SigmapAI

Inspiration

We’ve all stared at a stock chart and wondered “Wait… what even happened that day?” Most financial platforms throw numbers and graphs at you, but they rarely explain the why. When prices spike or crash, the context behind those moves fades with time. Months later, it’s almost impossible to recall the headlines or world events that caused them.

We wanted to change that. Our idea was born from the frustration of trying to piece together forgotten news, outdated data, and disconnected stories. We imagined a tool that doesn’t just show what the market did but why it did it. Something that brings clarity, connects events to impact, and makes the financial world understandable for everyone, not just experts.

What it does

Sigmap AI helps people new to trading understand how world events affect the market by visualizing them on an interactive world map. Each news event is automatically analyzed and ranked by AI-powered impact scoring, showing how strongly it influences global markets. Users can explore events geographically, filter by sectors or countries, and instantly see the connection between breaking news and stock performance. Whether it’s a policy change in Europe or an energy crisis in Asia, Sigmap AI makes it easy to grasp what happened, where it happened, and why it matters — all in one intuitive view.

How we built it

We used the Nextjs framework for the application. We used MarketAux to fetch the news API and we used AlphaVantage to fetch stock information.

Challenges we ran into

One of our teammates had to wrestle with merge conflict — 10 conflicts in a single log file (we still joke about it cuz how). On a more serious note, finding reliable, free, and open-source APIs for both news and stock market data was a major hurdle. Many APIs came with strict rate limits, paywalls, or incomplete datasets. To overcome this, we built AI-assisted data pipelines to help identify, clean, and validate more reliable sources during development.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully managed our time and coordinated effectively as a team to meet tight deadlines. Balanced multiple tasks simultaneously, from development and testing to design and deployment. Built a functional and scalable product that showcases collaboration and innovation

What we learned

Working on this project, we learned how to work with modern technologies like Next.js, and gained experience in integrating APIs, managing state, and optimizing performance. We also improved our team communication, problem-solving, and project management skills.

What's next for SigmapAI

Our next goal is to gather user feedback, and continue improving the system based on real-world use. We also want to optimize the application and incorporate real time data.