Google to Offer Real-Time Stock Quotes

Apro+im writes "Today, Google announced that Google Finance will report real-time prices on NASDAQ-listed securities. While real-time stock quotes are not new, they have long encumbered with subscriptions, legal agreements, or pay software. This may be the first free source for real-time quotes."

Simpsons already did it.

Yahoo! does this already.

Re:Simpsons already did it.

I don't know why this is flamebait, Yahoo did actually start doing this about a month ago, but got no Slashdot coverage. I'm glad to see it done, 15 minutes/20 minutes were the actual delay times, and were kind of annoying...not 3 hours as some people have already stated. Anyhow, most brokers give you real-time quotes for free, such as Scottrade...others are a bit more stingy about it...such as ING. Hopefully this will force brokerage firms to lighten up on their lower tier subscription fees.

Re:Simpsons already did it.

I'm more interested in being able to search the 20+ year history of a stock, mutual fund, index (with dividend reinvestment), or futures contract. They only seem to let you go back 10 years, or not see the result of dividend reinvestment. Even google finance only lets you go back a few years in many cases.

Interestingly enough, people on investing forums casually reference these values as if they're easy to get, but I've never seen a free source for that information.

Re:Simpsons already did it.

Yahoo lets you download way more than 20 years of stock history, with and without taking into account dividends. You can even download all that in a .csv.

F. ex: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=IBM [yahoo.com] shows IBM quotes going back to 1962.

Re:Simpsons already did it.

Yahoo! does this already.

Are you sure? Read the fine print at the bottom of the Yahoo finance page next time:

Quotes are updated automatically, but will be turned off after 25 minutes of inactivity. Quote data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, 20 minutes for NYSE and Amex. Real-Time continuous streaming quotes are available through our premium service.

Yahoo users - don't be fooled

Yahoo users - don't be fooled by simple "Web 2.0", and "AJAX" magic. It's just a bunch of javascripts refreshing your browswer... on a time delay.

On occasion, I have seen quotes for FDRXX (money market fund) report 123,000%+ on finance.yahoo.com, so you still have to think once in a while, as wonderful as the Internet is, it is not perfect.

And to be a bit off-topic and rambling, it will not be technical hurdles that "kill" the Internet, it will be lawyers and legislators, mark my words.

Re:Ctrl-r

Just because they stop streaming after 25 minutes doesn't mean they aren't providing free real-time quotes.

Guess you missed the end part where Yahoo said:

Quote data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, 20 minutes for NYSE and Amex. Real-Time continuous streaming quotes are available through our premium service.

...that doesn't strike me as free and real-time.

not just talking about yahoo, although they provided them years ago but were forced to discontinue them a few years ago.

"Forced" by whom, and how?

FIRST POST!!!!

First post!!!

All post data delayed 15 minutes for Slashdot. Sigs are updated automatically, but will be turned off after 25 minutes of inactivity.

Re:Simpsons already did it.

Assuming Google quotes NASDAQ directly, the difference is that Yahoo! quotes ECNs instead as the managing editor over at CNBC explains:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/24927068/site/14081545/ [cnbc.com]

This has a wide range of implications, mainly how exchanges charge for their data. This will probably help NASDAQ to continue to put more pressure on the NYSE. It may be a good step though as I'd like to see the futures exchanges allow for their data services to be more freely available.

It also helps to empower the individual investor as the gap between the institutions and in the individuals closes. This can have unintended consequences though in terms of volatility as the retail money may get more fidgety with this more timely data. Either way, it should be interesting to watch this develop.

I got 'em in E*Trade readily enough.

I got free real-time quotes with my E*Trade account readily enough. You do need to open an account and log in each time, and you do need to accept a legal agreement, but I don't think you need to actually pay for them.

The legal agreement was mostly "you can't sue us, or NASDAQ, or the NYSE or anybody, for giving you these quotes... and you can't, like, republish these to other people". It didn't seem excessive.

I guess Google will be more convenient than these, but it's not a huge deal. Besides, if you actually care about a 15-minute delay, you'll have your brokerage account open anyway.

Who needs real time stock quotes?

First it was "15 minutes delayed" stock quotes being all the rage.

Now people are getting excited over "real time"? bah!

Give me "In 10 Minutes" stock quotes and I'll pay for that!

Re:Who needs real time stock quotes?

Give me "In 10 Minutes" stock quotes and I'll pay for that!

I just bought several hundred thousand shares of some stocks that are supposed to go through the roof next week. Many emails from good friends who's names I don't recognize recommended them!

This is a NASDAQ story, not a Google story

While I know Google makes for good news, this story is in fact more about the exchanges loosening their grip on quote restrictions than it is a feel-good Google story.

Historically the exchanges have required anyone offering free quotes to delay them 15-20 minutes [cnn.com] since a big part of their revenue stream derived from charging brokerages for real-time quotes. (Brokerages in turn only offered this service to their customers.) NASDAQ announced a deal to allow Google, the Wall Street Journal, and CNBC [cnet.com] to show real-time quotes for free. Yahoo Finance announced a similar deal with a different group (BATS Trading) to phase free real-time quotes throughout its site also.

Looks like the internet continues to bring down barriers to information.

Welp

I feel a great disturbance on the Internet. As if millions of tenuous business models suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

Google vs Bloomberg

As some of you may or may not know, Bloomberg provides huge amounts of financial data to investment banks/firms via "Bloomberg Terminals" that Bloomberg offers. These terminals are very expensive to the firms. Yet all they offer is information. Information is something that Google excels at. I've used these Bloomberg terminals and they aren't exactly technology that you'd think of as cutting edge for 2008. Data is often inaccurate and researching things on them is an art.

I've wondered if Google might just enter the financial data market strongly. Google knows how to deal with large amount of data better than many places that are somewhat stuck in the past.

Not Realtime

I used to produce infosystems for traders and equities researchers/promoters on Wall Street (and in Toronto) during the 1990s Bubble. When those brokers say "realtime", they are talking about delays that are under 1 second. They're talking about WANs, LANs and apps at both client and server that have next to no latency. Because for their hottest traders, the software that makes them $billions a day, any edge in faster info means beating the competition.

The time to hit a Google page of "realtime" quotes is going to be at least a couple seconds, to say nothing of how long Google takes to get them from the market infosystems (which could be under 1s, because Google is rich and smart). That's not the realtime that real brokers pay for. It's better than 15-minute delayed quotes, which is what you usually get for free. But let's not call something realtime that isn't, even if it's free. That's the kind of BS that made the 1990s Bubble such a catastrophe, despite the best infosystems to deliver it that money could buy.

Re:Real time or delayed?

Looking back on the google finance blog, they apparently went to the SEC and asked to get a feed straight from the source. I think it's gonna be as real time as possible

Re:Real time or delayed?

If only the article contained this information...

Re:Real time or delayed?

If only the article contained this information...

I think I can speak for everyone when I say that nobody who values their time RTFA, after all it's just superfluous details that aren't needed to post comments. In fact, based on a lot of the comments I read, I assume that many people are so busy they cannot even RTFS. This too is understandable to some extent since the summary is just a wordy version of the article title. This is, however, the first time I've met somebody who couldn't bother to RTFT.

Short version: RTFT.

Re:ja1217

The best you can do is make a psuedo-ai that can make guesses based on data. And again, no one's made a computer good enough at guessing that it makes money.

Hahahahahahahahahaha. PLEASE keep thinking that. How do you think companies like D.E. Shaw & Co. [deshaw.com] exist? Not to mention Goldman Sachs [gs.com], etc.

The reason I get a paycheck twice is month, in part, is because you can create efficient algorithms to make money in financial markets. But please don't let that dissuade you from your obviously very informed opinion.

Prediction systems

While the formula may be hugely complex, if such a formula exists, it's kinda self destroying, because the stock market exists in a way because there is no formula.

That's the only part of the above posting that's true. There have been successful technical analysis systems over the years. The trouble is that once someone finds a working strategy for beating the market and uses it on a large scale, others notice and replicate it, and it becomes the market. There's also a failure mode where structured investment vehicles are constructed in such a way that they have a high probability of a continual small gain coupled with a small probability of a big loss, for a negative expectation overall. (See "Long Term Capital Management".)

So much programmed trading activity is going on that it's most of the market now. That's why the number of transactions has become so high.

Re:This is a big deal...

"tons" of subscription services will not lose most of their user base overnight as "tons" of subscription services offer more services than just "real-time quotes." Including research/reports, customer service, stock trading, etc... This is a non-issue.

Maybe to some, not to me.

The vast majority of investors should ignore the minute by minute blows of the market. At this time scale the market is literally a big roulette wheel. Virtually all day traders and every amateur who thinks they can reliably extract disproportionate gains out of the market long-term (i.e. more than they would by say, holding an appropriate mix of diversified indexes) are fooling themselves into making predictions on what essentially amounts to sheer randomness. Think I'm crazy? Do yourself a favor and read A Random Walk Down Wall Street [amazon.com] and save yourself the decade it took me to figure out how the market works. You're welcome.

Re:Maybe to some, not to me.

This is very VERY true. Speculation is, afterall, a zero-sum-game. You can only beat the average of the market to precisely the same degree that someone else underperforms the market. The only sure winners are the brokers collecting transaction-fees.

Now -investment- is *not* a zero-sum game, over time most companies turn a profit (those who don't go bankrupt), and so buying random stock at random times and keeping it until you need the money will, on the average, give you precisely the same return as the market-average.

The Random Walk book gives good advice, except I personally prefer just naked stocks instead of index-funds. For the fairly simple reason that index-funds have -low- costs (typically 0.2%/year or thereabouts) whereas holding random stock has -zero- overhead-cost pro year.

4% pro year over 30 years give 324% (4% above inflation is a fair longterm guess for the stockmarket) 4.2% over the same period gives 344%. It's not a big deal though, either is sound advice.

index funds make sense if you ain't got enough money to invest to get an acceptable diversity yourself. Personally I change from index-funds to raw stocks when I can afford to hold 10+ different stock in a market. (which means for example for OSE, you'd need on the order of $20K)

Also in most funds, the fund-managers are technically the owners of the stock, and you own only a part of the fund. Which means, for example, that you don't get a vote on the general assembly. Instead the fund-managers get to vote -- even though it's YOUR money that bougth the stock.

Re:How will Google make money?

I'd like to know how Google will make its money on this particular service. How?

How does Google make money at anything? They'll sell your eyeballs to advertisers.