Yahoo! Finance, Learn About High Finance And Yodeling!
Written: Sep 15 '00 (Updated Sep 15 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Content Timeliness: |
 |
|
| Information Depth: |
|
|
| Web Site Experience: |
|
|
| Web Site Load Time: |
 |
|
|
Pros: a lot of information, great sources, easy to use
Cons: none
|
|
|
| doveman's Full Review: Yahoo Finance |
Yahoo! Finance is a great place for financial novices, intermediates, experts to learn more about the subject of finance and investments. I love this portion of Yahoo! because it is very easy to use and navigate, the pages download very quickly, and the information here comes from many high-quality sources.
Stock Research
Mainly, I use Yahoo Finance to keep tabs on my five measly shares of stock and other stocks that I would like to own. When you are at the Yahoo! Finance homepage(http://finance.yahoo.com), it is so very easy to pop in the ticker symbol of a company (you can look up the ticker symbol if you don't know it). Then, you will soon see detailed and current stock trading information. You can now get real time quotes at Yahoo! Finance as well as general daily trading information and various stock charts showing the change in price over a daily, monthly, or yearly time frame.
On the bottom on a company's stock quote page, you can find recent news articles about the particular company and stock. This is very valuable when you are trying to find out why your Internet stock is up or down 50 dollars today. The news articles come from a variety of sources, Reuters Business, Motley Fool, CBS Market Watch, Upside Today, Forbes.com, Business Wire, CNET News.com, and many more. Thus, it is very easy to read about current news affecting the stock. News articles appear for the company whenever the company's name appears in the article (doesn't matter if the company is the main subject of the article or not). There are also archived news articles that you can access.
After you have entered in a stock symbol, you can have access to such a large wealth of information. For instance, you can select "Profile" to get a good background report on a company and some of its major financial numbers and statistics. Another nice feature when researching a stock is that on the profile page there are usually links to the company's own web site, and usually a link to the company's own section for investors.
You can select "Research" to learn about how many analysts are ranking the stock from (1-Strong Buy through 5-Strong Sell). You can also see how the company has done in past earning announcements as well as expected future earnings. There also is a link to a page which contains information about which brokerage firms cover the particular stock.
Another section that I find useful is called the 'SEC' section. From here, an investor can get information that the company files with the SEC, such as quarterly and annual reports. These are great sources to learn more about the in and outs of a company.
One section that I haven't used too much, but could be helpful to many investor is titled 'insider'. In this section, you can see what stock transactions have been made by the executive(s) and/or members of the board of the company. I have been told that some investor buy or sell shares based upon insider information. To me, it is helpful information, but not crucial.
An interesting feature and a popular feature on Yahoo!Finance is Yahoo! Messageboards. Yahoo! maintains a messageboard for most individual stocks listed on an exchange. While I never know what to expect, it is always fun to see what people think about the stock. I wouldn't decide to buy or sell a stock solely based on a message posted in the boards, but some of the messages are well thought out and may help you think about a company's potential. However, you will find a lot of meaningless postings like, "This stock will go $100 to $200 by the end of the day". And some messages are just very humorous.
Other Features at Yahoo! Finance
The great thing about Yahoo! Finance is that it isn't solely about stocks. You can get information about loans, taxes, and banking and bills. Yahoo has it own Bill Pay service. You may never have to worry about overnighting bill payments again. They are currently offering a free three-month trial.
When the dreaded April 15 rolls around and before that date, you can use the Tax Center to get great information and tips around filing taxes. You can also connect to information about taxes in your particular state. Federal forms can also be accessed and printed out.
In the insurance section, you can receive a (InsWeb) free quote for auto, life, health, home, and rental insurance. I have never tried this, thus I cannot comment whether or not the results are worthwhile. But, if I was in the market for new insurance, I would gladly give it a try.
Another nice part about Yahoo! Finance is that if you have set your homepage at Yahoo!(My Yahoo!), it is very easy to integrate parts of Yahoo!Finance on your homepage. For instance, I have created a portfolio of stocks that I want to track. Thus, when I am at my home page, I see a column of stocks and their current or closing price. From here, I can link onto more detailed information about a particular stock. You can also set up your homepage to contain information about company news (news about companies in your created portfolio or portfolios), upgrades/downgrades (all stocks), earning surprises (all stocks), and small business features,
Any problems with this site?
Do I have any problems with Yahoo! Finance? Actually, the only problem with Yahoo may be too much information. However, at least, most of the information is on high quality. I rather have more information than less. Overall, I highly recommend this site for beginners or experts who want to learn more about business, finance, and investments. The experience at Yahoo! Finance may be very rewarding.
Hope you find a dollar and good luck,
doveman
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
doveman
|
|
Location: Illinois
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 32 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.