Built by a retail investor who got tired of forgetting what he read.
I'm Mike. I work in IT. I've been investing my own money for years — nothing sophisticated, just trying to make smart decisions with what I've earned.
I kept running into the same problem. I work long hours. By the time I sat down to check on my portfolio, I'd have twenty tabs open — Fed commentary, an earnings surprise, a regulatory filing, some geopolitical news. I'd read all of it, feel informed, and close my laptop.
Two months later, something would move the market and I'd think: I read something about this. I just can't remember where it fits.
The news cycle is relentless. A central bank speech, a trade policy change, a sector rotation — each one matters, but only if you can connect it to what came before. Professional fund managers have teams of analysts for this. I had a browser full of tabs and a memory that couldn't keep up.
So I built a system that reads the news for me, keeps score, and shows me the trend. That system became The Scoop.
Every day, The Scoop pulls from 250+ sources — financial news outlets, government press releases, central bank speeches, regulatory filings, and more. Then it asks a simple question about each one.
RSS feeds from the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Federal Reserve, SEC, BLS, Reuters, and hundreds more — checked at midnight, 6 AM, noon, and 6 PM every day.
An AI reads each article and asks: is this bullish or bearish? For which sectors? Which specific companies? How significant is it on a scale of 1–10? How confident are we? Those assessments become signals.
A single bullish signal for energy might be noise. Fifteen bullish signals over thirty days is a trend. The Scoop tracks signal history so you can see what's been building — not just what happened today.
Every morning, a clean summary lands in your inbox — top events, signal mix, sector rotation, and a watchlist of tickers that keep appearing in the analysis. The full report and trend history are always available in the app.
I'm not going to compromise that with advertising revenue, data deals, or features designed for institutional customers. Here's what that means in practice:
I bill annually because payment processors take a significant cut of every transaction. Monthly billing at a low price point would mean a meaningful chunk of what you pay goes to Stripe rather than keeping the lights on. Annual billing keeps the economics honest.
The Scoop is an information aggregation and trend analysis tool. It reads the news, keeps score, and shows you patterns over time. It is not:
To use The Scoop, I need your email address. That's it. I use it to send you the daily digest and alert emails you've opted into.
I don't collect browsing data, trading data, or any other personal information. I don't use third-party analytics on the app. I don't know what you read, what you searched for, or what you own. I don't sell, share, or license your data to anyone — ever.
If you want to delete your account and all associated data, email me and it's done.
Questions, feedback, broken feeds, story tips, or just want to say hello — I read everything and respond to most of it.
mike@thepapertrail.net