I have been learning how to do more with the stock market lately and at first I forced myself to start using Google Finance. I say force because I really love Google’s services because the interfaces are so clean, but I think MSN and Yahoo both have financial sites that offer more information to users. The latest update to Google Finance does, however, present some information that will potentially be very useful:
- A new homepage design which lets you see currency information, sector performance for the U.S. market, and a listing of top market movers along with the relevant and important news of the day.
- A Top Movers section highlighting most active companies by price, market cap, volume, and popularity as determined by our own Google Trends.
- More comprehensive charts, which now display up to 40 years of data for U.S. stocks.
- Richer portfolio capabilities that let you import other online portfolios to Google Finance, use different views and add transactions to make it easier to track your investments.
- A quick and easy way to add and view your Google Finance portfolios on the Google Personalized Homepage.
Now all of those things are great and one thing that I love to do with stocks is look at their history. The new “40 years of data” for certain stocks sounded appealing but there is just one thing that I cannot figure out for the life of me and that is how I can go back to a specific date. I realize that I can adjust the sliders but there has to be a way where I can enter in a date, or select it from a calendar, and have it tell me the numerical values for the stats on that particular day. Am I crazy or is there no easy way to do this?
I also find the “Top Movers” on the homepage to be extremely useful. I have found a few companies that look interesting and I’ll be tracking them to see how they progress. I’m not going to use the “Google Trends” portion of the Top Movers as a reliable source but it may uncover some hidden investment opportunities.
News Source: Official Google Blog
Thanks for the tip CoryC!
A little “tip”; Don’t concern your self with the “Top Movers”. Look at the “Losers”. Look for a good company that has taken a beaten and pick up the stock at a discount. When the stock rebounds you’ll be popping the cork on you favorite bottle of champaign.
Remember, you’re buying a company not the stock.
I typically like to watch the top movers because they are probably going to peak and then drop back down. I definitely don’t buy them when they are doing really well but just like you said I wait for the rebound after they have peaked.
It would be neat if I could great a tab in my Google Home page that would display the Google Finance Page inside a tab on my Google Home Page. I know and I have done this already, I can put my portfolio at my home page. Also, I wish it would have the ability to import a Quicken file so that you can have a history of all your investments.
I can’t say that I ever really thought about it before but I think that you are onto something. Google should offer a lot of their services in tabs on the Personalized Homepage, such as Gmail. I’m sure that would attract a lot more users then. Maybe I’ll see if I can find an address to send some sort of recommendation.
Your browser doesn’t support tabs?
It does support tabs but I don’t like keeping those things open in tabs. I already have 10-30 tabs open at any given time so being able to open a single website and then having quick access to all of the other services would be great.
I haven’t figured how to put the Finance Portfolio on my Google homepage. All I get is a dumb-down version that only show the current stock price for a a few stocks. It’s in no way close to the portfolio on Google Finance. Where the add-on for the portfolio?
Is there a “My Portfolio” link at the bottom of the Google Module? On mine there is and then I can add stocks and such.