9. The big picture: macro, markets and news

The news feeds (TOP, N, CN, NI, FIRST)

Gloom shows one stream of stories five ways: TOP ranks what matters, N shows everything as it arrives, CN filters a company, NI a topic, and FIRST only breaking news.

  • 4 min
  • 3 questions
  • Lesson 1 of 2

Why you would care

What is the news, and which of it matters? Hundreds of stories arrive every hour. Most are noise. A good news workflow keeps one ranked view open, checks company news before acting, and lets breaking alerts interrupt only when something big happens. It also means knowing how fresh your news is: on the free plan, very late.

The idea from scratch

Where market news comes from

  • Newsrooms reporting on companies, markets and politics.
  • Press wires: services that distribute companies' official announcements (results, deals, executive changes). US rules push companies to publish material news broadly (chapter 01, How information reaches prices: Reg FD).
  • Regulators and central banks publishing decisions.
  • Social posts from official accounts.

What Gloom adds to each story

Tickers
Companies the story is about
Category / topic code
M&A, policy, legal, regulatory, earnings, capital...
Sentiment
Whether the story reads positive or negative for its tickers
Score
An importance score (0 to 100) used to rank TOP
Breaking
An urgent flag for FIRST

These labels are assigned automatically and can be wrong: open the source when it matters.

Diagram: Newsrooms, wires, regulators, official posts leads to Tickers, category, sentiment, score; Tickers, category, sentiment, score leads to TOP: ranked; Tickers, category, sentiment, score leads to N: everything, newest first; Tickers, category, sentiment, score leads to CN: one company; Tickers, category, sentiment, score leads to NI: one topic; Tickers, category, sentiment, score leads to FIRST: breaking only.
Wide diagram: scroll sideways to see all of it.

See it in Gloom

Gloom screenshot: TOP: the most important recent stories ranked by score, with age, headline, tickers and category
TOP: the most important recent stories ranked by score, with age, headline, tickers and category. Historical example.

open themTOP, N, CN NVDA, NI ENERGY (codes: MNA, CB, ENERGY, REG, CRYPTO, EARN, IPO, or a sector), FIRST. Keys in N: Enter open, t ticker, y share; newer versions (after 0.15.8) add / search and p pop out.

  1. 14h U.S. 30-Year Treasury Yield Hits Highest Level… Policy 100: the top story, 14 hours old.
  2. 19h Delivery Hero Cancels CEO Exit Plans… DHER UBER M&A 100: tickers linked to the story.
  3. CATEGORY: Policy, M&A, Legal, Regulatory, Earnings, Capital.
  4. SCORE: the importance used for ranking; green marks the highest.
  5. TIME: the story's age (26m, 2h, 1d).
  6. Tickers in boxes (9969, 2222): non-US listings (Hong Kong, Saudi).

FIRST can send notifications for new breaking stories even when its pane is closed (pane settings).

Practice and recap

Try it3 tasks
  1. In the screenshot, which story is the newest? (26m: "10-Year Treasury Yield Hits 5.20%".)
  2. Which view would you open before trading NVDA? (CN NVDA.)
  3. Why might a story's sentiment label be wrong? (It is assigned automatically from the text and can miss context or irony.)
Common mistakes4 mistakes
  • Trading on headlines without opening the source.
  • Forgetting the 12-hour delay on the free plan.
  • Treating the score as a measure of price impact.
  • Keeping the full firehose (N) open all day and drowning.
Check yourself3 questions
  1. What is the difference between TOP and N?
  2. Which view shows only one topic?
  3. What is a press wire?
Answers
  1. TOP ranks stories by importance; N shows every story as it arrives.
  2. NI, with a topic code.
  3. A service that distributes companies' official announcements to many outlets at once.
Words in this lesson6 words
headline
The title line of a story.
press wire
A service distributing official company announcements.
topic code
A label grouping stories by subject.
news sentiment
Whether a story reads positive or negative for its tickers.
importance score
A 0-100 rank of how much a story matters.
breaking news
Urgent news flagged as it happens.

Educational material about reading market data, not investment advice.