Trader News skill

trader-news

A position you hold can change in a minute: an earnings miss, a CEO leaving, a lawsuit, a restatement. This skill reads the two feeds that carry those first for each of your stocks and tells you only what is new.

Tool in this folder (standard library Python, no keys):

python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/news.py" --help

What it reads and writes

• Your tickers: --tickers, else trader/portfolio.json positions, else trader/targets.json weights (so it works right after /trader-copycat).
• Headlines: Yahoo Finance's public headline RSS, one feed per ticker (https://feeds.finance.yahoo.com/rss/2.0/headline?s=AAPL&region=US&lang=en-US).
• Filings: SEC EDGAR's company Atom feed, 8-K by default (--forms 8-K,10-Q for more). Needs the SEC User-Agent from trader/config.json (sec_user_agent) or SEC_USER_AGENT. Without it, filings are skipped with a note and headlines still run.
• Writes trader/state/news.json: what has been shown (kept 30 days) and the CIK for each ticker, so every item appears once.

The rules

• Headlines are leads, not facts. Before telling the user something happened, open the story or the filing and read it. Quote the source and link it. Never summarise a paywalled story you could not read: say it is paywalled.
• Filings beat headlines. If an 8-K and a headline disagree, the 8-K is what the company told the SEC.
• Say what it touches. Every item lists the tickers it touches (the feed it came from plus any of your tickers or company names it mentions) and tags (earnings, analyst, legal, deal, capital, people, risk). Filings marked ! carry an important 8-K item: earnings results (2.02), an officer change (5.02), an impairment (2.06), a delisting notice (3.01), past financials no longer reliable (4.02), bankruptcy (1.03) or a cyber incident (1.05).
• No predictions. Report what was published. Never say what the stock will do next.

Steps

1. Run the check:

   python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/news.py"
   python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/news.py" --tickers AAPL AXP GOOGL KO BAC --hours 24
   

   Exit code 1 means nothing new. --all shows items already seen, --json gives everything machine-readable, --dry-run leaves the state alone.

2. Read the items that matter: every ! filing, every item tagged earnings, legal or risk, and anything touching the biggest positions first.

3. Write a short brief: per ticker, what happened, the source and link, and one line on why it matters to this portfolio (its weight, from trader/targets.json or trader/portfolio.json).

4. If a story might change the plan (an 8-K 4.02 restatement, a delisting notice), say so and suggest /trader-analyst for the numbers or /trader-risk to recheck pending orders. Never act on a headline alone.

To run it on a schedule, use /loop 30m /trader-news during market hours or a scheduled task each morning.

Example: the reel's portfolio

The user copied Berkshire's top 5 (AAPL, AXP, GOOGL, KO, BAC). On Tuesday 2026-10-13 the check shows Apple headlines first ("Apple Introduces HomeView Smart Home Hub, Other Gadgets", "Judge orders OpenAI to turn over hiring records in Apple trade secrets case", tagged legal), Coca-Cola dividend pieces, and from SEC: Apple's 8-K of 2026-07-30 (item 2.02, earnings results) and Coca-Cola's of 2026-07-28 (2.02). Brief: "Apple (your biggest position, 30.7%) launched a $299 smart home hub; a court ruling in its trade secrets case against OpenAI. No new filings from your five companies this week." When a ticker has no news, say so rather than padding the brief.

What it never does

• Never invents or embellishes a story, a quote or a number.
• Never trades on news, and never tells the user to buy or sell because of a headline.
• Never hammers a server: one request per feed per ticker, a pause between SEC calls, and SEC's 10 requests a second limit stays far away.

Safety

Education and tooling, not financial advice. This skill only reads and reports. Nothing places an order except /trader-broker, after /trader-risk passes and the user types an explicit yes for that order.