< Google Manual

You can use Google to get quick stock quotes and more stock information.

The fastest way to get a quote with some basic trading data is to simply key the stock symbol right into the search field. For example, give [goog] a try. You’ll get the following stock quotes one-box right at the top of your search results page.

It gives you a one-day mini-chart, price, volume, market cap and highs and lows for the day. I am very pleased to see that they included the real time price at the bottom, in addition to the 15-minute delayed price.

To get more detailed and complete information, you can then click in the one-box. This will produce the same result as if you wanted to go directly to the detailed stock data by entering into the search field the operator “stock:” followed by one or more stock symbols:

[stocks: goog]

Google doesn’t have it’s own stock information page (yet?) so it will pull up pages from other sites. Entering a Google stock: query, surprisingly, begins with a page from it’s arch rival, Yahoo!. Click the link above to see it in action in a new browser window.

You can see at the top of the page there are links to switch to stock quote pages from The Motley Fool, MSN MoneyCentral and ClearStation. Clicking any of these will display a page from their respective sites.

If you enter more than one symbol in the search field, you’ll get multiple quotes on the page. Try clicking the following now to open up the quotes in a new browser window:

[stocks: goog qcom nvda]

The initial Yahoo! finance page shows a series of snapshots, one after another, neatly stacked on the page for an organized look at the stock prices, market data, a daily chart and more. Links provide more detailed information.

The Fool.com (The Motley Fool) site will display a page for the first stock symbol only. Yet, it has a drop down list box pre-filled with the other symbols you can select to change the page information. This page is better suited for recent headlines and press releases.

MSN Money Central provides a nice display for multiple symbols. There is less information shown than on Yahoo, but the benefit is it takes less space. There is a line for the price and volume for each stock, followed by a chronological list of headlines for the companies. You can click links for more detailed information on any stock. (I had trouble opening this page with FireFox for some reason, but maybe it’s only my installation.)

ClearStation gives you more information on the initial page than the others do. However, it will only display information for the first two symbols. But, if you are looking for a quick display of the best looking chart of the four, along with common technical indicators, this is the best bet.

Other Ways to Get to Quotes

If you key in the entire name of a publicly traded company you’ll most likely see a regular search result listing for the company’s web site; this will have a “stock quotes for symbol” link you can click to go to the stock quotes page.

Creating Portfolios

You can create and bookmark a portfolio for quick retrievals of selected stocks. Just enter the stocks: operator with the symbols you want grouped together, select the information source up top, and then bookmark the page with a descriptive name for the portfolio. For example, you can set up portfolios for Energy, Technology, Biotech, and so on. Or, if you don’t have many stocks, just put them all in one portfolio.

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