Market Briefings

Set up pre-market briefings and scheduled financial summaries for your watchlist.

By the end of this page, your agent will send you a pre-market briefing every morning with your watchlist data, key market levels, and anything overnight that matters.

Time: ~30 minutes

What you're building

Every weekday morning before the market opens, you receive:

Pre-market briefing — Wednesday, March 25

SPY: -0.3% pre-market. QQQ: flat. VIX: 18.2 (elevated).

AAPL: +1.2% on earnings beat. NVDA: -0.8% on supply news.

Macro: Fed minutes released today at 2pm ET. Watch rates.

Sentiment: cautious. Options flow leaning bearish on tech.

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Financial data options

OpenClaw can pull financial data through:

Web search (free, limited) — good for news and price mentions, not reliable for real-time prices
Financial skills from ClawHub — structured, reliable, some free tiers
Direct API via web_fetch — if you already have a data provider (Alpha Vantage, Polygon, Yahoo Finance)

For most users, Yahoo Finance via web_fetch is the easiest free option.

Step 1 — Enable tools

{
  "tools": {
    "web_fetch": { "enabled": true },
    "web_search": { "enabled": true, "maxResults": 5 }
  }
}

Step 2 — Define your watchlist

Create ~/.openclaw/workspace/watchlist.md:

# Watchlist

## Indices
- SPY (S&P 500 ETF)
- QQQ (Nasdaq 100 ETF)
- VIX (volatility index)

## Stocks
- AAPL
- NVDA
- MSFT
- [Add your tickers]

## Context
My portfolio is mostly tech. I'm a medium-term investor, not a day trader.
I care about: earnings surprises, macro events, sector rotations.
I don't care about: intraday noise, individual analyst upgrades/downgrades.

Step 3 — The briefing automation

{
  "automations": [
    {
      "id": "premarket-briefing",
      "schedule": "0 8 * * 1-5",
      "prompt": "Pre-market financial briefing. Read my watchlist from watchlist.md. Search for current pre-market prices and overnight news for each ticker. Also check for any major macro events today (Fed decisions, CPI, earnings). Format: 1 line per index, 1 line per stock with notable moves only, 1 line on macro, 1 line on overall sentiment. Under 10 lines total.",
      "channel": "telegram"
    }
  ]
}

Step 4 — Evening market close summary

{
  "id": "market-close",
  "schedule": "30 16 * * 1-5",
  "prompt": "Market close summary. Check how the major indices closed today (SPY, QQQ, VIX). Note the day's biggest movers from my watchlist. Any notable news that moved markets. 5-6 lines. What should I watch tomorrow?",
  "channel": "telegram"
}

Step 5 — Restart and test

openclaw gateway restart
openclaw cron run premarket-briefing

Check the output quality. The first run will give you a sense of what the agent can reliably pull vs. what it's approximating.

Important: Without a paid financial data API, your agent is using web search results. These are usually accurate for price mentions and news, but can lag by 15-20 minutes. For trading decisions requiring real-time data, connect a financial API skill.

Add a financial data API (optional)

For reliable, structured price data, Alpha Vantage has a free tier (5 API calls/minute, 500/day):

Get a free key at alphavantage.co
Add to config:

{
  "skills": {
    "alpha_vantage": {
      "enabled": true,
      "apiKey": "YOUR_KEY_HERE"
    }
  }
}

Now update the briefing prompt:

"prompt": "Pre-market briefing. Use Alpha Vantage to get current prices for SPY, QQQ, and my watchlist tickers. Use web search for overnight news. Format as before."

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