Reading the Finance Page

Google Finance homepage, http://finance.google.com, displays a summary of the U.S. stock market based on the top indices, a list of your most recently requested quotes, today’s headlines, and related news (see Figure 16.1). At the top is the familiar Google Search box, but with a few twists.

Figure 16.1: See up-to-the-minute financial information on Google Finance.

Market Summary

The Market Summary is the first section displayed on the Google Finance home page. Listed in the Market Summary section are the four top U.S. market indices: the Dow Industrials, Nasdaq, S&P 500, and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The graph shown in Figure 16.1 tracks the Dow Jones Industrials (DJI) through its intraday trading.

To the right of each index is the current trading level of the index. The third column shows how much the index is up or down for the day, displayed in green (meaning up) or red (meaning down) with a plus or minus sign displayed before the quantity. The same value is displayed again as a percentage of the index and enclosed in parentheses.

Each index’s name is displayed as a link. Clicking the link takes you to the detail for that index and the news about the index’s performance or news that is affecting the performance of that index. Figure 16.2 shows the detail for the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index.

For each index, you can see:

• The current index price displayed in a large bold number beneath the index name

• The amount the index is up or down

• The date and time displayed as Eastern Time (either Standard or Daylight Savings Time).

The next column of information includes the index’s opening price, the high price, the low price, and the volume of trading for that index. The third column of information begins with the market capitalization level, which is not applicable for any of the indexes. Below that, view the 52--week-high price, the 52-week-low price, and the average volume of trading. The fourth column does not apply to indices, only to individual companies. This is covered later in the chapter.

Figure 16.2: View detailed information about each of the indexes tracked in Google Finance.

Today’s Headlines

The main Google Finance page displays today’s financial headlines. Just like Google News, Google Finance is not a news source, but rather a news aggregator, displaying financial news from other financial news sources. Some of the financial news sources include

• Bloomberg

• New York Times

• ZDNet

• MSN Money

• BBC News

• Reuters

• Washington Post

• USA Today

Articles in the Today’s Headline section are gathered from hundreds of news sources (see Figure 16.3). Similar to Google News, each article abstract appears with a link to the actual online article, a citation of where the article was printed, and how long ago the article was released.

Figure 16.3: Read top financial stories in Today’s Headlines on Google Finance.

Below each article title, which is displayed as a link, is the name of the financial news source. This could be pointing to one of the larger financial news sources or to a local newspaper article with an interesting story of financial interest.

Some articles are released in multiple sources with each of the sources listed below the article so that you can choose which news source you want to read. The first couple of additional articles are listed with the title of the article (a link to the article) and the name of the source. Additional sources are listed in green beneath these, or click the link that lists all the related articles. The link, appearing in green, tells you how many related articles you can access. For example, the link may read, all 587 related >>.

Clicking the article title or news source links cause you to navigate away from Google Finance. If you do not want to navigate away from Google Finance, right-click with your mouse on the link and select the menu option that allows you to open the link in a new window. If you navigate away from Google Finance, click your browser’s Back button to return to it.

Look for the More headlines >> link near the last news article to see additional financial articles.

Recent Quotes

Each time you request a quote using the Google Finance Search box (more about this in the next section), your Google Finance home page updates the list of quotes that appear in the Recent Quotes section in the upper right.

The stock symbol and company name appear as links making it easy to return to the company detail page quickly for a new quote or updated company information. Also shown is the quote for each stock and the amount changed for the day.

Related News

The Related News area is a particularly nice feature. While the top financial headlines of the day may be interesting, chances are you are interested in news articles that affect the companies in which you own stock or may be researching for a purchase or sale. The Related News section displays news articles only about companies that appear in your Recent Quotes.

The related news articles are displayed in the same fashion as those in the Today’s Headlines section, and navigating to the articles works the same way. Depending on the company and how often news articles are written about it, it’s possible that the news articles that appear in the Related News can be much older than those you expect to see in Today’s Headlines.