Bigger, better Google Finance charts -- and how to get the most out of them

Posted by Tianpeng Jin, Software Engineer

One of the most popular features on Google Finance is our charts. In fact, we like them so much we thought they’d benefit from being bigger. So today we launched a new feature on our individual stock and market charts: the ability to expand them to fill the page and allow for further refinement.

Here are our top tips & tricks for using Google Finance charts, including a few longstanding ones you may not have seen before.

1) Big charts (NEW)

To expand a stock chart, click the arrow button in the upper-right corner. Voilà! The chart fills the page, making it easier than ever to see and manipulate. If you want to collapse it, just click the arrow button again. 

Before:

 

After:

2) Customize your chart view in ‘Settings’ 

You can change the content of the charts to include or exclude news flags, dividends, splits, volume, and after hours trading data by clicking on the ‘Settings’ tab under the chart. From this panel, you can also change the scale from linear to logarithmic and change the default zoom for your charts. Also on the Settings tab, you can switch your charts to a variety of types. Instead of a line graph, you can opt to view candlestick or OHLC (Open, High, Low, Close) charts. 

3) Plot custom news feeds on your charts 

Using the ‘Plot Feeds’ tab, you can customize the news annotations on your chart to come from a favorite RSS feed or news source. Simply click the tab, enter the Feed Address, and click Plot Feeds. Here you can see I’m tracking The Apple Blog.

4) Let’s get technical 

The ‘Technicals' tab allows you to add a variety of technical data to your charts for more advanced tracking. Available technicals range from Simple and Exponential Moving Averages to KDJ Indicators and Bollinger Bands, among many more. You can set up as many technical data series’ to your charts as you like and view up to six at a time.

Try these tips out and let us know what you think or submit your suggestions for Google Finance on our Product Ideas page. Stay tuned for more as we keep building out Google Finance.

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Google Finance smartens up for your smartphone

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager

Here on the Google Finance team, we’re always looking for new ways to help you access the finance data, charts, and reports that you need in the blink of an eye. But all the data in the world won’t help if you can’t access it when you need it most. Since many of us are on the run throughout the day and don’t always have our computers in front of us, it came as no surprise that one of users’ most frequently requested features was a fast, easy-to-use mobile website for Google Finance.

We heard your feedback and are please to announce we’ve launched the new Android/iPhone edition of Google Finance for mobile! The markets don’t stop when you leave your desk, so we’re bringing the markets to you. Our new design gives you a unified experience across desktop and Android or iPhone phones, offering nearly all the same features and functionality on both. You can easily access the new site when you do a Google search for stock tickers or company names on your mobile device, or when you tap the "Finance" tab on the Google mobile homepage.

Now no matter where you are, you can keep up with your portfolio, the latest market news, and the sectors you care about, with real time quotes and data -- all at a glance.

Prefer it in app form? Android users can also get the Google Finance app in Android Market.

As always, if you have feedback on this or other topics, please share it on our Google Finance survey or visit our Product Ideas site where you can share and vote on ideas.

For more tips and tricks on Google Finance, follow us on Twitter.

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What do you wish Google Finance could do?

Posted by Laura Hughes, Consumer Operations
Have you ever had an idea for Google Finance? We want to hear it! Today we’re opening up our very own Product Ideas page.

The Google Finance team looks to our users for feedback and ideas. Knowing what you care about helps us set our priorities when we’re developing the product. Our Product Ideas page lets you submit, vote on, and read other ideas from users. Best of all, it allows the team to jump in and see what YOU want. We’ll respond directly to the ideas that you’re most excited about.

So, don’t hesitate -- tell us what you think would make your Google Finance experience more efficient and more exciting. Take a look at some of the most voted Ideas now and submit your own.



For further feedback visit our product survey here. Stay tuned for more as we keep building out Google Finance and catch the latest from the Google Finance team by following us on Twitter.

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Google Finance adds oodles of options

Posted by Philip Brittan, Director of Product Management

Buy! Sell! Hold! That’s stock trading 101. But sometimes investing isn’t as simple as just buying or selling shares of a stock or mutual funds. More sophisticated stock watchers also want to have the choice, but not the obligation, to purchase or sell a security before a certain time and for a specific amount of money. Yes, it’s nice to have options...



In fact, according to the feedback we’ve collected in our Help Center, options data is among the most requested features users ask for each month. So we’re making options information available to all Google Finance users globally. To find options data on a specific company, search for the company’s name on http://www.google.com/finance. You’ll see a new link to the Option chain in the left navigation bar, which will display the complete option chain for the closest expiration month from today. You can change the expiration date by choosing from the ‘View options by expiration’ dropdown. Here’s a sample option chain for Cisco Systems with an expiration of July 17, 2010:

If you’d prefer to see just the Calls or Puts for the company selected, click on the ‘+’ or ‘-’ beside the table. You can also view the tables straddled side by side. For more information on understanding option chain data, visit our Help Center



We hope you find option chain data helpful as you use Google Finance. If you’ve got feedback on this or other topics, please share it on our survey or visit Product Ideas where you can share and vote on ideas.



For more tips and tricks on Google Finance follow us on Twitter.

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Improved Company Comparisons

Posted by Tianpeng Jin, Software Engineer

Now there is a faster and easier to use company comparison page on Google Finance! Many of you query multiple companies at the same time, so we have worked to make the results better. Let us take a look at this comparison of HP & DELL.

First, the comparison chart displays price changes for all the companies you include. Next to the chart, you will see news related to all of those companies. You can navigate the chart, zoom in and out, and click on news stories just as you can on the chart on a regular stock page.


You will find a table of key metrics such as price or market cap right below the chart, and can customize the metrics by adding or removing columns from the table. Your configuration will be saved and applied to future comparisons as your personal setting.


You can also add more companies to the page. Enter the ticker in the input box above the price chart and click! You will find the new company's price, news and table metrics have been added.

Last but not least, Google Finance now supports cross-country stock comparison. Compare any public stocks from across the world. For example, you can compare Apple with HTC Corporation.

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Google Search Volumes and Economic Activity

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager and Eric Schrock, Software Engineer

We are really excited to launch Google Domestic Trends on Google Finance. This launch was inspired by Hal Varian, our chief economist's research on using Google Trends data to predict economic indicators.

Google Domestic Trends tracks Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy. The changes in the search volume of a given sector on google.com may provide useful economic insight. We have created 23 indexes that track the major economic sectors, such as retail, auto and unemployment. Each index value is baselined at 1.0 on January 1, 2004 and is calculated and displayed on the Google Finance charts as a 7-day moving average. You can easily compare actual stocks and market indexes to these Google Trends on the charts.

For example, the Google Unemployment Index tracks queries like [unemployment], [social security], [unemployment benefits] and so forth. We see that as the recession took hold in the latter half of 2008, this index increased quite dramatically.



Predicting real-world statistics
We wondered if Google search volumes in a month can help better predict real world statistics well before they are officially tabulated and released.

Predicting retail sales
The US Census Bureau releases the Advance Monthly Retail Sales survey 1–2 weeks after the close of each month. These figures are based on a mail survey from a number of retail establishments and are thought to be useful leading indicators of macroeconomic performance. Learn more about the survey and the procedures followed in constructing these numbers.

The retail sales data is organized according to the NAICS retail trade categories. The data is reported in both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted form; for the analysis in this section, we use only the unadjusted data for the NAICS category 448 (clothing and clothing accessories stores).

Google Domestic Trends data
The Google Retail Index tracks query volumes on Google.com related to the retail trade category. Sample queries are [retail], [bags], [retail sales] and so forth. For this analysis we use the index value (30 day moving average) in the middle of the month. Thus, to predict retail sales of March, 2008 we use the index value on March 15th, 2008.

We observe that the Mean Absolute Error improves from 6.52% to 3.65% (an improvement of 44%)!

You can read more about Hal's research on using Google Trends data to predict economic activities on the Google Research Blog.

The data for these indexes are available for download — so you can use it with your own models. If you find interesting patterns and uses, feel free to share with us!

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Splits and dividends now tracked in portfolios

Posted by Patrick Coskren, Software Engineer

One of our most frequent user requests is that portfolios automatically account for splits and dividends. Starting today, they do. Transaction view lists all splits and dividends during the time period when you hold a stock. When a stock splits, your quantity is automatically adjusted in Performance view. Dividends are automatically deposited into your cash holdings.

An example will help here: suppose you purchased 100 shares of GE on Dec 31, 1999, at a price of $51.53. When it split 3:1 on May 8, 2000, you'd have found yourself holding 300 shares. Google Finance portfolios will now accurately reflect the split, showing your purchase of 100 shares in Transactions view, but accurately reporting your current holdings as 300 shares in Performance view. At the same time, your cash value will now be $2,459.69, thanks to all the dividends GE has since your purchase.



For those of you who have been monitoring your stock performance, we know that you have manually adjusted your shares. We have ensured that we do not split-adjust your split-adjusted shares. Users' transactions that have a fully specified set of date, shares and purchase price will be back-adjusted to account for subsequent splits.

For more information, see our help center, and as always we invite feedback at the comments link below. Happy splitting!

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