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While I'm no short term trader (or even a day trader), I imagine it is of high importance to these people that they hear about significant stock related news as early as possible. This would allow them to respond before competing traders do.

But where do these people get their news, especially those items specifically related to publicly listed companies (rather than a market or an economy as a whole)?

I imagine these are all sources on the internet, since other means would provide significant delay.

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I work for a fund management company and we get our news through two different service providers Bloomberg and Thomson One. They don't actually source the news though they just feed news from other providers
Professional solutions (costs ranging from $300-1500+ USD/month/user)

Bloomberg is available as a windows install or via Bloomberg Anywhere which offers bimometric access via browser. Bloomberg is superb and their customer support is excellent but they aren't cheap.

If you're looking for a free amateur solution for stock news I'd take a look at

There are dozens of other tools people can use for day trading that usually provide news and real time prices at a cost but I don't have any direct experience with them

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  • Thanks for your input. Could you elaborate on the "but they just feed news from other providers"? Does this mean that 1) these other providers delay their own news to get a premium from Bloomberg/Thomson or 2) these other providers publish their news at their own sites at the same time as they transfer it to Bloomberg/Thomson.
    – Tom
    Dec 30, 2011 at 18:49
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    It'll be a mixture depending on the agreements Bloomberg has with it's news/research providers (there are over 1200). Timeliness of news is important but more often than not it will already be worked into the stock price, only unxepected news will trigger price moves. An amateur day trader doesn't have much hope of competing with the automated execution engines/institutional traders in terms of reacting to news that will cause a price change, in all likelyhood the price will have moved or be well on the way by the time you've read and digested the headline
    – David Hayes
    Dec 31, 2011 at 2:29
  • I'm actually performing linguistic analysis as well so there is usually no need for me to read the article. It seems like noone really knows what these contracts look like, though.
    – Tom
    Dec 31, 2011 at 17:25
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There's a whole industry devoted to this.

Professionals use Bloomberg terminals. High Frequency Traders have computers read news feeds for them. Amateurs use trading consoles (like Thinkorswim) to get headlines quickly on stocks.

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    @Tom. If you want access to the "news sources" you buy the hardware - it's a proprietary system, and the system includes both the info and the access to that info.
    – gef05
    Dec 24, 2011 at 0:39
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    @Tom "look for the earliest stock related news?" To give the people answering your question some credit, you did ask how they get the earliest news. Like duff mentioned different sources for each level of trader, maybe you want to specify further. Are you just looking for the average joe information? There are many systems and applications dedicated to short/day traders ranging from hundreds to couple thousand/month for access. Short/day traders also trade on technical analysis of stocks.
    – Troggy
    Dec 25, 2011 at 18:41
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    @Tom, and where do you think these guys get the news? You think every press secretary calls every news outlet separately and tells them the news? No. A PR goes into the Bloomberg (Or Reuters, AP, or others), and all the news outlets get it from there and reprint. You want to get the earliest news? You don't wait for the reprints, you get the Bloomberg console for yourself.
    – littleadv
    Dec 27, 2011 at 8:46
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    Bloomberg makes a business of being the first to get a lot of snazzy market-moving news to people FAST. Like, immediately. Consumer-oriented news sites are allowed to take their good old time: if your headline is 60 seconds late hitting the website because the journalist wanted to look up an appropriate .jpg file to go with it, nobody cares, but your trading opportunity is gone. Moreover CNN is not the first place you're going to hear a lot of market-moving news.
    – user296
    Dec 29, 2011 at 2:35
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    Also, for reference, the Bloomberg terminal can do things like this (scroll down for picture): bloomberg.com/professional/commodities
    – user296
    Dec 29, 2011 at 2:39

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