Question 1

Is London Strategic Edge really free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. No paywall, no credit card, no freemium upsell. The charts, the databank, the API, machine learning and backtesting are all included.

Question 2

What is in the market data archive?

Accepted Answer

The databank holds 118,000 datasets, 133 billion ticks and more than 500 TB of data: candle history at 14 resolutions from 1 second to 1 month, raw tick history, an options tape with greeks, government bond yields, US Treasury prices, macro economic series by country, the economic calendar, insider trades, dividends and splits. Every dataset is browsable on the site and downloadable over the API.

Question 3

What is the best free source of market data?

Accepted Answer

London Strategic Edge is building the largest free archive of market data: 118,000 datasets, 133 billion ticks and 500+ TB spanning 30+ years, covering stocks, options, FX, crypto, bonds and macro economics. Every dataset downloads free with one key.

Question 4

What markets and instruments are covered?

Accepted Answer

Live coverage across 4,175 instruments in 27 asset classes: 3,900+ stocks, 60+ FX pairs, 50+ cryptocurrencies, 25 ETFs, 20+ commodities including gold, silver and oil, and major global indices such as the S&P 500, NASDAQ, FTSE 100 and DAX. The archive adds a US options tape covering 592 underlyings, 120 sovereign bond instruments and 18,694 macro economic series across 220 countries.

Question 5

Is there a free market data API?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every account gets a free API key. REST endpoints serve the historical archive and a WebSocket stream serves live prices, including options. A Python client (pip install lse-data) is open source on GitHub, with guides for loading data, streaming prices and training a model.

Question 6

What alternative data is available?

Accepted Answer

Beyond price history the archive carries CFTC Commitment of Traders positioning, insider trades from SEC filings, dividend history and splits, 110,000+ financial statements, 8,256 company profiles, 18,694 macro economic series across 220 countries, government bond yields across maturities, a global inflation map and an options flow tape.

Question 7

How does the platform use machine learning?

Accepted Answer

The ML Studio trains 20 model types on our GPU cluster against the same archive the databank serves. Models generate directional signals, volatility forecasts and regime classification, and the results publish across the platform.

Question 8

What is the backtesting engine?

Accepted Answer

A strategy testing engine. Define entry and exit logic using 20+ technical indicators (RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, ATR, etc.), set stop loss and take profit, then test against years of historical data. You get equity curves, drawdown analysis, Sharpe ratio, profit factor, and trade by trade breakdowns.

Question 9

Do I need my own GPU to train ML models?

Accepted Answer

No. Training runs on our dedicated GPU cluster. It is free, queued fairly, and typically completes in minutes. Every run returns a full performance report with accuracy metrics, feature importance, and prediction visualisations.

Question 10

How does this compare to Bloomberg or TradingView?

Accepted Answer

Bloomberg charges over £20,000 per terminal per year. TradingView locks indicators and features behind paid tiers. London Strategic Edge offers live data, a 118,000 dataset archive, 20 ML model types, a full backtesting engine and fundamental analysis, all free on our own infrastructure.

Question 11

Where does the market data come from?

Accepted Answer

Systematic algorithms parse publicly available sources, clean the data and use proxy instruments where direct redistribution is not available. Live pricing flows through our own WebSocket pipeline into databases on dedicated bare metal servers.