M2M uses multiple data sources. Here is exactly what we use, what it covers, and what it does not.
What: Real-time and historical stock prices, options chain snapshots, and options flow data.
Covers: Equity snapshots (price, volume, VWAP), daily bars for technical indicators, full options chain with greeks, and options trade tape for sweep/block detection.
Does not cover: Does not provide dealer-level positioning, market maker identity, or index-level data (SPX, VIX) on our current plan tier.
What: Short interest data: SI percentage of float, days to cover, cost to borrow, utilization.
Covers: Daily short interest estimates for individual equities, exchange-level routing (NYSE vs NASDAQ).
Does not cover: Does not provide real-time short interest (data is reported with a settlement lag). SI numbers are estimates, not exact counts. M2M caches short-interest data for 24 hours to manage data budget.
What: Short volume data from regulated trading venues.
Covers: Daily short volume as a percentage of total volume, providing a same-day read on short-selling activity.
Does not cover: Short volume is not the same as short interest. A high short volume day does not necessarily mean short interest increased — it includes market maker hedging and other non-directional activity.
What: Index-level price data (SPY, QQQ, VIX, DIA, IWM) for regime classification and market context.
Covers: Premarket and intraday index prices used for regime gate calculations and the premarket dashboard.
Does not cover: Not used for individual equity prices or options data — those come from the market-data feed.
What: All technical indicators (SMA, EMA, RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, ATR) are computed from scratch using daily price bars.
Covers: Full suite of technical analysis without dependency on a third-party TA library. This gives M2M precise control over lookback periods, edge handling, and NaN propagation.
Does not cover: Does not use pre-computed indicators from any external service. If a technical value disagrees with another charting platform, the difference is likely in how edge cases (gaps, halts, insufficient history) are handled.
M2M scans approximately 1,005 tickers from the Russell 1000 index (sourced from published index holdings). The scanner processes the full universe in batches of 8 tickers over multiple cron runs across each trading day.
A complete universe sweep takes approximately 4 weekdays. This means not every ticker is scanned every day — the batching rotates through the full list. High-momentum or recently-signaling tickers are not prioritized over others; every ticker gets equal scan time.
Price snapshots are fetched in real-time during each scan batch. Options chain data is fetched at scan time. Short interest data is cached for 24 hours to stay within API budget limits. Technical indicators use the most recent daily bars available.
The confidence formula penalizes stale data. If a card's supporting data is older than expected, its Confidence B is reduced automatically.