How do I write a useful monitoring instruction?
The monitoring instruction is the brief the filter uses. Vague briefs produce vague alerts. Specific briefs produce fewer, more useful ones.
Write it as if you were briefing a junior analyst for a week: the market or name, the event types that would change a decision, the geographies, and the noise you already know you do not want.
What to include
- Entities: companies, mines, plants, officials, tickers or facilities you care about.
- Event types: outages, permits, strikes, export bans, sanctions, accidents, guidance changes.
- Geography: countries, ports, basins or regions, especially when the same name exists in several places.
- Exclusions: routine earnings recaps, sports, similarly named consumer brands, or analyst-note roundups if those are noise for you.
Examples
Weak: “copper news”. Stronger: “Alert me when Chile, Peru or the DRC reports mine disruption, tax changes, water-permit issues or labour action at major copper operations. Ignore price-roundup pieces that only recap futures.”
Weak: “Trump”. Stronger: “Alert me to Truth Social or news items where tariff rates, energy permitting, or named agencies change. Ignore campaign-rally recaps unless a policy number is stated.”
After the first run
Open five results. If three are off-topic, the brief is too wide or a source is too general. Remove the noisy source or add an exclusion. If an expected story is missing, the source may not be attached, the item may still be behind a login, or the event did not match the brief.