App of the Month

DailyFinance by AOL for iPod, iPod touch, iPhone and iPad

by CI Staff

In Joe Lan’s December 2010 Online Exclusive article on the top comprehensive financial websites, he dropped DailyFinance, formerly AOL Money & Finance, due to its shift in focus to financial news. While the site is no longer a top CI pick among comprehensive online financial data, tools and analysis providers, it does offer a useful (and free) app for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. With it you can access real-time stock quotes, track portfolios and watchlists, access company and sector news items and create rudimentary charts.

Real-Time Stock Quotes

One trend among financial websites and apps is free “real-time” stock quotes. Typically, exchanges such as the NYSE and NASDAQ charge a fee to deliver real-time quotes. However, the BATS Exchange, currently the third largest market center for stock transactions in the U.S., offers totally free real-time quotes for those stocks trading on its platform. The “catch” is that this quote may not reflect the most current trade in that stock, as it only captures trades on the BATS Exchange. Also, depending on the trading volume in the stock, there may not be a real-time BATS quote. To overcome this, BATS also provides a composite delayed quote, which represents trading across all exchanges.

Beyond offering quotes during regular trading hours, the BATS Exchange also provides extended hour quotes for pre- and after-market trading.

Real-Time Financial News

As we mentioned earlier, DailyFinance has re-focused itself on providing a broad spectrum of financial news for markets, stocks, and sectors. With the DailyFinance app, you can access real-time news stories from over 3,000 sources such as WSJ.com, Reuters, Seeking Alpha, Zacks, SmartMoney.com, the AP, New York Times, FT.com and CNBC. News items within the app are broken down by sector—basic materials, financials, healthcare, etc.—as well as U.S., international, commodities, etc. You can also access company-specific news when browsing individual company quotes.

My Stocks

With the DailyFinance app, you can create and track watchlists directly within the app, which you can also view and monitor at the DailyFinance website. Furthermore, you can set up actual portfolios at the DailyFinance site (http://finance.aol.com/portfolios/myportfolios) and follow them with the app. In all you can create up to 25 different portfolios and watchlists.

DailyFinance by AOL

Charting

The charting functionality of the DailyFinance app is not one of its strong points, but will serve those merely looking to see the trend in a stock over varying time periods. I was disappointed that you can only create line charts and that there are no technical indicators, moving averages or other line studies to plot.

You can create charts for the current trading day, for one, three and 12 months, for year-to-date, and for five years. In addition, you can compare a company’s stock chart to indexes and its peers. One unique feature allows you to plot the last five years, each in a different color, on top of one another to see seasonal trends in the stock price.

Movers

Lastly, the “Movers” section lists the most active stocks and the biggest gainers and losers for the NYSE, Amex and NASDAQ.

Overall

The DailyFinance app more than holds its own in comparison with the other financial apps we have reviewed here. Our biggest gripe is that there is not a dedicated iPad version of the app. When viewing it in 2x mode to make use of the larger iPad screen, the text can become difficult to read.

If you are looking for real-time quotes and news in an easy-to-use (and free!) app, DailyFinance is definitely worth your time.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dailyfinance/id309721195?mt=8

Although a member of AAII for twenty-five years I have noticed AAII publications refuse to ever make note of the very helpful sites available through "the Report on Business" section of the "Globe and Mail." Stock prices are given on one screen from several exchanges, many of which are not available on almost all "MAJOR" stock quotation web sites. The site can be easily reached from the main newspaper link www.globeandmail.com and then click on INVESTING followed by "My Watchlist" or directly www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/my-watchlist/

MUCH OF IT IS ABSOLUTELY FREE.

AAII Journal and CI editors how about giving at least one mention of this as a source for stock quotations, news, broker recommendations, charts, daily history and recent news alert. At least give it a try.

Disclaimer: Neither I nor any family members have any investments or business connections whatsoever with the "Globe and Mail" or it parent company.

Signed

ART

posted over 2 years ago by A from Tennessee

It would be great for us to have more timely info about stock prices on our watchlists. However, I can suffer from info overload on current price movements. It looks like what is offered on AAII is not too bad, not having a long history in watching the market, I need the education offered as well.

posted over 2 years ago by Max from Iowa

On the iPad I find the CNBC app to be pretty useful and easy to read. It also has real time quotes.

posted about 1 year ago by J from Massachusetts

Have an Android system and I find something called "Stock Quote" through BiShi News to be more direct then Cnbc and faster to get to what you want. It allows you to set up numerous lists and gets most of its info through Yahoo finance which I find very easy to use. By the way, the quotes you get from this ite is faster then Cnbc.Oh..it is a free app too!

posted about 1 year ago by Sanford from Ohio

After using AOL Portiflio for over a decade the new change to Daily Finance has caused me to drop the program. With out warning they changed over and dropped from coverage on over 8 of the preferred stocks in my portfolios. the new screens do not give the same quick infromation as before. In addition I had used the purchase date and price when I sold older stock holdings, but now I must sift through old brokerage statements to obtain the information. You can only imagine how discusted I am.

posted about 1 year ago by Stevan from New York

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