Data & Methodology
How our data is updated, processed and delivered.
How each dataset is updated
Every major page shows when its data was last updated and how often it refreshes; economic pages also name the agency that publishes the data. The line links here. If a dataset is later than its schedule, the page says so instead of showing an old time as current. For a live check of our prices against an independent reference right now, see data status.
Markets, screeners and your account
| Data | Source | How often | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live quotes | Exchange price feed (streamed for actively watched US stocks; other listings polled) | Real time for streamed stocks; other listings polled every 1 to 30 minutes | Continuous stream; tickers with alerts polled every minute, all others every 30 minutes |
| Stock screener fundamentals | Company financial statements, with live prices overlaid | Rebuilt every weekday after the close | Weekdays 9:00 PM ET |
| ETF & fund screener | Fund holdings and performance data | Rebuilt every weekday night | Tue-Sat 1:40 AM UTC (the evening after each trading day) |
| S&P 500 heatmap | Exchange price feed | Every 5 minutes on trading days | Weekdays every 5 minutes (ET), plus a 9:32 AM opening snapshot |
| Crypto heatmap | Crypto exchange prices | Every 5 minutes, around the clock | Every 5 minutes, 7 days a week |
| Financial news | Publisher feeds; a story publishes only once two or more independent outlets report it | Checked every 15 minutes | Every 15 minutes, 24/7 |
| Market feed | SEC EDGAR filings and Form 4s, analyst rating changes, press releases | Checked every 2 minutes | Every 2 minutes; signal detectors every 5 minutes and nightly |
| Economic indicators | Federal Reserve, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census Bureau and other issuing agencies | Each series updates on its official release schedule; we check for new releases every 5 minutes, 8 AM to 7 PM ET on weekdays | Release ingest weekdays every 5 minutes (12:00-22:00 UTC); macro snapshot twice daily |
| Earnings calendar | Company-announced report dates and results | Calendar refreshed hourly | Hourly (data and page cache both 1 hour) |
| Institutional holdings (13F) | SEC EDGAR Form 13F filings | Funds file quarterly, up to 45 days after quarter end; we refresh holdings daily | Holdings pages refresh every 24 hours; the market feed picks up new 13F filings every 2 minutes |
| Congress trades | House and Senate periodic transaction reports | Checked every 15 minutes; members may disclose up to 45 days after a trade | Page and provider cache refresh every 15 minutes; feed alerts ingest every 30 minutes, 8 AM-8 PM ET weekdays |
| Insider trades | SEC Form 4 filings | Checked hourly; insiders must file within 2 business days of a trade | Page refresh hourly; feed ingest every 10 minutes, 10:00-22:00 UTC weekdays |
| Top analysts board | Analyst price targets and ratings | Rebuilt weekly; upside is recomputed against the live price | Sundays 2:00 AM UTC |
| Growth leaders | Analyst revenue and EPS estimates | Rebuilt weekly | Sundays 3:00 AM UTC |
| AI stock ratings | Computed by Stock Alarm from earnings, price strength, sales and profitability, volume flow and sector strength | Recomputed every weekday after the close | Weekdays 9:00 PM ET (with the screener rebuild) |
| Power rankings | Computed by Stock Alarm from 26-week relative strength against the S&P 500 and each sector | Built on weekly closes through the latest Friday; re-run every weekday night | Weekdays 10:15 PM ET; the as-of date moves once a week |
| Market regime | Computed by Stock Alarm from index and sector moving averages | Recomputed every weekday after the close | Weekdays 9:00 PM ET (with the screener rebuild); regime history snapshot weekdays 21:00 UTC |
| Market radar | Public attention signals (app-store charts, Wikipedia pageviews, news wire) | Sources checked hourly to daily | Hourly and daily source readers; tracker weekdays after the close |
| Company ecosystems | Earnings-call transcripts and SEC filings; every relationship carries the quoted sentence that proves it | Relationships re-verified in periodic reviews; stock quotes are live | Manual verification runs (scripts/verify-ecosystem-edges.js) |
| Your alerts & portfolio | Your saved alerts and holdings, priced with live quotes | Prices update in real time; your data saves instantly | Continuous |
Stock quote pages
| Data | Source | How often | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stock news | Stock Alarm news wire (stories confirmed by two or more outlets) plus publisher headlines | Refreshed every 5 minutes; wire stories every 15 minutes | Page and headline fetch cached 5 minutes; news wire job every 15 minutes, 24/7 |
| Fundamental charts | Company financial statements and analyst estimates | Refreshed daily; a new quarter appears after the company files | Page cached 24 hours |
| Trailing metrics | Trailing-twelve-month metrics from company filings | Refreshed daily | Page cached 24 hours; metrics fetch cached 1 hour |
| Financial statements | Income statements, balance sheets and cash flows from company 10-Q and 10-K filings | Refreshed daily; a new quarter appears after the company files | Page and statement fetches cached 24 hours |
| Earnings history | Company-reported results, consensus estimates and earnings call transcripts | Earnings history refreshes daily; a new report appears within about 2 days | Page cached 24 hours; earnings history fetch cached 24 hours |
| Fair value | Reported earnings, analyst estimates, daily prices and dividends; fair value computed by Stock Alarm | Page refreshed every 6 hours; earnings history daily | Page cached 6 hours; earnings history fetch cached 24 hours |
| Cash flow valuation | Company financial statements and analyst estimates; the model runs when you open it | Inputs refreshed daily | Valuation inputs cached 24 hours |
| Peer comparison | Industry peer list; peer fundamentals from the Stock Alarm screener | Fundamentals rebuilt every weekday after the close | Page cached 24 hours; screener rebuild weekdays 9:00 PM ET |
| Analyst ratings and targets | Analyst rating changes and price targets; price history from our quote feed | Page refreshed hourly; analyst feeds refreshed daily | Page cached 1 hour; rating and target fetches cached 24 hours |
| Institutional holders | SEC Form 13F holdings | Funds file quarterly, up to 45 days after quarter end; this page refreshes weekly | Page and holder fetch cached 7 days |
| Price history | Daily open, high, low, close and volume | Refreshed daily after the close | Page and price fetch cached 24 hours |
| Earnings call transcripts | Earnings call transcripts from company quarterly conference calls | Refreshed daily; a new transcript appears within about 2 days of the call | Page cached 24 hours; transcript fetch cached 24 hours |
Sectors, indexes and themes
| Data | Source | How often | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sector radar | Exchange price feed for the 11 S&P 500 sector ETFs; breadth from the S&P 500 heatmap snapshot | ETF prices stream live; breadth every 5 minutes on trading days | Breadth snapshot weekdays every 5 minutes (ET), plus a 9:32 AM opening snapshot |
| Relative strength | Daily closing prices | Daily closes; history refreshed once a day | Provider history cached 24 hours; page data cached 1 hour |
| Theme trends | Computed by Stock Alarm from constituent price trends, grouped into themes | Rebuilt every weekday morning before the open; the page can take up to a day to pick up a new build | Weekdays 10:30 UTC (6:30 AM ET in summer, 5:30 AM ET in winter); page and blob caches up to 24 hours |
| Theme heatmap | Exchange price feed, aggregated by theme | Every 5 minutes during market hours | Weekdays every 5 minutes, 13:00-21:55 UTC |
| Macro themes | Measured by Stock Alarm: 3 years of weekly returns regressed against each driver, with trend and volume state from the screener | Rebuilt weekly | Saturdays 9:00 UTC |
Economy
| Data | Source | How often | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economic calendar | Official release schedules of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census Bureau and Federal Reserve | Rebuilt daily | Daily 5:00 AM UTC (/api/cron/macro-releases) |
| Economic indicator catalog | Federal Reserve, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census Bureau, U.S. Treasury and other issuing agencies | A reference list of series; each series page shows its latest reading | Static catalog; series data is fetched when a series page opens (cached 1 hour) |
| U.S. Treasury holdings | U.S. Treasury (Treasury International Capital system) | Published monthly, about two months behind; we re-read it at most every 30 days | On page request; Treasury file cached 30 days, page cached 24 hours |
| Bonds and yield curve | U.S. Treasury (yields and curve spreads), Federal Reserve (fed funds), ICE Data Indices and Moody's (credit spreads) | Rebuilt daily | Daily 2:00 AM UTC, including weekends (bond-snapshot-daily) |
| Inflation (CPI and PCE) | Bureau of Labor Statistics (CPI) and Bureau of Economic Analysis (PCE) | Released monthly; we check for new data hourly | On page request; data cached 1 hour |
| Consumer finances | Federal Reserve, Bureau of Economic Analysis and University of Michigan | Released monthly or quarterly per series; we check for new data hourly | On page request; data cached 1 hour |
| Oil markets | U.S. Energy Information Administration; WTI and Brent cards use live prices | Inventories weekly, spot prices daily; we check for new data hourly | On page request; EIA data cached 1 hour |
| Central bank balance sheets | Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan; every other bank is a published estimate set in January 2026 (marked Estimate, no trend shown); GDP from the World Bank | Snapshot rebuilt weekly; pages refresh as soon as it is rebuilt | Sundays 00:00 UTC (/api/cron/central-banks-snapshot), which revalidates the pages; page and data caches 1 day as a fallback |
| Central bank balance sheet (per bank) | Federal Reserve (weekly), European Central Bank (weekly) and Bank of Japan (monthly), converted to U.S. dollars at the latest exchange rate; other banks are published estimates | Each series on its own release schedule (the Bank of Japan series is monthly and about a month behind); read by the weekly snapshot | Sundays 00:00 UTC snapshot; no lateness check here because each series publishes on its own lag |
Research and investor pages
| Data | Source | How often | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recent 13F filings | SEC EDGAR Form 13F filings | Checked every 15 minutes | Provider fetch and page data cache both 15 minutes |
| News story pages | Publisher reporting, corroborated by two or more independent outlets; summary written from those articles | Rewritten when the story materially grows; the wire is checked every 15 minutes | News wire every 15 minutes, 24/7; the 20 top stories' pages are refreshed on every run |
| Market Reads | Written by Stock Alarm from live market data pulled at publish time; every figure cites its data pull | Three editions each trading day: 9:00 AM, 12:00 PM and 4:30 PM ET | Weekdays 13:00/14:00, 16:00/17:00 and 20:30/21:30 UTC (paired runs keep the ET slot across daylight saving) |
Times on the site are US Eastern. “Updated” is when we last produced or checked the data; filings and holdings pages instead show the date of the newest filing, because the filer’s own deadline (2 business days for Form 4, 45 days for 13F and congressional reports) matters more than our refresh time.
Data Processing
Raw market data is processed through our infrastructure to calculate indicators, check alert conditions, and deliver notifications.
- •Validation — Data is checked for anomalies and errors
- •Normalization — Adjusted for splits, dividends, and corporate actions
- •Calculation — Technical indicators computed using standard methodologies
- •Monitoring — Continuous comparison against user alert conditions
Technical Indicator Methodology
All technical indicators are calculated using industry-standard formulas:
Simple Moving Average (SMA)
Arithmetic mean of closing prices over N periods
Exponential Moving Average (EMA)
Weighted average with exponential decay, recent prices weighted more heavily
Relative Strength Index (RSI)
Momentum oscillator comparing average gains vs losses over 14 periods
MACD
Difference between 12-period and 26-period EMA, with 9-period signal line
Alert Latency
When a market condition triggers your alert, notification delivery typically occurs within seconds. Factors affecting latency include:
- •Price feed latency (streamed tickers update within seconds; polled tickers every 1 to 30 minutes)
- •Processing time for condition evaluation
- •Notification delivery channel (push, email, phone call)
- •Device and network conditions
Limitations
While we strive for accuracy and reliability, users should understand:
- •Market data may be delayed for certain securities or exchanges
- •Technical indicators are based on historical data and don't predict futures
- •Alert delivery depends on network conditions and device availability
- •Data errors, while rare, may occur