• With financial websites like Yahoo! Finance, you can track stock price changes almost as they happen. There is a 15 to 20 minute delay to the data stream, much like the thirty second running delay used on live radio, but other than that, you can see a real-time reflection of what happens on the floor of just about any stock exchange. These sites also allow you to track the value of your portfolio much more efficiently than an investor ever could prior to the internet.
  • To learn how to interpret the information in a Yahoo! Finance stock quote, see How to Read the Stock Market.

• Yahoo! Finance contains one of the easiest to use stock tracking applications on the internet—it also happens to be free.

1. Go to the Yahoo! Finance homepage
2. In the upper right hand corner, click on "Sign Up."
   • Note that if you already have a yahoo email account, you can sign in with the same username and password.
3. Fill in all the relevant info and activate your account.

• Even if you don't own stock, this online portfolio can help you decide whether to invest, by tracking the prices of stocks that interest you.

1. On the homepage, scrawl over the My Portfolios tab and select New Portfolio from the drop-down list.
2. Select Track Your Current Holdings.
3. Name your portfolio in the Portfolio Name field.
   • You can call it whatever you like—"Lucky," "Fred," whatever—but if you own shares in different kinds of stocks, you could name separate portfolios according to category.
4. Under Ticker Symbols, enter the one to four letter abbreviations of all the companies you wish to track.
   • For an explanation of ticker symbols, see How to Read the Stock Market.
5. Under Example Market Indices, select which indices you wish to be displayed on your account's homepage.
   • Market indices offer an up-to-date measure of the performance of a certain market sector. For example, the NASDAQ Composite tracks tech companies.
   • For more, see the Security and Exchange Commission's Market Indices page.
6. Select your preferences under Basic Features.
   • Most importantly, if you don't want everyone who walks by to know your financial situation, check off on Don't show portfolio total value on your My Yahoo! pages.
7. In Advanced Features, check off any other data you wish to track.
   • Shares Owned and Purchase Price/Share will allow you to watch your overall stock holdings grow and contract.
   • Set the Upper Limit and Lower Limit functions in order to recieve an alert every time a stock reaches a certain level, high or low.
8. Click Continue.

• On the Portfolio Details page, you're now going to enter the details of your holdings. Not so long ago, investors had to labor over a chart while watching a financial channel, in order to track their holdings. Once you input this data, the money you have tied up on the stock market will track automatically. Referencing each stock by the ticker symbol, enter the following data:

1. Shares: the number of shares you hold in this particular company.
2. Price Per Share: The amount you paid for each share.
3. Trade Date: The date on which you purchased the shares.
4. Comm.: The commission you paid your brokerage to make the transaction.
5. Lower Limit: The price at which a single share can drop before you receive an alert.
6. Upper Limit: The price at which a single share can rise before you receive an alert.
7. Click Finished.
8. An interactive chart will appear tracking all your holdings in one convenient spot. Sit back and watch the money roll in (or away)!

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• Yahoo! Finance isn't the only online source for stock quotes. You may want to consider some of the other options.

1. Quote.com
2. CNET News.com (subscription required)
3. Scottrader (subscription required)
4. NobleTrading
5. Bloomberg.com

• Yahoo! Finance: Yahoo! Finance homepage
• Securities and Exchange Commission: Indices
• eHow: How to Create a Portfolio to Track Stocks
• Wikipedia: Portfolio | Ticker symbol | United States Securities and Exchange Commission
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