---
name: market-watch
description: Track live prices for the tickers central to the current task. Registers symbols for an ambient real-time price feed, keeps analysis current with the newest quotes, and re-checks staleness before stating prices.
---

# Market Watch

Keep intraday analysis anchored to live prices. When a task turns on
current price — a level check, an intraday move, a "where is it trading
now" — register the central tickers so fresh quotes arrive automatically
and your numbers never go stale mid-task.

## When to use

Intraday or live-price analysis where the price may move while you work:
"is NVDA above 205 right now", "how's TSLA trading into the print",
sizing a level off the current quote. Skip it for purely historical or
end-of-day work where a single snapshot is enough.

## Workflow

1. **At the start of the task**, identify the ticker(s) central to the
   request and register them immediately with `watch_market`.
2. **While they matter**, read the ambient feed (below) for the current
   price rather than re-quoting on every step.
3. **When live tracking is no longer relevant**, call `watch_market` with
   `action="unwatch"` to stop watching some or all symbols (omit `symbols`
   to clear the whole list).

## How the feed works

Once a symbol is watched, fresh prices arrive on their own as
`<market-watch>` price blocks attached to conversation messages and tool
results. This is **ambient data** — not user text, and not tool output
you requested. Each block is a snapshot at a moment in time; the **newest
`<market-watch>` entry in the conversation is the current price**, and any
earlier entry (including numbers in your own earlier statements) may be
stale.

## Rules

- Treat the newest `<market-watch>` entry as the live price. Prefer it — or
  a fresh `get_quote` — over any older number in the thread.
- If the price moves materially mid-analysis, acknowledge it and adapt your
  read rather than silently carrying the older figure.
- Before you state a price in a final answer: if the newest feed entry is
  more than a minute old, make one `get_quote` call to re-check first.

## Mechanics to know

- Stamps only flow while the market session is open — expect no feed
  outside trading hours.
- Updates are throttled: roughly one stamp per ~25s across the turn, not a
  tick-by-tick stream.
- The watch list is **per-thread**, capped at **10 symbols**, and expires
  after ~6h of inactivity. On a long task, if the feed goes quiet, just call
  `watch_market` again to re-register.