How to Use a News API for Financial Monitoring

Financial monitoring and intelligence platforms require vast amounts of data, especially news data. After all, news sources provide a wealth of financial information — from national and global economic trends to investment and competitor strategies. So today, we are pleased to present this short guide on how to use a news API for financial monitoring. With a news API, companies specializing in automated financial monitoring and intelligence platforms can easily get the data they need to enhance their offerings and better serve their customers.

How to use a news API for financial monitoring in four simple steps

The first thing you need to do is choose a news API for your financial monitoring use case, and this blog post highlights what to look for. Once you’ve reviewed and selected a news feed API, you’ll typically go through four basic steps to use it: 

Step #1: Sign up for an account

In general, you’ll need an API key or an access token to make calls with a news API. You’ll need to sign up for an account with the vendor to get your key or token.

Step #2: Create relevant keywords

Before you can create relevant keywords, you need to identify your use case and clearly define the goals you’d like to achieve with the news API. You can use a news feed API for various financial monitoring use cases, such as investor intelligence insights, competitive benchmarking, fraud detection, and financial due diligence.

Once you’ve identified your use case, you can break it down into representative keywords you can search for through a query. For example, one of your customers might want to see investment trends from the NYSE or NASDAQ. Keywords for this use case could include “NYSE,” “NASDAQ,” “investment,” “shares,” “accelerated buyback,” “accelerated share repurchase,” “all eyes on,” and “catalyst.” 

Step #3: Structure and run a query

Once you have all your relevant keywords, you can start building your query. The structure of the query depends on your keywords and the parameters you specify, such as category and language. For example, if you choose the Webz.io News API and want to monitor investment news posts for U.S. companies, you could include a site category value of “financial news” or “investing” in your query. You could also add a language value of “English.” Note that the parameters available vary from vendor to vendor.

Step #4: Customize the feed

A basic news API returns a feed of information based on the query you create. An advanced news API, however, includes filters that allow you to customize the feed generated from your query. You can also use filters to remove any noise or unwanted content from the feed. 

Let’s say you have an automated financial monitoring platform, and one of your clients is a venture capital firm looking to invest in technology startups. You could incorporate a news API with social and domain rank filters into your platform. The V.C. firm could then see which technology startups get the most attention on social channels, and any news posts about those startups would only come from reputable sites.  

Not all news APIs include the same filters, so you’ll want to make sure the one you choose has the filters you need.

Example: Running a financial monitoring query with Webz.io’s News API

For this example, let’s say you’re a financial intelligence company, and one of your customers wants to monitor negative economic trends in the U.S. Integrating the Webz.io News API with your platform enables you to help this customer monitor news sources for relevant financial information and provide accurate financial analysis.

You can use the Webz.io News API for financial monitoring in four easy steps:

Step #1: Sign up for a Webz.io account

Once you’ve created an account, you’ll be provided with an API key that you can use to run queries. You can sign up here.

Step #2: Create a list of relevant keywords

If the customer wants to monitor negative economic trends in the U.S., they could add relevant keywords to their query using “OR” statements. Keywords could include “FED interest rate,” “US unemployment,” “US economy,” “US inflation,” “yield curve,” and “recession.”

Step #3: Structure the query

Once you identify the keywords for your query, you’ll want to ensure you get relevant data. You can do that by limiting the query to news posts from websites operating within the U.S., or posts that contain one or more of your keywords in the title. Also, consider setting the domain rank to keep out low-quality content.

Here’s an example of what a query might look like for monitoring negative economic trends in the U.S.:

thread.title:(“FED interest rate” OR “US unemployment” OR “US economy” OR “US inflation” OR “yield curve” OR recession) domain_rank:<1000 site_type:news country:US is_first:true

Running this query will give you news data related to negative financial changes or trends in the United States.

Step #4: Customize the feed

We recommend adding one or more of the key filters we provide with our API to customize your feed further. These filters include social, domain rank, number of characters, language and country, and site category. Customizing your feed ensures you only get the data you want. 

Using the query from step #3, you could set the num_chars filter to “3000” so that the API only returns posts with a minimum of 3000 characters in the text. That’s about 500 words. You could also add the site_category filter so that posts come from one or more site categories, like “financial news” or “national news.”

thread.title:(“FED interest rate” OR “US unemployment” OR “US economy” OR “US inflation” OR “yield curve” OR recession) domain_rank:<1000 site_type:news country:US num_chars:>3000 (site_category: financial_news OR site_category: national_news) is_first:true

Running this query gives you posts from news sites in the U.S. in the categories of financial news or national news, and only posts with 3000+ characters in the text.

Once you’ve applied some filters and you’re satisfied with the data feed the query returns, you can copy the URL from the API endpoint into your platform or application to start consuming the continuous data feeds.

What kind of news API is right for your organization?

You have a lot of news APIs to choose from, and they are not all equal. Some return noisy data because they use basic scraping services to obtain it. Noisy data requires that you have the resources to clean and process it. Every news API has its own parameters, functionality, and features. If you plan on using a news feed API for financial monitoring, you’ll want to ensure it has what you need for that use case.

If you need help deciding which API to choose, check out our complete guide to selecting a news API. It explains several things about news APIs, including the two types, what to look for, and common limitations.

Boost financial monitoring with the Webz.io News API

Financial monitoring and intelligence platforms need massive volumes of high-quality news data to perform well. With the Webz.io News API, you get a continuous stream of high-quality real-time and historical news data from more than 190 countries — millions of daily financial news articles. Our API offers vast news coverage, enriched news data, and critical filters, enabling your customers to achieve their financial monitoring and intelligence goals. Maximize your reach with the Webz.io News API!

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