apify-financial-news

Financial News Intelligence

Discover and extract financial news for portfolio companies via Apify Actors. Two modes:

• Single company — news scan for one company.
• Portfolio scan — same pipeline run across multiple companies.

33 Tier 1 sources organized in 4 categories (Global / Pan-European / Institutional / CEE Local). Tier 2 = broad Google News fallback for unverified domains.

Estimated cost: $0.10–0.50 per single company, $1–5 per full portfolio scan.

Prerequisites

• Apify access — preferred: apify CLI (npm install -g apify-cli && apify login); fallback: Apify MCP connector (call-actor tool). CLI is faster and preferred when both are available.
• Python 3 + pip install readability-lxml lxml (for the extract_and_clean.py post-processor)
• Companies data at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/data/companies.json

${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} is the plugin's root directory (where .claude-plugin/ lives). It is resolved automatically by Claude Code when the plugin is installed, or set to the --plugin-dir path during development.

Workflow checklist

Copy this and tick boxes as you progress:

Task Progress:
- [ ] Step 0: Verify prerequisites — try `apify --version && apify info`; if unavailable, check for `call-actor` MCP tool; if neither, tell user to install apify CLI or Apify MCP connector. Also verify: `python3 -c "from readability import Document; print('OK')"` (install: `pip install readability-lxml lxml`)
- [ ] Step 1: Build queries (look up company in data/companies.json or construct manually)
- [ ] Step 2: Discovery — pick 8-12 sources by region, run 2-phase Google News
- [ ] Step 3: Dedup + route (Tier 1 = whitelisted domain → verified extractor; Tier 2 = broad → rag-web-browser)
- [ ] Step 4: Extract & clean (run extractor, then extract_and_clean.py)
- [ ] Step 5: Output Tier 1 + Tier 2 tables to user

Constraints

Allowed Apify Actors (exhaustive — do NOT use others)

Actor	Purpose
data_xplorer/google-news-scraper-fast	Google News discovery
louvre/rss-news-aggregator	RSS discovery
rodrigo_pacelli/headline-news-scraper	Headline discovery
jamie_tran/bloomberg-article-scraper	Bloomberg extraction
romy/bloomberg-news-scraper	Bloomberg fallback
workhard3000/news-intelligence-rag-extractor	Paywall extraction
apify/rag-web-browser	Free/soft-paywall + Tier 2
stanvanrooy6/universal-ai-web-scraper	Hard paywall (Barron's, MarketWatch) — $0.25/page

Do NOT use any other actor. Do NOT use WebSearch, WebFetch, or browser tools.

Extractor routing (mandatory — do NOT substitute)

Extractor	Domains
jamie_tran/bloomberg-article-scraper	bloomberg.com
workhard3000/news-intelligence-rag-extractor	ft.com, wsj.com, economist.com, morningstar.com, asia.nikkei.com, caixinglobal.com, zawya.com, euobserver.com, reuters.com
apify/rag-web-browser	cnbc.com, forbes.com, investors.com, lesechos.fr, afr.com, scmp.com, euronews.com, intellinews.com, handelsblatt.com, politico.eu, eubusiness.com, eureporter.co, ecb.europa.eu, + all 7 CEE Local
stanvanrooy6/universal-ai-web-scraper	barrons.com, marketwatch.com
REST API (presscorner)	ec.europa.eu

Full per-source config: reference/SOURCE_CONFIGS.md. Machine-readable: data/sources.json.

Pipeline

Step 1: Build queries

Look up company in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/data/companies.json. Key fields under queries: gnews_en, gnews_cz, bloomberg.

For non-portfolio companies, construct manually: quoted full legal name + ticker OR variant + geographic qualifier.

Query rules:

• Use "InPost SA" not InPost (quoted full names avoid false positives — see reference/EUROPEAN_COMPANIES_GUIDE.md)
• Per-source site: operator: site:bloomberg.com "InPost SA" OR "INPST"
• FT tip: use site:ft.com/content/ (bare ft.com returns stock-data pages)
• Valid timeframes: "1h", "1d", "7d", "1y", "all" (NOT "30d")
• Tickers < 4 chars: always pair with full company name
• ALWAYS set decodeUrls: true on Google News input

Step 2: Discovery

Do NOT search all 33 sources. Pick 8–12 based on company region.

Regional priorities

Region	Priority Sources
CZ	ČTK, IntelliNews, Reuters, Bloomberg, POLITICO EU, FT, Handelsblatt
PL	PAP, IntelliNews, Reuters, Bloomberg, POLITICO EU, FT
HU	Telex.hu, HVG.hu, VG.hu, IntelliNews, Reuters, Bloomberg
BG	BTA, IntelliNews, Reuters, Bloomberg, Euronews
SK	TASR, IntelliNews, Reuters, Bloomberg, Handelsblatt
Western Europe	Bloomberg, Reuters, FT, Handelsblatt, Les Echos, POLITICO EU
US / Global	Bloomberg, Reuters, WSJ, FT, CNBC, Forbes, Barron's
Asia / MENA	Bloomberg, Reuters, SCMP, Nikkei, Caixin, Zawya
EU Regulatory	POLITICO EU, EUobserver, EUbusiness, EU Reporter, EC Press Corner, ECB

Two-phase Google News strategy

Phase 1 — Targeted (per priority source, with site:):

apify call data_xplorer/google-news-scraper-fast \
  --input '{"keywords":["site:bloomberg.com \"InPost SA\" OR \"INPST\""],"maxArticles":10,"timeframe":"7d","region_language":"US:en","decodeUrls":true,"proxyConfiguration":{"useApifyProxy":true,"apifyProxyGroups":["RESIDENTIAL"]}}' \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-financial-news \
  --output-dataset > discovery_bloomberg.json

Phase 2 — Broad (always run, no site: operator). Classify results by domain in Step 3 — whitelisted → Tier 1, others → Tier 2.

CEE local-language discovery: For CEE companies, run additional queries with region_language set to CZ:cs, PL:pl, HU:hu, BG:bg, SK:sk. See region_language field per source in data/sources.json.

EC Press Corner — direct REST API (no Actor)

curl -s "https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/documents?reference=IP/26/614&language=en"

Parse IP_XX_NNN reference IDs from Google News titles to construct API calls.

RSS / Headline discovery (optional)

For sources with RSS, you can supplement GNews with louvre/rss-news-aggregator (max 10 feeds per run; split into batches). For 6 sources, rodrigo_pacelli/headline-news-scraper works (CNBC, SCMP, Nikkei, Caixin, Zawya tag-pages-only, Handelsblatt). RSS/headline output is unfiltered — filter client-side by company name in title/description. Full feed list: reference/PIPELINE_DETAIL.md.

Step 3: Dedup & route

1. Collect URLs from all discovery runs.
2. Classify by domain: whitelist (33 Tier 1 sources) → Tier 1; other → Tier 2.
3. Filter non-article URLs: /quote/, /stock/, /sitemap, /author/, /tag/, /key-metrics/, /newsletters/, /topic/, /profile/, redirectUrl=.
4. Filter by company name/ticker in title.
5. Deduplicate (URL normalize).
6. Route Tier 1 URLs to verified extractor per routing table.
7. Route Tier 2 URLs to apify/rag-web-browser.

Low-coverage fallback (< 3 articles): broaden timeframe to "1y", run Phase 2 if skipped, try local-language queries.

Step 4: Extract & clean

Run the extractor per the routing table. For rag-web-browser calls, use outputFormats: ["html"].

After extraction, run extract_and_clean.py on the dataset to strip nav/menus/footers via readability-lxml. The script auto-detects format: HTML cleaned via readability-lxml, already-clean output (Bloomberg scraper, workhard3000) passes through.

DATASET_ID=$(apify call apify/rag-web-browser \
  --input '{"query":"<ARTICLE_URL>","maxResults":1,"outputFormats":["html"],"requestTimeoutSecs":40,"proxyConfiguration":{"useApifyProxy":true,"apifyProxyGroups":["RESIDENTIAL"]},"removeCookieWarnings":true}' \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-financial-news \
  --json | jq -r '.defaultDatasetId')

python3 ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/apify-financial-news/reference/scripts/extract_and_clean.py "$DATASET_ID"

The --json flag returns run metadata including defaultDatasetId. Errors produce non-zero exit code so the pipeline fails fast.

Step 5: Output

Two tables to the user — Tier 1 (verified) and Tier 2 (broad). Per article: source, title, author, date, char count, URL.

## News Intelligence: InPost (INPST.AS) — Last 7 days

### Tier 1 — Verified Sources (2)
| Source | Title | Author | Date | Chars | URL |
|--------|-------|--------|------|-------|-----|
| bloomberg.com | InPost Readies AI Shopping Assistant | K. Krasuski | 2026-03-19 | 7,577 | … |

### Tier 2 — Broad Discovery (5)
| Source | Title | Date | Chars | URL |
|--------|-------|------|-------|-----|
| seekingalpha.com | InPost expands parcel locker network | 2026-03-18 | 1,200 | … |

*Sources: 6 verified queried | 5 broad | Cost: $0.15*

Macro context

For country-level economic context, use these alongside news scans:

• ING Think (think.ing.com) — daily CEE FX/rates via apify/rag-web-browser (~11K chars). Best free open-access CEE macro source.
• IMF (imf.org) — Article IV concluding statements via apify/rag-web-browser (~22K chars).
• ECB (ecb.europa.eu) — already in Tier 1.
• Central banks (ČNB, NBP, MNB, BNB, NBS) — direct URL extraction; see reference/MACRO_SOURCES.md.

Critical gotchas

• ALWAYS decodeUrls: true in Google News (encoded redirects break ALL extractors).
• "InPost" is ambiguous — matches "post-Maduro". Use "InPost SA" for precision.
• RSS max 10 feeds per run — split into batches.
• Zawya headline-scraper returns tag pages, NOT articles — exclude from headline runs.
• Reuters needs RESIDENTIAL proxy — without it, returns 386 chars.
• Reuters: rag-web-browser returns 0 chars on ~60% of URLs — use workhard3000 only.
• Morningstar .co.uk URLs fail with workhard3000 — use .com URLs for extraction.
• WSJ livecoverage pages fail — skip URLs matching wsj.com/livecoverage/.
• FT: rag-web-browser returns 16 chars ('Client Challenge') — use workhard3000.
• Forbes: workhard3000 returns 0 chars — use rag-web-browser.
• Barron's / MarketWatch cost $0.25/page — use selectively for high-value articles.
• Caixin URLs must be complete — truncated URLs fail extraction.
• EC Press Corner is an Angular SPA — rag-web-browser returns 0 chars. Use REST API.

Full failure-mode catalog: reference/PIPELINE_DETAIL.md, reference/SOURCE_CONFIGS.md.

Reference

• data/sources.json — machine-readable: 33 sources × discovery × extractor × cost × gotchas
• reference/SOURCE_CONFIGS.md — per-source curl examples, run IDs, output samples
• reference/PIPELINE_DETAIL.md — RSS feeds, headline sources, warnings, failed paths, source quick-reference table
• reference/MACRO_SOURCES.md — ING Think, IMF, central banks
• reference/EUROPEAN_COMPANIES_GUIDE.md — European company handling tips
• reference/MORNING_NOTE_DETAIL.md — HTML output spec (archived; out of scope for this skill)
• reference/scripts/extract_and_clean.py, reference/scripts/clean_article.py — readability-lxml post-processors