FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What The Trading Tools is, what it costs, where the data comes from, and how to read it.
What is The Trading Tools?
A free, daily-updated reference for market internals and related data — breadth, volatility, sector rotation, credit, options positioning, historical signal base rates, 13F fund portfolios, and economic indicators. Every tool leads with a dated, plain-English reading and documents its full methodology on the page.
What does it cost? Do I need an account?
It's completely free. There is no paywall, no subscription, no signup, and no account. You can read, share, and quote every tool without logging in.
Where does the data come from?
Market internals and signals are computed from our own database of daily OHLCV bars for roughly 5,600 US equities, with sixteen years of history and SPY back to 1993. Economic indicators come from the Federal Reserve's FRED service, fund holdings from SEC EDGAR 13F filings, and options figures from end-of-day chain snapshots.
How often is it updated?
Every trading day. After the US market close, an automated pipeline fetches the day's data, verifies it is complete, and recomputes every tool. Economic, 13F, and options data refresh on their own natural cadence. Each reading is dated to the close it was computed from.
How do I know which day a reading is from?
Every reading is stamped with the market session it was computed from. If a served reading ever falls more than one trading day behind, the page shows a staleness notice, so you always know exactly which close you are looking at.
Is this investment advice?
No. Everything on the site is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment, financial, legal, or tax advice, and nothing on it is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial professional.
What are the Signals, and how should I read them?
Signals are historical base-rate studies. For each well-known technical trigger, we find every time it fired on SPY since 1993 and tabulate the forward returns across six horizons — average, median, hit rate, best, and worst — with the full sample shown. They describe historical odds, not predictions, and sample sizes are often small.
Why do your historical counts sometimes differ from other sites?
Because the inputs differ. The exact universe of stocks, how integer-priced or thinly traded symbols are handled, and the specific thresholds all change an indicator's history. We disclose where our implementation deviates from a classic specification and why, so you can see exactly what produced the numbers.
Can I see a price chart for an individual stock?
Yes. Tickers across the site — heatmap cells, options scans, fund holdings, and sector and macro tables — link to a candlestick and volume chart drawn from our own daily history.
Can I quote or republish your readings?
You're welcome to quote and share our readings with attribution for personal, non-commercial use. Systematic republication or commercial redistribution requires prior written permission — email info@thetrading.tools.