October 11th, 2007
Google Finance goes real-time in China
Google announced today that they have started providing free real-time stock prices for the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Google is now hoping the SEC will follow suit by allowing free access to last trade data for NYSE and Nasdaq as well. Real-time quotes are nice, but I don’t think it is what will ultimately make this service a success.
Google Finance has come a long way since the early days, but it still lacks features that make investors happy. If the service could transform into a world-class personal finance portal that can accurately analyze your portfolio and show that information in an innovative way, the service may become indispensable. Unfortunately though, the portfolio feature in the current application almost feels like it was tacked on at the last minute.
There are so many things that could be added to make it more useful. For example you still can’t look at a graphical representation of your portfolio, and splits and dividends aren’t accounted for so your gain/loss has the potential to be very wrong. There is a giant list of suggestions on a page in the Google Finance discussion group — many of which have to do with making portfolio management better. What do you think? Is Google Finance good enough for you? What features would you like to see added?
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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