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Daily Market Scan Guide

Agent scan template — daily-level websearch and scraping workflow for macro, news-driven index catalysts, and market metrics. Fill all fields via live public sources; no pre-populated data.

Last run: 2026-08-01

Search each topic below and capture the latest release, actual vs. forecast, and the market reaction.

1.1 Scheduled Macro Releases (US)

Indicator Release Time (ET) Search Terms Latest Value Forecast Reaction
CPI / Core CPI 8:30, monthly "CPI [month] [year] actual forecast"
PPI 8:30, monthly "PPI [month] [year]"
Nonfarm Payrolls 8:30, monthly "NFP jobs report [month] [year]"
Unemployment Rate 8:30, monthly "unemployment rate [month] [year]"
FOMC Decision / Dot Plot 14:00, ~8x/year "FOMC statement [date] rate decision"
GDP (advance/revised) 8:30, quarterly "GDP [quarter] [year]"
PMI (Flash) 9:45, monthly "flash PMI [month] [year]"
ISM Manufacturing / Services 10:00, monthly "ISM [month] [year]"
Retail Sales 8:30, monthly "retail sales [month] [year]"
Jobless Claims 8:30, weekly "jobless claims week ending [date]"

1.2 Central Banks & Rates

Item Search Terms Latest
Fed funds target rate "fed funds target rate current"
2Y / 10Y / 30Y Treasury yields "treasury yields today 2yr 10yr 30yr"
Yield curve (10Y-2Y) "yield curve inversion 10yr 2yr latest"
ECB / BOJ / BOE decisions "[bank] rate decision [month] [year]"
Fed speakers "Fed speakers this week schedule"

1.3 FX, Commodities, Rates Context

Asset Search Terms Latest Move (%)
DXY "DXY dollar index today"
EUR/USD, USD/JPY "EUR/USD today" / "USD/JPY today"
WTI / Brent "crude oil price today"
Gold "gold price today"
Copper "copper price today"

2. News-Driven Equities Index Catalysts

Search for events that can move the broad indices (SPX, NDX, DJIA, RUT, VIX) on the day or week.

2.1 Catalysts to Scan Daily

Catalyst Search Terms Status (None / Upcoming / Hit) Impact Notes
Earnings season (mega-cap reporters) "earnings calendar today [date]" / "[ticker] earnings date"
Guidance / pre-announcements "[ticker] guidance cut OR raise"
M&A and buybacks "today merger announcement stock market"
Index rebalance (S&P / NDX quarterly) "S&P index rebalance [quarter] [year]"
Analyst upgrades/downgrades on index heavyweights "[ticker] analyst upgrade downgrade"
Geopolitics / tariffs / sanctions "tariff news today markets" / "[region] conflict markets"
Government shutdown / debt ceiling "debt ceiling news latest"
Option expiration (OPEX) "options expiration [date] index"

2.2 Top-of-Hour News Digest

Search terms to build a quick daily digest:

  • "stock market today [weekday]" (e.g. "stock market today friday")
  • "why is the stock market up OR down today"
  • "S&P 500 futures today"
  • "[Ticker] news today" for each index heavyweight (AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, AMZN, GOOGL, META, TSLA, BRK.B)

3. Market Metrics Methodologies

For each metric, capture value, prior close, and note the methodology used to compute it.

3.1 Metrics Table

Metric Methodology Latest Prior Source
VIX Implied vol of 30-day SPX options
Put/Call ratio Equity options volume, CBOE
Advance/Decline (breadth) NYSE advancing minus declining issues
New highs / new lows NYSE 52-week highs vs lows
S&P 500 above 50-DMA / 200-DMA % of constituents
10Y-2Y spread Yield curve slope
Credit spreads (HY-OAS) ICE BofA High Yield OAS
Fear & Greed Index CNN composite of 7 inputs
S&P 500 P/E (fwd and trailing) Price / EPS estimates
Earnings yield vs 10Y E/P minus 10Y yield

3.2 Index Level Data

Index Level Daily Move (%) 5D (%) 1M (%) YTD (%)
S&P 500 (SPX)
Nasdaq 100 (NDX)
Dow Jones (DJIA)
Russell 2000 (RUT)
VIX

4. Yahoo Finance Scraping

Public scraping targets on Yahoo Finance. Use for daily-level index and stock data. No login required; keep request volume low and add delays.

4.1 Quote / QuoteSummary (Spark, live quote)

  • Endpoint: https://query1.finance.yahoo.com/v7/finance/quote?symbols=^GSPC,^IXIC,^DJI,^RUT,^VIX,AAPL
  • Fields: regularMarketPrice, regularMarketChangePercent, fiftyTwoWeekHigh, fiftyTwoWeekLow, regularMarketVolume, marketCap
  • Notes: Request per symbol or small batches; the v7 endpoint occasionally needs a crumb/cookie — the v8 quote endpoint and spark endpoint are more scraping-friendly.

4.2 Historical / Daily Bars

  • Endpoint: https://query1.finance.yahoo.com/v8/finance/chart/^GSPC?range=1mo&interval=1d
  • Fields: timestamp, open, high, low, close, volume, adjclose
  • Use for: index levels, daily moves, 5D/1M/YTD returns, 50/200-DMA computation.

4.3 QuoteSummary (fundamentals)

  • Endpoint: https://query1.finance.yahoo.com/v10/finance/quoteSummary/AAPL?modules=defaultKeyStatistics,financialData,summaryDetail
  • Fields: trailingPE, forwardPE, beta, earningsYield via defaultKeyStatistics, dividendYield.
  • Notes: The v10 endpoint requires a crumb and session cookie from https://fc.yahoo.com. If blocked, fall back to the v7 quote endpoint or use finnhub/stooq mirrors.

4.4 Screener (Yahoo Finance stock screeners)

  • URL: https://finance.yahoo.com/screener/predefined/most_actives (HTML, needs parsing)
  • Use for: most active / gainers / losers as a breadth proxy.

4.5 Scraping Rules

  • Rate limit: max ~1 request per 1–2s per session, short sessions; rotate query1 / query2 hosts.
  • User-Agent: set a realistic browser User-Agent; many 401/404 errors are UA-related.
  • Timeouts: wrap in try/except; retry once with backoff; skip and annotate on repeated failure.
  • Fallbacks: Stooq CSV (https://stooq.com/q/d/l/?s=^spx&i=d), FRED API for macro series, https://www.wsj.com/market-data HTML for indices.

5. Daily Workflow Checklist

  1. Pre-market (US): futures, overnight Asia/EU moves, earnings calendar, scheduled macro releases for the day.
  2. Macro scan: fill section 1 tables via websearch; note release times to re-check at 8:30 / 10:00 / 14:00 ET.
  3. Catalyst scan: fill section 2.1; flag anything with "Upcoming" or "Hit" status.
  4. Metrics scrape: Yahoo Finance endpoints from section 4 for section 3 tables.
  5. Digest: 2-3 sentences on what moved the indices and why, with links to top sources.
  6. Archive: save as daily-market-scan-[yyyy-mm-dd].md in this section; record machine-readable data as metadata/market/daily-snapshot-[yyyy-mm-dd].yaml following the schemas in metadata/market/schemas/ (one schema per data type: macro, catalyst, market_metric, news; composed by daily_snapshot.yaml).

6. Scan Instructions

  • Expected volume: ~15–25 websearches + ~5–10 Yahoo Finance requests per daily run.
  • Priority order: macro calendar → index catalysts → metrics → scrape confirmations.
  • Tolerance: prefer official sources (BLS, Treasury, CBOE, exchange) over blog summaries; skip 404s; annotate stale data.
  • Date stamp every data point. Without a date, a market figure is unreliable.
  • All content in English. Translate non-English sources.
  • Output: this guide filled with data becomes the daily scan report; or write a separate daily-market-scan-[yyyy-mm-dd].md companion file.