NASDAQ quotes go real-time on Google Finance!

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of real-time last sale prices for NASDAQ listed stocks on Google Finance and other Google search properties. Google has partnered with NASDAQ for this pilot program in order to offer users free access to real-time stock quotes.

It's important to have up-to-date market data. It's equally important that that data stay up to date. Consequently, we're enabling the streaming of quotes across Google Finance. Prices will update automatically, once per second, to reflect current market conditions.

As many of you are aware, we have worked on this for a long time. We believe providing real-time stock quotes is an important step to allow investors to make more timely and better informed investment decisions. From Wall Street to Main Street, everyone deserves equal access to the financial markets.

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Hong Kong Stock Exchange pricing data

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We've just added support to Google Finance for Hong Kong Stock Exchange listings. In addition to news and descriptive data (which we already offer for these listings), you'll now see intra-day data and pretty charts. You can search for companies by name using the search box. You can also search by ticker -- for example, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Hutchison Whampoa, you can search for it by name, as 0013.HK, or as HKG:0013.

Note: While we've added support for Hong Kong equities, we haven't yet added support for the Hang Seng indices. We're working on adding Hang Seng support, and will announce it here as soon as it's available.

Thanks for using Google Finance! As always, if you find any problems, please let us know.

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A new home page and a new country!

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

You might have noticed today that our homepage has a new look. We've been listening to your feedback, and as a result have made it easier to follow the latest news affecting the market as well as those that are relevant to your portfolio. You can still view your portfolio's performance and recent quotes on the homepage. We hope the new look helps you find the financial information you're looking for much more quickly and easily!

The new homepage look is available on all Google Finance properties (U.S., Canada and the U.K.). And there's a new site addition too: Google Finance China. The Chinese stock market has been generating a lot of buzz, and there has been a pronounced increase in individual investing all across China. We are happy to offer Chinese investors access to Chinese stock and mutual fund information as well as to other global markets through our easy-to-use and familiar interface in Chinese. This is an exciting launch for us, and several engineers from our New York and Shanghai offices have worked hard to make this happen. This simultaneous launch of the new homepage with the Chinese site continues our momentum in adding new features and countries in the future. As always, we encourage you to send us your feedback, and stay tuned for more feature updates to come.

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Taiwan Stock Exchange pricing data

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We've just added support to Google Finance for Taiwan Stock Exchange listings. In addition to news and descriptive data (which we already offer for these listings), you'll now see intra-day data and pretty charts. You can search for companies by name using the search box. You can also search by ticker -- for example, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in MediaTek, you can search for it by name, as 2454.TW, or as TPE:2454. Similarly, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Cathay Financial, you can search for it by name, as 2882.TW, or as TPE:2882. The TAIEX can be found as .TWII or ^TWII.

As always, if you find any problems, please let us know.

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Introducing the Stock Screener

Posted by Daniel Switkin, Software Engineer

I'm very happy to announce that today we are introducing a new stock screener to Google Finance. If you haven't used one before, a screener is an advanced search tool that lets you find companies which match a set of criteria. For example, you could search for large companies with a PE ratio less than 20 which pay at least a 5% dividend. Or you could screen for small tech companies with strong 5 year growth. It's entirely up to your investment strategy.

There are a number of new and cool features I'd like to mention. Anytime you make adjustments like setting a value, removing a criteria, or limiting the search to a single exchange, the list of results updates automatically. The search is completely live -- no buttons to press. We also have blue and white histograms so you can see the distribution of all companies for a particular value--for example there are far more companies with a market cap below one billion dollars than above. You can either grab the sliders or type exact values to the set the minimum and maximum for each criteria.

Once you have run a screen that you like, you can bookmark the page or email the link to a friend. Since not all of the criteria may be familiar terms, we've included definitions in the Add Criteria wizard, as well as a help icon next to each line.

As always, please let us know how you like it. We're hard at work on new features and want to incorporate your suggestions. Happy screening!

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iGoogle chart gadget fixes

Posted by Vivi Costache, Software Engineer

A while ago we launched an iGoogle Finance tab with various gadgets. We received a ton of feedback from you, and one of the main questions was "why are there no fancy finance charts there"? It was a bit of a challenge to add those nice charts using iGoogle, so it took more time than we hoped. And now... the Google Finance Chart gadget is ready for you!

Add the Google Finance Chart gadget »

We've even added a configuration option for setting the default number of days on your gadget so that it best fits your trading habits.

So go ahead and watch your favorite stock (or combination of stocks by entering multiple tickers) on iGoogle and let us know if you have any other suggestions for our fancy charts gadget. We're listening.

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Tell us what you think

Posted by Marianne Berkovich, user experience researcher

We’re looking to get some organized feedback from y’all about Google Finance. Please take a few minutes to take our survey and tell us about how you use it -- which features you like, which you don’t use, and a bit about what kind of investor you are.

This survey will help us learn what’s working for you and focus our energies on the areas that matter most to you. We look forward to hearing from you!

Take our survey!

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