Quote Watchlists

Also named: Stocks/Quote Watchlist, Stocks/Quotes Monitor, Stocks/Quotes Tables

In the finance business lingo, a Quote Watchlist is a list of securities being monitored closely by a brokerage or exchange in order to spot irregularities.

On most financial websites, a quotes watchlist is a table of data that displays on each line data for a particular symbol, while columns represent a particular field.

A stock watchlist can be:

• live (or real-time): display quote data in real time, without the user having to refresh the browser to get latest quotes data;
• static: displays data at the time the page was generated (or at some other particular time);

The most advanced watchlists allow users to define their own list of symbols, while normal watchlist are small tables containing only the most interested instruments, like indices.

The things you need to take care if you want to have your site enriched with a quotes watchlist are:

• quotes data source: where to get stock quotes, what technology to use on server side;
• displaying quotes: how to show the wathclist, what technology to use on client side;

Depending on the number of symbols and also the number of columns a watchlist has, it might eat a lot of bandwidth and also add a lot of load on the server side, therefore you will rarely find real-time stock watchlists displayed on websites in the public areas. Most websites provide these watchlist as a per-pay service to their customers.

Quote Watchlists Resources

Website Embedded Quote Watchlists

• Stock Quotes Monitor Java Applet - supports unlimited symbols, full customization, 2 columns for quote data
• Live Quote Java Applet - presents detailed continuously updated data on one instrument at a time

Desktop Watchlists

• eTikr - A freeware Microsoft (R) Excel (R) addin that allows you to get, monitor and analyze free Excel stock quotes and live stock market data