Plot Feeds is back

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

And ... we're back. You can once again view blogs and plot feeds on Google Finance charts. Access to blogs provides a greater range of information than conventional news alone; plotting a particular feed lets you view its information in the context of a stock's performance.

Click the 'Blogs' tab from any company's summary page, and you'll see the blogosphere's coverage of that company plotted along the chart. Or, if you want to plot specific blogs on the chart -- blogs you know, blogs you search for, or blogs you write -- click the 'Feeds' tab. Search for a blog or type its URL, and the blog posts will be plotted on the company's chart, making it easy for you to discover the blogs that provide high-quality analysis and breaking news.

Try this feature out and let us know what you think. Stay tuned for more as we continue to enhance Google Finance.

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Plot Feeds unavailable for the moment

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

As you may have noticed, the Google Finance site was inaccessible to some users for several hours earlier this morning. We’ve now restored the site, but it will take us a bit longer to restore the blogs and feeds feature that we launched yesterday.

We’re working feverishly on a fix and will let you know as soon as these features are back up.

If you're experiencing any technical difficulties, we encourage you to visit the Google Finance Help Center.

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Plotting more than news on the charts

Posted by Vivi Costache, 20% Charting Wizard

Plotting news stories on the company charts has always been one of my favorite features of Google Finance. Today, I'm happy to announce that we're pushing it even further!

First,you'll notice that we moved the Blogs section to a tab next to the News area. When you select the blog tab, relevant blog posts are listed and charted just like the news items, making it easier to see the blogosphere's coverage of your favorite stocks.

We've also added a tab called Feeds. There are a few ways you can use this tab:

• Search for relevant feeds by typing keywords in the query box. Relevant results (like blogs or news feeds) are listed so you can choose which one to plot onto the chart, just like news stories and blog posts.
• Use addresses from blogs you know, blogs you've written, or blogs you just found that you think are relevant to a stock. For example, one of my favorite URLs is http://AAPL.bloggingstocks.com/rss.xml. Enter it in the query box and you can see the news about Apple from bloggingstocks.com as flags on a company chart (hint: it works for most other symbols too!).

• Use data from Google Spreadsheets. If you keep notes in a Google Spreadsheet about your investing decisions, you can publish that spreadsheet to the web and plot the entries along any Google Finance chart.

And best of all, if you find a blog or create a useful spreadsheet that you'd like to share with others, you can click "Link to chart" to send a link to your friends.

For more advanced tricks for the Feeds tab, you can visit our Help Center to learn more.

We're hoping this feature will encourage more, and more meaningful content creation by analysts, bloggers, and users alike. By giving users more content to compare with the stock performance over time we hope to help investors make financial decisions that are as informed as possible.

As always, let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.

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Google Finance invests in Google Data

Posted by Casey Ho and Steven Soneff, Software Engineering Interns

Our team is pleased to announce the release of a data API for Google Finance portfolios. This means that developers can build financial software that could give you easy access to your portfolios on your desktop, homepage, or mobile phone. If you know something about writing software and are interested in making this happen, check out the details on the Google Data API blog and let us know what you come up with!

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It's raining real-time quotes!

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome; Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

Today, we're pleased to extend the availability of real-time quotes on Google Finance, Google.com and other Google search properties to include companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). We've partnered with the NYSE on a pilot project that enables us to offer users free access to more real-time stock quotes. Now you can follow companies listed on both NASDAQ and NYSE in a streaming real-time fashion every second of every day -- well, at least while the market is open.

As you know, we worked with the NYSE and SEC last year to make this data more accessible to our users and we're happy to finally see it come to fruition. Our goal is to provide our users with the tools and content that help them manage their portfolios, stay informed about breaking market changes, and easily access the financial information they're looking for. Providing up-to-the-second market data from two of the largest exchanges in the US helps us achieve that goal.

As always, if you encounter problems or have suggestions, please let us know.

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Custom date range on the charts

Posted by Andre Lebedev, Software Engineer

We are happy to have launched custom date entry on our charts. Try clicking the mouse over the date range in the top right corner and enter the exact date range for which you want the chart to be set.

Want to see the chart for all of 2007? Enter '2007' as start date, and '2008' as your end date, and the chart will reset to display the stock price for all trading dates of 2007.Want to see the chart for February of 2008? Enter '2008-02' for start date and '2008-03' for end date.

If you encounter problems or have suggestions, please let us know.

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Put cash in your portfolio!

Posted by Patrick Coskren, Portfolio Software Engineer

Portfolio cash support is one of the most requested features by our users. We listened: you can now add a cash balance to every portfolio you maintain. In the 'Add' section that appears on every portfolio page, you'll see a new 'Cash' tab where you can apply deposits and withdrawals to your cash holdings. Furthermore, your stock transactions -- both existing and new -- can be individually linked to your cash balance, so that a purchase or sale results in a matching debit or credit. All you have to do is click the new 'Cash-linked' checkbox on the 'Edit transactions' tab. No longer will your total portfolio value appear to drop just because you decide to realize your gains on a stock by selling.



Don't want to track cash? Don't worry. If you never enter a cash deposit or link a transaction to your cash balance, you'll never see a cash value in your portfolio.

This is just the beginning, so stay tuned. We've got plenty of ideas to improve our portfolio feature, and we're sure you do too! Please continue to share your ideas with us in the comments below, and if you find any problems, please let us know.

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