The newsroom
Market data methodology
Where the prices on Bank Season come from, what an as of timestamp means, and what we do when a number is stale, adjusted or denominated in another currency.
Market data on this site is not decoration. A reader should be able to tell, from the page alone, what a number is, when it was captured, and how much trust it deserves. This page sets out the conventions so nobody has to guess.
Where quotes come from
Quotes arrive from licensed data vendors and from exchange feeds, normalised into a single internal schema before they reach a page. Every symbol carries a provenance record naming the source, the venue the price came from, and the timestamp the vendor attached to it. When a vendor and an exchange disagree, the exchange print wins and the discrepancy is logged.
- Equities: consolidated tape prices from the listing venue, with the exchange named on the quote page.
- Indices: values published by the index administrator, not recalculated by us.
- Government bonds: benchmark yields from a fixed income vendor, quoted to two decimal places.
- Currencies: interbank mid rates, not retail or card rates.
- Commodities: front month futures settlement, with the contract month stated.
- Digital assets: a volume weighted composite across named venues, with the venue list published on the symbol page.
What the as of timestamp means
Every price surface on Bank Season shows an as of time. That is the timestamp of the last price the system successfully captured for that symbol, expressed in the reader's local time zone with the source zone in the tooltip. It is not the time the page was rendered and it is not the time you loaded it. If a market is closed, the as of time is the last print before the close, and the page says the market is closed rather than implying the price is live.
Delay conventions
Nothing on the free site is real time, and we label the delay rather than hiding it behind the word live. Delays follow the licensing terms of each venue and are applied per asset class.
Quote delay by asset class
| Asset class | Delay | Refresh on page |
|---|---|---|
| US equities and ETFs | 15 minutes | Every 60 seconds |
| European equities | 15 minutes | Every 60 seconds |
| Major indices | 15 minutes | Every 60 seconds |
| Government bond yields | 10 minutes | Every 5 minutes |
| Currencies | 60 seconds | Every 30 seconds |
| Commodity futures | 10 minutes | Every 60 seconds |
| Digital assets | Near real time | Every 15 seconds |
Delays are a licensing floor, not a target. The as of stamp on the quote always takes precedence over the figures in this table.
Corporate actions
Splits, reverse splits, spin offs, rights issues and special dividends are applied to historical series on the ex date, so a chart does not show a fictional overnight collapse. Prices before the action are adjusted; the unadjusted series is retained internally and the symbol page notes the most recent adjustment and its date. Ticker changes carry the old symbol forward as an alias so an old link still resolves.
Dividend adjusted and price only series are different things and we label which one a chart is showing. Total return comparisons always say so in the chart note, because the difference over a decade is large enough to change a conclusion.
Currency conversion
Instruments are quoted in their native currency by default, with the currency code shown next to the figure. Where a page converts, it uses the interbank mid rate captured at the same timestamp as the underlying price, never a rate from a different moment. Converted values are marked as converted, and the rate used is available on the symbol page. We do not convert historical series at today's rate.
Stale data
A quote is marked stale when its as of timestamp falls outside the expected refresh window for that asset class while the venue is open. Stale quotes are greyed and labelled rather than removed, because a missing number is harder to reason about than a visibly old one. If a feed fails for more than 30 minutes during market hours, the affected pages carry a banner naming the asset class and the time the last good capture arrived.