17and17: Yahoo Finance

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Yahoo Finance

I use yahoo.com mainly to track my stock watch lists with yahoo's portfolio tracker. I have found that it is easy to use and importantly free. I think that yahoo.com has better information displayed right when you type in a stock symbol and look at the quote. Unlike MSN money, yahoo.com shows you the P/E ratio without the need to scroll down. There are a ton of basic features I love on yahoo.com finance. The best one in my opinion is the "Competitors" page that shows you the statistics and ratios for the competitors and overall industry for the stock you are investigating. It is also easy to find major company events by clicking on the "Company Events" feature. This will show you the recent filings, major press releases, and upcoming earnings report date for the stock you are researching. Yahoo.com finance also has analyst reports that are available for sale if you feel the need to delve really deep into a stock your looking at.

Yahoo.com finance is one of my favorite sites for investing information. I use it daily and I also like the way it visually looks as well as the features described above. That being said there are a couple of draw backs to yahoo.com finance. One thing I do not like is the market pulse page. This page shows message board posts from average joes and any regular joe can put comments on the page. People should be cautious when reading what anyone says about stocks! This is especially true when a teenage kid can access the market pulse page and type out silly junk. On the other hand carefully reading the market pulse page can help to gauge investor sentiment a bit I suppose.

Apart from possibly letting morons and crazy people ramble on via the Market Pulse feature, I also find yahoo.com finance lacking when it comes to rating stocks. There is plenty of analyst information but there is no yahoo.com rating system. Other financial sites like MSN and thestreet.com have their own site specific ratings. I wish yahoo finance had a rating system too.

Apart from those tiny issues I really like yahoo.com finance and I use it everyday. Just their portfolio tracker alone makes them great. I gave MSN money a B when I reviewed them. To be fair I will give Yahoo Finance a B+, it is better overall then MSN.

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About Me (Christopher Peterson)

I started 17and17 so that my family and friends could read my thoughts on investing and topics related to investing. I am a novice investor, I am not an expert. I do not work in the financial industry at this time. I work as a customer service supervisor for a national television network. My job affords me the time and opportunity to follow the stock market and study investing, (unless it is Football season!).

I became interested in the stock market in my mid 20s in 2004 when I stumbled upon the show "Mad Money". Since then I have been following the stock market with increasing intensity. I have read multiple texts relating to the stock market and continue to research and develop my investing knowledge.

I have read all of Jim Cramer's books, he is my stock investing mentor. I credit him with introducing me to the market and providing me with a base of knowledge about investing through his show, books, and thestreet.com. As I have learned more about investing though I have slowly migrated away from Mr. Cramer's optimistic trading on investor sentiment style toward a more value oriented philosophy about investing. I feel that my mentor can be over optimistic at times! I am still developing my investing philosophy and will be for the rest of my life.