Why I would pay for Yahoo! Finance
Written: Aug 26 '01 (Updated Aug 26 '01)
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Pros: Has everything you could ever need
Cons: Can it last forever?
The Bottom Line: If you are a supermarket type one-stop shopper, there is no other finance site for you. Yahoo Finance gets the job done like none other.
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| mrisch's Full Review: Yahoo Finance |
Come now, as we explore the exciting world of financial websites. By far the best free site (and probably best among pay sites) is the Yahoo! finance site. You can get anything, everything, and then some at finance.yahoo.com. The site is so good, I would probably pay for it if the alternative was to lose it.
I wrote in my CBS MarketWatch review that it was the best combination of services I had seen. I take it back. Of course, this is in part because Yahoo has had a year to add to its services as the sole Survivor of the super-duper-yet-free-but-how-will-we-pay-for-it dot-com portal wars.
Access with my news
Perhaps one of the most important but overlooked features is that I can put my portfolio information on my main Yahoo! portal page. Because Yahoo! is one of the best, if not the best, portals, it is nice to be able to get my portfolio info on the same page. I couldn't get my MarketWatch portfolio on Yahoo! Hmmmm. I wonder why.
Portfolios
The bread and butter of this site just like any others is portfolio management. You can add and subtract items, and it works well. There is also a Java based manager that is glitzy but doesn't do a whole lot that the regular HTML site doesn't do.
An added bonus is the ability to add outside accounts - for example, I can view my e*trade portfolio (when I have the stomach to look at it) right on my home portal page. This is a really nice feature.
The only drawback here (and I have yet to see an effective solution) is any way to handle stock distributions and splits, etc. without adding the same stock multiple times - you are stuck doing price averaging, and it doesn't work well.
Research
Research and profiles at Yahoo is pretty standard - SEC reports, graphs, news from many sources, etc. Nothing special, but it all works very well and is timely. You can also pay for real-time stock quotes.
Like the rest of Yahoo!, you can also personalize the myriad of news and other information on the home finance page, and you can also focus on finance in other parts of the world - Yahoo! is truly multi-national - and it is not a U.S. view of those countries - it is news as reported to people living there.
Two research features that I like a whole lot are:
A. The ability to view a mutual fund's holdings as a "portfolio". In trying to decide whether to sell a fund, I was able to go to the profile of holdings, and then see the stock prices and daily changes for those holdings. I could see what went up and down in a given day.
B. The ability to do a historical price check for a specific day. When my grandparents died, this was very important for handling the value of a trust they left, and no other site I tried had it.
Other external accounts
Another great feature is the ability to look at other accounts online. For example, I can view my latest MBNA Mastercard balances and transactions, and I could (if I didn't use a small credit union not yet on the list) also see my bank transactions and balances. That is what I call a full service, one stop shop. There are other sites that tried this, but Yahoo! actually delivers, and for free.
Bill Paying
If you are not already with another bill payer, you can use, for a low fee, Yahoo's online bill payer. I haven't used it, but I did want to report that it is available.
PayPal Wannabe
Another service offered, but that I haven't tried, is "PayDirect", the ability to send money online. While I can't speak to the quality, if you gave me a choice between PayPal and Yahoo!, both on survival, service, and on likelihood of survival in the super-duper-yet-free-but-how-will-we-pay-for-it dot-com portal wars, I would go with Yahoo! - especially because it is available along with all the other services I want.
Mobility
Did you know that most of Yahoo!, including the financial site, are available on mobile devices? I used to routinely check my portfolios on my internet cell phone. Now I don't have the stomach for it, but I still could if I wanted.
Net Worth
There is a goofy little personal finance module called "Net Worth", which will add up all your portfolios and take other information in and report on your assets and liabilities. I suppose it is a useful feature - Quicken has been offering it for years.
Every service under the sun
Yahoo! has worked hard to make sure you will never need to go anywhere else for a financial service. You can do your taxes online with H&R Block, and get all sorts of insurance and loan quotes. All of the quotes I have seen are at least competitive. I am not sure why anyone would use sites like E-Loan and LendingTree (though note that Yahoo! farms out some of the services to E-Loan and other sites). In fact, I am going to go check out auto loans right now.
Conclusion
This may seem like a one-sided review, but the truth is, there is not really any drawback I can see to Yahoo! Finance, certainly so long as I am not paying for it.
I am certain that this review will soon be out of date, as the site adds more and more features.
Recommended:
Yes
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