How do I find out the exact publication date/time of a press release (Reuters, PR Newswire)?

External question — Quantitative Finance Stack Exchange Author: zonksoft Original post: https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/71821 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I'm interested in the impact of a press release on related stock prices. The reliability of the timestamp is also important to me. Of course, an important point here is the realtime latency of a platform, i.e. how many (milli)seconds pass from the publication at the source until this message reaches its destination. This is not the main aspect I'm looking for, but rather: How accurate and precise are the timestamps (creation, modification, publication...) that are attached to a news message, e.g. a press release? Imagine using the data in a scientific publication, then the data points used in a graph should have error bars (better: a standard deviation) on the t axis. Examples: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bps-head-crude-trading-wise-retire-sources-2022-08-02/ says 5:19 PM GMT+0 at the top. I received this via TradingView, which says the timestamp is 1659460510 which is equal to Aug 2 2022, 17:15:10 GMT+0. This is approx. 4 mins earlier, and also, the given precision is higher (seconds instead of minutes). https://seekingalpha.com/news/3864970-just-who-is-amtd-digital-and-why-have-its-shares-climbed-15000-since-mid-july says 1:45 PM ET. TradingView says 17:45:12 GMT+0, which works out - again, higher given precision. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-08-02-2022/card/pinterest-shares-surge-premarket-on-elliott-stake-qODDsiw8TtbMHaCMcLwH says 7:18 AM. I got this via IBKR and it says 7:18:00, so it checks out. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3864533-pinterest-surges-20-as-elliott-moves-in-susquehanna-upgrades-citing-new-catalysts says 7:21 AM ET. IBKR says 7:21:07. https://www.wsj.com/articles/moderna-revenue-rises-on-strong-demand-for-covid-19-vaccine-11659527439?siteid=yhoof2 says 9:30 AM ET. Yahoo Finance also shows this https://finance.yahoo.com/m/e24b0950-99ec-379e-a8e7-814f5df7e7dd/moderna-profit-falls-amid.html and displays the same time. https://www.accesswire.com/710670/Moderna-Reports-Second-Quarter-2022-Financial-Results-and-Provides-Business-Updates is the original press release and says 7 AM (ET, as far as I can tell). In IBKR, I see that Dow Jones Global News immediately (=07:00:00) republished Net, Rev and EPS as three separate "headlines" as well as the full balance sheets and the original press release. Then, Reuters publishes the original press release at 07:00:13 (that is: thirteen seconds later). DJ Global News then publishes additional "headline style" information at 07:01:00 and 07:02:00. Benzinga follows at 07:02:36 which reads as an automatically generated piece, StreetInsider.com does the same thing at 07:02:50. Benzinga says "ah wait, there is also a buyback announcement" at 07:02:51 and "also, advance purchase agreements where reiterated" at 07:03:19. SeekingAlpha at 07:08:30. Can anyone explain to me how this works? E.g. Is there a standardized timestamp format for press releases (at least within an agency)? Are there typical latencies for premium platforms and "normal" brokers (Bloomberg Terminal vs. IBKR/Yahoo Finance)? Is the displayed date usually the creation date or the modified date or does anyone even care?

External answer — Quantitative Finance Stack Exchange Author: AKdemy Original post: https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/72012 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. A lot of people care: for real time trading purposes for backtesting purposes where a correct point in time is crucial As an end user with a GUI (Reuters or BBG terminal for example) you will see the time of your interface's settings but under the hood it will be synced to UTC almost surely. For example, Tradingviews Unix Epoch is also based on UTC as well, which is confirmed by Tradingviews documentation. Bottom line, the time will be synced to UTC or NIST, with the latter being the “US version” of the UTC time standard and they synch to each other. Also regulators base their clocks of UTC. For example, the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II ( MiFID II ) in Europe and the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) in the USA require server clocks synchronisation to be within 100 microseconds of UTC. I believe Yahoo and the like store the timestamp when they receive or scrape the news headline. It is not their business to provide fast and reliable news. It is highly unlikely that Tradingview will beat Reuters in a Reuters article, written by a Reuters journalist and published on Reuters. The only way News providers will care about exact time stamps is if they record it accurately themselves and can earn money with this business model. Data providers like Bloomberg and Reuters created a huge business out of the demand for this. For example, Bloomberg sells so called Even Driven Feeds . You will not need this feed because you do not need real time, but you will need a provider that cares about accuracy. I recommend you reach out to the major providers and ask what they can offer. To figure out the impact on financial markets also requires you to get accurate market data. Based on your request at least down to the second. That in itself will be quite difficult to obtain, especially if you need a bit of history as well. To see the accuracy of release data, if you have access to Bloomberg, you can look at ECO , for economic data calendar which shows the time of scheduled releases. You can backdate this and compare with the news articles that come in. When you see BFW as the source - it will be a direct automated report once retrieved, with the time stamp in seconds. ECMI uses these time stamps and computes the reaction of selected securities to surprises.