GET FREE REAL TIME QUOTES AT YAHOO
You would think that when you open up an account with an online discount broker so that you can buy stocks, all the tools needed to start trading successfully would automatically be offered. Makes sense right? But in the case of real time quotes, that isn’t the case.
I have online accounts with E*Trade and Ameriprise Financial and neither of them gives me real time quotes. In order to get them I would have to pay an additional monthly fee. I assume most or all of the other online brokers have the same policy and they see it as a way to get a little more money out of people: part of the up-sell they all have.
The good news is that anyone can now get free real time stock quotes at Yahoo. Take a look at the Apple quote below taken at 9:38 AM Eastern time which is 8 minutes after the stock market opened. You can see the “Change” at 0.00 because quotes are delayed 20 minutes. But they now have the small blue icon that says “real-time” in it and you can see the stock is really up $1.76.
Real time quotes are especially useful in the 20 minutes right after the market opens every morning because without them, you have no idea at what price a stock opens. After hours earnings reports and overnight news means that the price of a stock in the morning can sometimes change a lot from the previous close. Without real time quotes, you have to buy (or sell) blindly in those first 20 minutes which is something no trader should do.
In the second screen shot below, you can see the time was 9:50 AM Eastern time which exactly 20 minutes after the market’s open. Now the 20 minute delayed “Change” shows Apple being up $2.59 and the real-time price really being up only $0.11. Without the real time quote feature you would only know that the stock opened close to up $2.59 and not know that it went down from there.
It should be stated that no price is truly ever “real time”. Computers and the Internet are fast but any real time quote you ever see anywhere will always be seconds or more behind. However, the benefit of being able to get quick and easy real time quotes that are much closer to the actual price you would be paying when you want to buy is clearly a benefit to any trader. Being able to get those real time quotes free, is even better!
