Getting free stock quotes is as easy as picking up the discarded financial section of the newspaper at your favorite coffee place. Reading this Monday - Friday feature on a regular basis will make you a smarter stock market investor because you will know exactly what is going on in the stock market.
The most important thing to remember about free stock quotes is that you should get them only from reliable sources. Just because some Websites offer them gratis doesn't necessarily ensure they're accurate or up to date.
That said, there are a good many Websites offering easy-to-read, free stock quotes that are accurate, nearly current (standard lag time is 15 minutes), and don't attempt to strong-arm you into buying something. Google is one of the forerunners in making all kinds of information accessible to everyone at no charge.
The more up-to-date the information, the more valuable it is. This is predominantly true in the world of finance, where info and the timing of it can equal money. At the moment, real-time stock quotes are not as freely and easily available on the Web as you might like and expect. Some sites offer one real-time quote at a time, but usually only after you have enrolled in a service and/or agreed to a complicated legal contract. Other sites operate differently by displaying streaming delayed data.
Neither situation is what you are looking for. You want easy and fast access to real-time, free stock quotes so you know how the market, or your specific company, is doing right now, not half an hour ago.
A few reliable online sources for good, free stock quotes are Free Charts, Quote.com, and MSN Money. More are probably out there waiting to be found by a quick Google search.
There are a multitude of helpful software programs that not only give you free stock market quotes, but help you easily analyze them so you can access the information you want. Stock trading software helps you perceive hidden trends and cycles in the stock market that you wouldn't normally notice on a day-to-day basis. A familiarity with stock market trends is part of every expert investor's arsenal.
If you follow the online stock market news regularly, you'll know where to obtain free stock quotes and also what picks the "experts" are predicting will make you an investor to be reckoned with. |