Methodology

The daily close note

One note for every US trading day, written after the 4:00 pm New York close (1:00 pm on early closes). An automated research pipeline collects the session's figures into a fact pack: the closing level and daily change of each instrument, the Treasury curve, a risk score and breadth across the Andra Markets watchlist of US large caps. A language model then drafts the note's text from that fact pack only. When the model fails, the pipeline publishes a quantitative edition with the figures and no commentary.

How reports are produced

Andra Markets publishes three kinds of report, on this site: the close notes in the archive, the others in the Research Library:

• Daily close note: every US trading day, after the close, as described above.
• Weekly market review: once a week, after the last session of the trading week, on what moved across asset classes and what the week ahead holds.
• Research: deeper work on a theme, an asset class or a company, published when it is ready, with no fixed schedule.

Each report goes through the same steps. An automated pipeline collects the figures from the sources below into a verified data set, dated and sourced. The text is drafted from that data set only, with the help of a language model, and every figure in it is checked against the data set before publication. A report whose figures do not all match is held, reviewed and corrected before it is published, and its sources section says so. Opinions are marked as such and are Andra Markets' reading on the day of publication.

Data sources

• Prices and closes: Yahoo Finance, for US and international equity indices, sector ETFs, volatility indices, currencies, commodity futures, credit ETFs, digital assets and the watchlist stocks.
• Treasury yields, breakevens and real yields: FRED, which serves the US Treasury's daily par yield curve.
• Risk score and breadth: calculated by Andra Markets from the fact pack.

Each instrument is taken at its own official close, so an Asian or European index is that market's close, not a New York price. Every source the site uses, with what it feeds and how often it is read, is on the data sources page.

Timing

The pipeline runs after the US close. This site looks for a new note every half hour from 20:00 to 02:59 UTC, every day, and publishes each note as soon as it passes the checks below. FRED usually posts a day's Treasury curve late in the evening, so the curve in a note is often the previous session's; the note's chart says which close it shows.

Figure check

Before publication every figure in the text is compared with the session's fact pack. A figure the fact pack does not support fails the check. A note that fails is never published automatically: it is held for review, and if it is published after review its Sources section says that it did not fully pass the automated check.

What is held and why

A note is published straight away only when nothing below applies. Otherwise it is held for review, and published only once it has been read and approved:

• The date was not an NYSE trading day, or lies in a year whose holidays are not yet in the calendar: the session cannot be confirmed.
• The note is dated in the future, or the run finished before that day's close: its figures cannot be that session's.
• The figure check failed.
• The run was a test run, so its figures are not market data.
• A figure is from another session, for example a market that was closed that day: the note would mix dates.
• A section is missing or stops mid-sentence: the text was cut off.
• The text had to be read back from the report rather than from the pipeline's own text file.

A run whose files are missing or unreadable is rejected outright. There is one note per session: the newest run that passes is published and earlier runs that day are set aside. A published note that later fails a re-check is taken down.

Dashboards

The dashboards are refreshed at every deploy, before the US open and after the 8:30 and 10:00 am New York releases. Each shows the date of its own figures, never the date of the build.

• Sector heatmap: Select Sector SPDR ETFs (XLK, XLF, XLV, XLY, XLP, XLE, XLI, XLB, XLRE, XLU, XLC), price change between daily closes, from Yahoo Finance. Prices only; dividends are not included.
• Volatility term structure: Cboe VIX9D, VIX, VIX3M and VIX6M index closes, from Yahoo Finance. Levels are in volatility points (annualised percent).
• Global indices: S&P 500, Euro Stoxx 50, DAX 40, FTSE 100, Nikkei 225, Hang Seng, Bovespa and S&P/TSX closes, from Yahoo Finance.
• FX majors: Spot exchange rates (EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF, USD/CAD, AUD/USD), daily closes from Yahoo Finance. For pairs quoted against the dollar (EUR/USD) the sign is flipped so every bar reads as the dollar's move.
• Commodities: NYMEX WTI crude (CL) and COMEX gold (GC) front-month futures, daily closes, from Yahoo Finance. A session still trading is left out. The front month rolls to the next contract near expiry, which can add a small jump.
• Credit spreads: ICE BofA US High Yield and US Corporate option-adjusted spreads (BAMLH0A0HYM2, BAMLC0A0CM), daily, served by FRED. FRED carries ICE data with a short delay.
• Inflation and labour: US Bureau of Labor Statistics: CPI for all urban consumers, seasonally adjusted (CPIAUCSL), and total nonfarm payrolls (PAYEMS), served by FRED. A month without a release is left blank.
• Watchlist breadth: The Andra Markets watchlist of US large caps, closes from Yahoo Finance, as recorded in each published close note's verified figures. History starts with the first archived note.
• Cross-asset correlation: Daily closes from Yahoo Finance: S&P 500, iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT), ICE US Dollar Index, WTI crude and gold front-month futures. Log returns over the sessions all five traded.

Calendar

Every date and time comes from the publisher's own schedule: the BLS, BEA, Census Bureau, Department of Labor, Federal Reserve, TreasuryDirect, ISM and S&P Global, The Conference Board, the University of Michigan, the ECB, Eurostat, the Bank of England, the ONS, the Bank of Japan, China's National Bureau of Statistics and the People's Bank of China. Previous and Actual come from FRED, Eurostat, the ECB, the ONS, the Bank of England and TreasuryDirect; Actual is the figure as first printed, linked to its release. Earnings dates and EPS come from Yahoo Finance, with membership from State Street's SPY holdings and iShares' STOXX Europe 600 ETF holdings. The full list, with the date each was last read, is on the calendar page.

Limits

• No consensus forecasts: there is no reliable free source, so the calendar shows Previous and Actual only.
• Breadth covers the Andra Markets watchlist of US large caps, not the whole market.
• Price changes leave out dividends. Futures roll to the next contract near expiry, which can add a small jump.
• Economic figures are revised after release. Dashboards show the latest vintage; the calendar's Actual is the first print.
• FRED carries ICE credit spreads with a short delay, and the Treasury curve usually a day late.
• An earnings date marked Estimated may move, and a report time Yahoo Finance does not give is never guessed.
• When a source fails, its last good figures stay up with their own date until the next good read.
• The text of each note is machine-drafted. Its figures are checked against the fact pack; its reading of the session is commentary, not fact.

Charts and colour

Every chart states its source and date. Green marks a rise and red a fall, on charts and on every figure that shows a move, always with its + or − sign so colour is never the only cue. Lab diagrams marked Illustrative are not market data.

Corrections

A published note found to be wrong is taken down and the site rebuilds without it; it stays down, whatever later runs for that date bring, until it has been corrected and restored. Dashboards and the calendar correct themselves at the next good read of their source.

Questions