The Scenario
You are a commodity trader. Every morning at 7:30 AM you open the same Excel workbook with 12 commodities in column A of the Market tab and 8 currency pairs in column B. By 8 AM the desk needs refreshed prices and USD-equivalent values before anyone places a trade.
Right now you are copying prices from three different web sources, converting manually with a calculator, and pasting into the workbook. The whole ritual takes twenty-five minutes and you are still on your first commodity when your colleague calls to ask if the workbook is ready.
The bad version of this morning:
- Open commodity prices site, find crude oil, copy the price, paste into B2 of the Market tab
- Switch to another site for gold, different unit, have to convert manually
- Open a currency converter for the EUR/USD rate, use it to compute the EUR column
- Repeat for 12 commodities and 8 currency pairs
- By 7:58 you have done six commodities and three pairs
- The desk is calling. The workbook is half-done.
The consistent version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook. It reads your commodity and currency pair lists and calls the API Ninjas price and exchange rate endpoints, writing current prices and conversions back in one pass.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each commodity name in column A of the Market tab, fetch the current price from API Ninjas and write it into column B, then convert it to EUR using the current USD/EUR exchange rate and write that into column C. For each currency pair in column D, fetch the exchange rate from API Ninjas and write into column E.
SheetXAI fetches commodity prices and currency rates and writes the conversions without you touching a calculator.
What You Get
A refreshed market workbook ready for the 8 AM desk call:
- Column B: Current commodity price — in USD, live from API Ninjas
- Column C: EUR equivalent — computed using the live USD/EUR exchange rate
- Column E: Currency pair rate — live from API Ninjas for each pair in column D
The same prompt runs every morning. You give SheetXAI the same shape of prompt and it reads fresh data each time.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Market workbooks accumulate edge cases. SheetXAI handles them alongside the data pull.
When commodity names don't match the API Ninjas format
Your workbook uses display names like "Crude Oil (WTI)" but the API uses standardized slugs.
Normalize the commodity names in column A of the Market tab to API Ninjas API slugs before fetching prices. Write the normalized slug into column B, the current price into column C, and the EUR equivalent into column D.
When you want inflation data alongside commodity prices
Your research note needs CPI alongside prices.
Pull the latest annual inflation rate for each country code in column F of the Market tab using API Ninjas and write the CPI rate into column G alongside each country's current central bank interest rate in column H.
When you want to flag significant moves
Prices that moved more than 2% from yesterday's close in column C should be highlighted for the desk.
Fetch current prices for all commodities in column A via API Ninjas and write into column B. Compare each to yesterday's close in column C. If the move is greater than 2% in either direction, highlight the row red and write the percentage change into column D.
When the full morning refresh is one prompt
Twelve commodities, eight currency pairs, inflation data, and a move-flag for anything over 2%, all before 7:55 AM.
Fetch current prices for all commodities in column A of the Market tab via API Ninjas and write into column B. Convert to EUR using the live USD/EUR rate and write into column C. Fetch exchange rates for all currency pairs in column D and write into column E. Pull CPI and central bank rate for the country codes in column G and write into columns H and I. Highlight any commodity in column B that moved more than 2% from column F (yesterday's close) and write the percentage change in column J.
The pattern: every data pull and derived calculation in one prompt so the workbook is ready before the desk calls.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any market research workbook, then ask SheetXAI to refresh prices and rates using API Ninjas. The API Ninjas integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to bulk-enrich a ticker list with stock data in Excel or the API Ninjas in Excel overview.