How-to · 3-minute setup

How to get live stock quotes in Claude with TradeLoop

Ask vanilla Claude “where's SPY trading?” and it answers from training data that's months out of date — or refuses entirely. This guide fixes that in about three minutes: you'll install TradeLoop's MCP server, and Claude (Desktop or Code) will pull live quotes, daily bars, technical indicators, earnings dates, and SEC filings from real providers — Polygon, Finnhub, CoinGecko, FRED, and EDGAR.

What you'll need

• One of: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex CLI, or the ChatGPT desktop app.
• A terminal. No market-data API keys required — the free tier works out of the box, and you can bring your own Polygon / Finnhub key later for higher limits.

Step 1 — Install TradeLoop

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://tradeloop.top/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -c "iwr -useb https://tradeloop.top/install.ps1 | iex"

The installer puts the TradeLoop CLI, local daemon, and the skill library under ~/.tradeloop/. The daemon runs at 127.0.0.1 — local-first, so your watchlist and queries stay on your machine.

Step 2 — Log in and configure Claude

tradeloop login
tradeloop setup

tradeloop setup scans for installed AI clients and writes the MCP server entry into each one's config — Claude Desktop's claude_desktop_config.json, Claude Code's ~/.claude/settings.json, Cursor's ~/.cursor/mcp.json, and so on. You never edit a config file by hand.

Step 3 — Ask Claude for a quote

Fully restart Claude Desktop (Cmd+Q, then reopen — it reads MCP config at startup), or start a fresh Claude Code session and confirm with /mcp. Then try:

Where is NVDA trading right now, and what's the 14-day RSI?

Claude calls the Polygon-backed quote tool for the price and the Technical Indicators skill's analyze tool for the RSI — computed server-side, so the model reasons over a clean number instead of crunching OHLC bars token by token.

What your agent can pull after setup

• Quotes & bars — live and historical prices for stocks and options via Polygon and Finnhub; crypto via CoinGecko.
• Indicators — RSI, MACD, moving averages, Bollinger Bands, ATR, precomputed over any symbol and timeframe.
• Levels — support/resistance, pivots, opening-range breakout, anchored VWAP via Levels & Setups.
• Earnings & fundamentals — dates, EPS/revenue estimates, analyst recommendations (Finnhub).
• Filings — 10-K / 10-Q / 8-K / Form 4 from SEC EDGAR; macro series (CPI, rates, yields) from FRED.

Useful prompts to try

• “Pull SPY's last 60 daily closes and tell me if momentum is turning on the MACD.”
• “Which of AAPL, MSFT, AMD is most overbought on the daily RSI right now?”
• “When does AMD report next, and what are the consensus EPS and revenue estimates?”
• “Where are the key support levels on TSLA, and how far is price from the 200-day MA?”

Troubleshooting

Claude says it has no market-data tools.

Claude reads MCP config at startup — fully quit and reopen. Then run tradeloop doctor to verify the daemon is running and the config points at the right binary.

Quotes work but feel delayed.

The free tier uses shared provider quotas with standard data entitlements. For real-time quotes and extended history, upgrade the plan or bring your own Polygon key (BYOK) — the daemon then calls Polygon directly with your entitlements.

Claude answers from memory instead of calling the tool.

Be explicit once: “Use the market-data tool to get NVDA's price.” After a call or two, Claude reaches for the tools on its own.

Going further

Quotes are the entry point. The same setup lets your agent watch your list and alert you when a setup triggers and run cited research across FinTwit, Reddit, and the web.

Related skills: Polygon · Finnhub · Technical Indicators. Deep dive: Give Your AI Agent Live Market Data via MCP.