What is Delayed Market Data? Best Datasets & Databases 2023
What is delayed market data? How can you utilize it? Discover the top data sources for delayed market data, including delayed market data APIs and currency delayed prices, and purchase the data you need on Datarade.ai. Stay ahead of the competition with accurate and up-to-date information.
On this page
- What is Delayed Market Data?
- Best Delayed Market Data Databases & Datasets
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is Delayed Market Data?
Delayed market data refers to financial information, such as stock prices or market quotes, that is not provided in real-time but with a time delay. This delay can range from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the source. Delayed market data is commonly used by individual investors or traders who do not require immediate information and are willing to accept a slight delay in exchange for lower costs or free access. However, it may not be suitable for time-sensitive trading strategies or high-frequency trading.
Delayed market data refers to financial information that is not provided in real-time but has a time delay before it is made available to the public. Examples of delayed market data include delayed stock prices, delayed currency exchange rates, and delayed commodity prices. Delayed market data is used by investors, traders, and financial analysts to track historical trends, analyze market performance, and make informed investment decisions. In this page, you’ll find the best data sources for delayed market data, including delayed market data APIs and delayed prices for various currencies (ccy).
Lucy Kelly
November 14, 2023
Data Specialist
Best Delayed Market Data Databases & Datasets
Here is Datarade’s curated selection top Delayed Market Data. These trusted databases and datasets offer high-quality, up-to-date information.
Real Time: What it Means Compared to Delayed Quotes
Will Kenton is an expert on the economy and investing laws and regulations. He previously held senior editorial roles at Investopedia and Kapitall Wire and holds a MA in Economics from The New School for Social Research and Doctor of Philosophy in English literature from NYU.
Updated August 13, 2021
Reviewed by
Reviewed by Gordon Scott
Gordon Scott has been an active investor and technical analyst or 20+ years. He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT).
Fact checked by
Fact checked by Suzanne Kvilhaug
Suzanne is a content marketer, writer, and fact-checker. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance degree from Bridgewater State University and helps develop content strategies for financial brands.
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What Is Real Time?
Real time is when a system relays information to a user at a speed that is near-instantaneous or has a short delay from when the event occurred. Online brokerages often provide a real-time data feed that displays stock quotes and their respective real-time changes, with a very insignificant lag time, so that clients can base their investing decisions on the most up-to-date information.
Key Takeaways
- Real time refers to information that is relayed at the time it happens, or with only a short delay.
- In financial markets, real time is a reference to the price of a security and the accuracy of the pricing is crucial to market participants.
- Many financial networks, websites, and apps provide delayed quotes, which show where a stock or currency stood 15 or 20 minutes ago.
- Delayed quotes are usually enough information for a casual investor who isn’t looking to time the market.
- Some brokerages and certain paid services that traders use provide real-time, up-to-the-minute quotes.
Understanding Real Time
While many financial websites do offer free stock quotes to the general public, many of these feeds are not real-time feeds and may be delayed up to 20 minutes. Therefore, when viewing stock quotes from any financial website, be aware of the time that is posted near the stock quote to verify whether the quote is actually in real time.
Possessing accurate real-time quotes is especially important for traders, as even the smallest time discrepancy between a provided quote and the real-time situation can change a profitable position into a loss.
For rapid intra-day traders, especially, it can be critical to get real-time quotes instead of delayed quotes.
Real-Time Stock Quotes vs. Delayed Stock Quotes
Stock quotes reflect the results of actual trading on stock market exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. Investors and traders can get quotes on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, other indices, or individual stocks from a number of financial news sources. However, some financial news services don’t report real-time information and instead delay stock quotes for 15 or 20 minutes.
The prices of actively traded stocks can fluctuate dramatically from minute to minute or from second to second. That’s why knowing the current price is imperative. In a rapidly rising or falling market, also known as a fast market, even real-time quotes can have a hard time keeping up. In that market scenario, a quote that’s delayed 15 or 20 minutes is virtually useless, as a stock’s price could have moved by a significant percentage in that time frame.
Delayed quotes are usually enough information for a casual investor who isn’t looking to time the market. For example, if a trader has a long-term portfolio of stocks they don’t intend to sell, they don’t need up-to-the-second price information. Even delayed stock quotes provide a general ballpark of where stocks and indexes are, and whether they are trending up or down.
Providing real-time quotes takes effort and technology; thus, this service has a cost. If firms don’t want to absorb this cost, they’ll only offer delayed quotes. Reuters, for example, provides lots of financial information, but its stock quotes are delayed at least 15 minutes. Financial news services often offer real-time quotes as a premium subscription service.
Real-Time, Delayed, and Intraday Stock Prices#
Here we’ll describe the stock and equity market quotes IEX Cloud provides in real-time, at 15 minute delay, and intraday.
These real-time stock quotes are part of our IEX Cloud Market Data bundles offering.
Real-time and 15 Minute Delayed Prices#
During market trading hours, IEX Cloud provides both real-time stock quotes and 15 minute delayed stock quotes for U.S. stocks and ETFs. You can access this data via the Stock Quote endpoint and Intraday Equity Prices endpoint.
Real-time quotes (or prices) are based on all trades that occur on the Investors Exchange (IEX). 15 minute delayed stock prices reflect activity from all U.S. exchanges, and is provided by the Securities Information Processor / Consolidate Tape Association (SIP).
While real-time prices for Nasdaq-listed stocks are available to all users, 15 minute delayed price data for Nasdaq-listed securities requires UTP authorization .
Note that real-time prices available via the IEX Cloud Data are different from real-time prices available via direct connection from IEX. During market hours, IEX Cloud Data prices available from IEX Exchange are real-time. Prices of most stocks are otherwise typically delayed up to 15 minutes–prices of some stocks (e.g., stocks traded in low volume) may be delayed longer.
Using the Stock Quote and Intraday Equity Prices Endpoints#
While there are several endpoints that provide stock price data on IEX Cloud in various formats, many users primarily use the Stock Quote and Intraday Equity Prices endpoints for current stock price data.
Using the Stock Quote Endpoint#
Use the following fields on the Stock Quote endpoint to access real-time stock prices:
latestPrice: The real-time price of a symbol, sourced from Investors Exchange (IEX) stock price data.
In the case of thinly traded securities – or securities traded less frequently – it’s possible that a symbol may not be traded on IEX within the most recent 15 minutes. In this case, since the IEX real-time price would be older than SIP’s 15 minute delayed price, IEX Cloud provides SIP’s 15 minute delayed price in this field.
Outside of trading hours, this field provides the last available closing price. For details on accessing extended hours prices, see OTC Stocks, ADRs, and Extended Market Hours Data at the bottom of this article.
latestSource: The source used to provide the latestPrice field value.
iexRealtimePrice: The real-time price for a stock, using the last trade on IEX.
delayedPrice: The 15 minute delayed price using SIP data. For Nasdaq-listed securities, this field and other delayed fields are returned as null without UTP authorization and a paid IEX Cloud plan.
Additional information is provided via this endpoint. See a full list of Stock Quote endpoint fields at the Stock Quote endpoint page.
Using the Intraday Equity Prices Endpoint#
The following Intraday Equity Prices endpoint fields provide minute-by-minute price data for the current trading day.
open: IEX real-time data. First price during a given minute.
close: IEX real-time data. Last price during a given minute.
high: IEX real-time data. Highest price during the minute on IEX.
low: IEX real-time data. Lowest price during the minute on IEX.
The average, volume, numberOfTrades, and notional fields are also all sourced from trades on the Investor’s Exchange. For thinly traded securities, it is possible for there to be no trades in a given minute on the Investors Exchange. In such cases, the field values are null .
The properties that begin with “market” are all based on 15 minute delayed market-wide prices from the SIP. During a trading day, these prices are populated with a 15 minute delay. For example, during a trading day at 10:00 a.m., you would see Investors Exchange real-time prices immediately for the 10:00 a.m. minute (assuming there are trades for that security on IEX in that minute). However, the market-wide fields for minutes 9:45 – 10:00 a.m. would be null . At 10:01 a.m., the 9:45 a.m. market-wide prices would be available, at 10:02 a.m., the 9:46 a.m. market-wide prices would be available, etc.
For a complete list of the endpoint fields, please see Intraday Equity Prices.
OTC Stocks, ADRs, and Extended Market Hours Data#
OTC stock 15 minute delayed prices require a separate license agreement with OTC. Please reach out to support at support @ iexcloud . io for more information.
ADRs listed in the U.S. are supported on IEX Cloud and have price data available in the same way as regular stock symbols.
Prices outside of market hours can be retrieved from the Stock Quote endpoint’s extendedPrice field. These prices are 15 minute delayed, and cover the hours 4:00 a.m. E.T. – 9:30 a.m. E.T. and 4:00 p.m. E.T. – 8:00 p.m. E.T. You can see a full list of data points returned for extended hours data at Stock Quote.
The free price data is 15 minutes delayed. Does this mean my order will also be delayed by 15 minutes?
No. The price feed information is provided for consultation purposes only. Your orders are executed in real-time and independently of this data.
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