Data sources and methodology
Last updated 29 September 2026
Ledgerline is built on one rule: we never invent data. Every price, rate, statistic and headline comes from a named source, carries the time it refers to and the time we fetched it, and is labelled with its status. When a source is unavailable we show the last validated value marked STALE, or Data unavailable — never a substitute number.
Market data sources
| Source | Used for | Refresh | Status label |
|---|---|---|---|
| CoinLore | Crypto prices, 24h change, market cap, volume, supply; global crypto stats | Every 2 min (top 10), 6–20 min (ranks 11–100) | LIVE when < 5 min old |
| CoinGecko | Crypto historical charts; independent cross-check of BTC/ETH prices | On demand, cached 5 min – 7 days | Chart / cross-check |
| CNBC quote service | US stocks, ETFs, world indices, front-month futures, bond yields | Every 10 min in session, 20–60 min otherwise | DELAYED / MARKET CLOSED |
| Yahoo Finance chart data | Historical OHLCV for stocks, ETFs, indices, futures (also gold/silver futures charts) | On demand, cached | Chart only |
| gold-api.com | Spot gold, silver, platinum, palladium (USD per troy ounce) | Every 4 min | LIVE when < 10 min old |
| Frankfurter (ECB and other central banks) | Daily FX reference rates incl. MAD; FX history | Hourly check; source publishes once per business day | REFERENCE RATE |
| FRED (St. Louis Fed) | US CPI, core CPI, unemployment, payrolls, fed funds, GDP, Treasury yields | Every 6–12 h | Official statistics |
| European Central Bank Data Portal | ECB deposit facility rate, euro-area HICP inflation | Every 12 h | Official statistics |
| SEC EDGAR | Company identifiers, SIC industry, 10-K / 10-Q / 8-K filings | Rotating, each company ~daily | Official filings |
| BLS, BEA, Federal Reserve, ECB calendars | Economic release and central-bank meeting schedules | Every 12 h | Official schedules |
What the status labels mean
- LIVE — the source’s value is only minutes old (crypto, spot metals).
- DELAYED — exchange-traded instruments; quotes are delayed and refreshed on a schedule.
- MARKET CLOSED — the market is outside its session; the value is the last close (the date is shown).
- REFERENCE RATE — daily central-bank reference exchange rates. Not tradable quotes.
- STALE — our pipeline has not received a newer validated value in time. The number shown is the last available one.
- UNAVAILABLE — no validated value exists.
Validation
Every provider response is checked before storage: schema, currency code, timestamp (not in the future, not too old), numeric ranges and impossible combinations (for example a daily high below the low). A move larger than the threshold for its asset class versus the last accepted value is held and raised as a data-quality alert. It is published only if the next independent observation confirms it; otherwise it is discarded. Thresholds: crypto 35%, stock 25%, etf 15%, index 12%, forex 6%, commodity 15%, metal 10%, bond 30%. Bitcoin and Ether are cross-checked against a second provider.
Free-tier limits and caching
All sources are used within their free access terms. A quota manager enforces self-imposed limits below each provider’s published limit (coinlore: 120 per hour; coingecko: 12 per hour; goldapi: 90 per hour; metalsdev: 3 per day; frankfurter: 40 per hour; cnbc: 60 per hour; yahoo: 240 per hour; sec: 300 per hour; fred: 60 per hour; ecb: 30 per hour; bls: 6 per hour; bea: 6 per hour; fed: 6 per hour; rss: 200 per hour). Pages read from our database, never directly from providers, and are cached at the edge for 1–15 minutes. Higher-priority assets (Bitcoin, Ether, gold, major indices and FX) refresh most often.
Derived values
Some values are calculated from sourced data and labelled as such: gold in EUR and MAD (USD spot × reference rate), gold per gram (÷ 31.1034768), crypto fully diluted value (price × max supply), FX crosses through USD, and the gold 24-hour change/range, computed from our own stored spot observations once 24 hours of observations exist.
News
Headlines come only from publisher RSS feeds and official institutional feeds. We store the headline, link, publication time and the publisher’s own feed excerpt (shortened), and link to the original. We do not copy articles or present third-party reporting as our own. Headlines without a publication date are skipped rather than given an invented date.
Reports of the same event from different publishers are grouped into one story using headline normalisation (synonyms such as “BTC/Bitcoin”, “Fed/Federal Reserve”, “jumps/rises/gains”), token overlap and shared assets within a 36-hour window. Verification labels: Primary source (official institution), Multiple sources (two or more independent publishers), Single source, Unverified. A headline tone label is computed automatically from wording only and is not investment advice.
| Source | Type | Trust (1–5) | Licence notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cointelegraph | crypto media | 3 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| CoinDesk | crypto media | 4 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| Decrypt | crypto media | 3 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| The Block | crypto media | 4 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| CNBC | financial media | 4 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| CNBC Economy | financial media | 4 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| CNBC Technology | financial media | 4 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| MarketWatch | financial media | 4 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| Yahoo Finance | financial media | 3 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. Aggregates partner publishers. |
| Investing.com | financial media | 3 | Publisher RSS feed. We store headline, link, timestamp and the publisher-supplied feed excerpt (truncated). Full articles are not copied; every item links to the original. |
| Federal Reserve | central bank | 5 | US federal government work (public domain). Headline, link and short excerpt stored; linked to the original release. |
| European Central Bank | central bank | 5 | ECB press releases; reuse permitted with source attribution (ECB copyright notice). Headline, link and short excerpt stored. |
| U.S. SEC | regulator | 5 | US federal government work (public domain). Headline, link and short excerpt stored; linked to the original release. |
| U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | official | 5 | US federal government work (public domain). Headline, link and short excerpt stored; linked to the original release. |
What we do not show (and why)
- Consensus forecasts for economic releases, earnings dates, dividends, splits and IPO calendars — no free official source publishes them in a verifiable form.
- Tick-by-tick FX or stock prices — our free sources provide delayed or reference data, and we label them that way.
- “Trending” crypto lists and crypto categories — not available from a verifiable free source.
- Buy/sell recommendations of any kind.