Stories that journalists break before anyone else are commonly known as ‘scoops’. As an information source that has shaped the opinions of the business and finance community and the global elite for over 130 years, scoops by FT journalists have a greater propensity than others to trigger market movements.
On April 15th 2021, the FT published one such scoop revealing that activist investor Elliott Management had built a multi-billion pound stake in UK drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline. Shares in GSK, which had fallen 14% since 2017, jumped almost 5% on the day following the article’s publication on FT.com.
The article was first published at 11:20am BST and the chart above illustrates how quickly GSK’s share price started to rise. Within an hour of the FT’s scoop being reported, shares had climbed by roughly 4.7%.
While the markets moved promptly in response to the news, the impact was by no means immediate. Adjusting our chart to 15 minute intervals and adding volumes as an additional indicator, shows us that trading didn’t increase significantly until well after 12:00pm.
Those who acted fastest were able to capitalise the most. Anticipating the increased demand, market makers providing liquidity were able to optimise their trades and adjust their prices accordingly. This however is exactly the kind of market-moving information that can now be leveraged in real-time exclusively through the FT’s machine-readable API service.
How can I be alerted when the FT publishes a scoop?
Individuals and businesses with premium subscriptions to FT.com already have full access to all Financial Times articles. However as shown above, there is often a time lag as the market figures out the novelty of the story.
The full value of FT scoops can now be extracted thanks to a datamining licence from FT Integrated Solutions. Our NotificationsPush API service helps organisations optimise their position in almost real-time relative to the breaking news.
The FT’s trusted, agenda-setting content is not available in this format from any other third party API providers. For more information about how you can leverage Financial Times journalism for faster investment decision making, please get in touch with our FT Integrated Solutions team.
