11:05:32 GMT
FinancialJuice Origin
Original source breaks the story. FinancialJuice squawk: Trump has instructed to postpone all military strikes against Iran.
How fast we catch it.
The desk monitors 130+ sources on a 30-second cycle. When a story breaks, here is how quickly it reaches the wire versus how fast we surface it.
Lead Time
88s
Ahead of mainstream wire
Sources Active
130+
Monitored continuously
Cycle Time
30s
Polling interval
Coverage
24/7
No downtime windows
What Lead Time Means
Lead time is the single most important performance metric the desk tracks. It measures the gap between when Intel Desk detects a story and when the first mainstream wire service publishes its own version. A positive lead time means the desk had the story first. The measurement is built from three timestamps recorded for every significant event.
firstSourceTimestamp
The moment the original source published the story. For a squawk feed, this is the publication timestamp on the item. For a social media post, this is the post creation time.
firstSurfacedTimestamp
The moment Intel Desk ingested the item and placed it on the wire. This is the timestamp visible to desk subscribers. It includes polling delay (up to 30 seconds) plus processing time.
firstMajorWireTimestamp
The moment the first mainstream English-language wire service (Reuters, Bloomberg, ForexLive, or equivalent) published a version of the same story.
Lead Time (calculated)
Wire pickup minus desk detection. firstMajorWireTimestamp - firstSurfacedTimestamp. A positive number means the desk had it first.
The March 23 Example
The clearest illustration of lead time is the 23 March 2026 event. Trump postponed military strikes against Iran. FinancialJuice broke the story. Intel Desk detected it on the next polling cycle. ForexLive published its article eighty-eight seconds after the original source.
11:06:12 GMT (+40s)
Intel Desk Critical Alert
Intel Desk critical alert fires. Tripwire match on iran_strike_postpone. Subscribers with portfolio exposure to Brent, LNG, SHEL, gold, and DXY receive immediate notification.
11:07:00 GMT (+88s)
ForexLive Wire Pickup
First mainstream wire article. ForexLive publishes a full article on the Trump/Iran development. This is the moment the desk's lead time is measured against.
Forty seconds from source to critical alert. Eighty-eight seconds from source to mainstream wire. For a Brent trader, that gap was the window.
Lead time log, 23 March 2026
The full source propagation timeline, including later confirmations and the Tasnim contradiction, is available in the case file.
Hit Rate
Speed without accuracy is noise. The desk tracks a confirmation hit rate for every story flagged as significant: what percentage of stories flagged by the desk were confirmed by a second independent source within four hours?
Confirmed Within 4h
87%
Of flagged stories
False Positives
3
Last 90 days
Sample Size
142
Significant events tracked
A false positive is defined as a story that the desk flagged as significant (confidence MEDIUM or above) that was not confirmed by any second source within four hours. Stories that remain at LOW confidence are not counted, because the desk explicitly marks them as unconfirmed.
These numbers update as the desk processes new events. The static fallbacks shown above are from the most recent manual audit. When the API is available, the figures are populated live.
Note
Lead time is measured against English-language mainstream wire services. Original-language sources (Farsi, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean) may publish earlier, and the desk's detection of those sources is measured separately. Past lead times do not guarantee future performance. The 88-second figure is from a single, well-documented event and should not be treated as a baseline.