Free Stock tickers are all over! You see them in the Finance Section of all major television networks, placed in the bottom or top of the screen. Every on line stock trading company has one. The gain of stock tickers are that you get a fast summary of share prices in a extremely intuitive way. And you can effortlessly get your own tailored real time stock ticker.

There are several different kinds of stock tickers, every one with their own characteristics, but they also share a lot of features. The most common features are the company symbol, the value of the company’s shares, and the direction in which the stock price is moving.

As mentioned, there are countless different ticker software available for your desktop, so you too can have a tape stock ticker running on your computer. Most desktop stock tickers are very diminutive programs, that does not use a lot of RAM or CPU, so you can continue your work. Often the stock tickers can be configured to signal you if the price of a chosen stock move outside a predefined area or the stock price changes speedily. The desktop stock ticker can be downloaded from many of the online stock trading companies. Since the tickers often are very small programs, the download and installation is fast and easy done.

Real Time or Near Real Time?

Almost every free desktop stock tickers shows the stock prices in “near real-time”, meaning that the prices are delayed ” quite often 15 to 20 minutes. If you are a customer with an online stock trading company however, you can normally get real-time prices – this is clearly a massive plus, especially if you are a day trader, who buys and sells often the same shares though out the day. In this case you must know the exact price, since you make your money on very diminutive movements. If you are a long term investor the delayed prices are of less importance.

Before buying stock online, make sure to download a desktop stock ticker, as desktop stock tickers are simple to use and gives a great overview.