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Dating with news can be somewhat fuzzy, which is why we always take our news from the financial press, and attempt to datestamp with "material" information ... that is to say, news with a very high monetary value that the market is racing to receive.

You could (conceivably) make up plausible future stories, but not things like quarterly results, lawsuit outcomes, etc.

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I can't remember which show, but I remember watching a TV mystery with a picture of someone reading a newspaper as proof of someone being present on a certain day. Trouble was, the editor of the paper was in on the scam and ensured the headline would appear that day.

Another good source of fixed-in-the-past yet unpredictable data is the closing price of a collection of stocks from the previous day. This would make verification easier to automate.

Easy to automate might not be the best goal for a system like this :)

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