El, and all,
This should help folks find free real time quotes.
NW
The real word on real-time quotes
Here's where to turn when you need to know now (and you don't want
to pay).
By Kamau High
When you want to know, you want to know - especially when it comes
to stocks. So it was a boon to investors when the Thomson Investor
Network began offering free real-time stock quotes on its Website
last fall.
But in typical Internet fashion, Thomson wasn't alone for long.
Many sites very quickly introduced free real-time quotes of their
own. And now, they're a fairly standard part of an investment or
personal finance site's fare.
"Information is quickly becoming commoditized," says Tanya
Hilleary, a spokeswoman for Thomson (which provides the real-time
quotes for Money.com). That's not to say the data is less useful
-- just that it's more easily found. But the proliferation of free
real- time quotes raises some interesting questions, most
significantly: Who's using the numbers? And why?
Officials at various sites say their users run the gamut from
casual investors to the day-traders, for whom minutes and seconds
count. The sites that offer the quotes won't say how many people
use the service or how many quotes they provide. But Stuart
Robson, the president of First International Financial Corp.,
which publishes freerealtime.com, said he saw "a large spike" in
requests during the market turbulence of the last couple of weeks.
And proponents say the quotes are a valuable tool for countless
investors, particularly in turbulent times. (Stocks ended higher
on Monday as investors put aside worries about Russian economic
weakness and the president's testimony before the Whitewater grand
jury. The Dow industrials surged nearly 150 points, or 1.78%; the
Nasdaq composite index rose 27.85 points, or 1.56%.) And the sites
say the real-time quotes have uses beyond online trading. "I still
get e-mail saying, 'boy, this has really helped me manage my
broker,'" says Hilleary.
Still, some experts question whether the average investor is -- or
should be -- basing his investment decisions on the real-time
data.
"If you're planning for the long term, or just general
information, real-time quotes are not necessary," says Michael
Gazalla, a senior analyst at Forrester Research who has monitored
the growth of investing on the Internet. Business and investment
sites sites feel compelled to offer real-time quotes for
competitive reasons, he says. But as more sites make them
available, the less useful they are as a customer recruitment
tool.
What's more, most of the real-time feeds are coming from the same
places, mainly Digitrade, Thomson, North American Quotations and
Standard and Poor's. All of the sites require registration to use
the feature, and most (including Money.com) set limits on the
number of quotes a user can access in a day.
With that in mind, Money Daily set out to examine the marketplace,
looking for the sites that offer free quotes in real-time, and to
find out what limits they have. The chart below indicates what we
found.
Money.com (money.com/rtq) 50 free quotes per day No e-mail alerts
to news/movement Delayed portfolio tracking News search available
Fox Market Wire (www.foxmarketwire.com) 50 free quotes per day
E-mail alerts for news/movement Real-time portfolio tracking News
search
Free Real Time (www.freerealtime.com) Unlimited free quotes No
e-mail alerts for news/movement Real-time portfolio tracking News
search
InfoSpace (in-114.infospace.com) 50 free quotes per day No e-mail
alerts for news/movement No portfolio tracking News search
Quote Central (www.quotecentral.com) 100 free quotes per day
E-mail alerts for news/movement Delayed portfolio tracking News
search
ThomsonRTQ (thomsonrtq.com) 50 free quotes per day E-mail alerts
Delayed portfolio tracking News search
Wall Street City (www.wallstreetcity.com) Unlimited free quotes
E-mail alerts Delayed portfolio tracking News search |
