is the provider’s forecast where available. The earnings calendar shows report dates, timing (before open / after close) and EPS and revenue estimates and actuals where our licensed provider supplies them. Companies sometimes change dates; confirm critical dates with the issuer.

Technical signals

Analyst Alley trend statuses are computed mechanically from verified daily closing prices:

• RSI (14) — Wilder’s relative strength index over 14 sessions.
• SMA 20 / 50 / 200 — simple moving averages of daily closes (100-day is used where fewer than 200 sessions are available).
• MACD (12, 26, 9) — the difference between 12- and 26-day exponential moving averages and its 9-day signal line.
• Trend status — bullish when the close is above the 50-day average, the 50-day is above the 200-day (or 100-day) and the MACD histogram is positive; bearish for the mirror image; neutral otherwise.

Signals require at least 60 sessions of data and are timestamped with the last close used. They describe the current trend; they are not forecasts or trading recommendations.

Automated reports

The Daily Brief, Premarket Brief, Closing Tape and Week Ahead are produced by the MarketAlleys Research Desk through a quality-controlled pipeline:

1. Discover and fetch — market snapshots, calendar events and headlines from primary sources (central banks, statistical agencies, SEC and company releases) and permitted metadata feeds.
2. Normalise facts into structured data with source and timestamp for every item; de-duplicate repeated stories and rank by market relevance.
3. Write from the structured facts only, using a language model where one is configured, or deterministic templates otherwise.
4. Verify — automated checks confirm that every hard number traces to the source data, that named events and entities appear in sources, that scheduled events are not described as having happened, and that there are no invented quotes, analysts or price targets, no unsupported causal claims and no investment-advice language. A second model may independently review the draft.
5. Similarity guard — the text is compared against source snippets so that we never reproduce other publishers’ wording.
6. Score and gate — reports need sufficient, fresh, authoritative sourcing and a quality score above our threshold with no critical flags. Anything that falls short is held for human review instead of being published.

Each automated report shows its publication time, the data timestamp, its sources and a link to this page. If you find an error, please request a correction.

Archive content

Articles published on our previous website have been migrated with their original URLs, text and publication dates intact.