Real-time stock prices from the Nasdaq and NYSE are now offered online for free. But seriously, what took them so long? We’re in the 21st Century, has anyone even noticed? You can get nowadays almost anything online for free, just visit our website and increase our traffic, will ya?
Well, some might say that with the SEC involved, it is a surprise that this was approved before the third millennium. But I am not one of them.
Well, is it about time? Apparently, this feature was available in the past on Yahoo! Finance through August 2006. Yahoo! Finance has again announced a partnership with BATS Trading to provide free stock prices online fairly recently – just before the exchanges announced the same thing – RT quotes online for free. Coincidence? Of course not.
The recent announcements by the Nasdaq and the NYSE regarding the partnerships with Google, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal may seem like a “late to the party”, “me too” announcements. However, it was just a matter of days between them, so they must have been working on these partnerships for some time. Also, you must give them some credit for doing it with style. Why get the real-time quotes from a broker, when you can go straight to the source – the exchange itself. That will definitely do it.
Yes. Definitely do a PR fiasco for Google and the other partners, but unclear why the Nasdaq and the NYSE went along with it. They could have done it more gracefully by announcing they plan to offer the quotes under such a partnership, and have interested companies contact them. Because by doing it this way, they have picked one of the sides in the whole Yahoo! Finance/ Google Finance war.
I’m still wondering what ever happened to the real-time quotes Yahoo has offered in the past. What made them stop the service? (and don’t tell me “consolidation in the marketplace and a new pricing structure”. Don’t they want the traffic all to themselves? Or did they not care because they were getting it anyway?)
Yahoo RT Quote
