Sizing Up Three Streaming Quote Services

Last week's Tools of the Trade column talked about what you should look for in an entry-level, real-time streaming quote service -- things like customization and the ability to track multiple portfolios and multiple exchanges.

This week we'll look at three basic quote services: myTrack from Track Data Securities, the Screamer from Money.net and Quotes Live! from Quicken. All three give you the basic functionality I talked about last week. They let you arrange how data is displayed on your screen. You can create multiple portfolios, watch real-time charts, call up reams of fundamental data and so forth. That said, each of these streaming quote sites is different and each is best suited to a particular kind of trader.

myTrack: So Free It's Dangerous

myTrack is both an online brokerage and a quote vendor. Customers can use one service without signing up for the other. The company allows anyone to download its quote platform free with delayed data.

The program resides on your computer's hard drive, which gives it a crispness of operation that you don't always find with Java-based platforms, plus a speed that browser-based quote services can't match. Also, there are plenty of bells and whistles to give you a taste of what active trading is all about.

One feature called Market Pulse, for example, lets you quickly pick the Nasdaq Composite Index, the New York Stock Exchange or another market, then select from a lengthy pull-down menu of indicators such as biggest percentage gainers, volume movers or even stocks that gapped the most at the open (moved up or down from their previous closing price). Momentum traders -- who need to always be where the action is -- can make good use of this macro-markets feature, even in delayed mode. If you're thinking of giving active trading a try, there's even a Simulated Trading button that calls up an order entry screen.

We're still talking about the delayed-data free service, mind you. And a lot of other financial Web sites offer much the same functionality. The nice thing about myTrack is the way everything's packaged. A watch list screen acts as your central command, displaying quotes and news headlines. It occupies roughly one-fourth of your monitor's real estate. Tabs atop the watch list call up various functions, like simulated or live trading, which pop out as separate windows. Right-click on any stock in your watch list and you call up charting, news and so forth. The net effect is that you're not overwhelmed with flashing screens and blinking numbers, the way you might be with day trader-quality quote platforms.

The whole setup is coyly designed to hook you into subscribing. myTrack lets you do this via a combination of bundled service plans and a la carte packages. Alas, figure on spending $39.95 per month just to get real-time streaming quotes. Add about $50 if you want to receive Level II quotes. (The difference between streaming and Level II is explained in last week's column.) So you're talking about $90 in total at minimum -- or about what you'd pay for a high-end streaming quote platform such as WindowOnWallStreet.com.

For a trading account with myTrack, market and limit orders cost $12.95. By contrast, CyBerCorp.com charges $17.95 if you use its high-end trading platform. And you'd also pay $99 for Level II quotes. So maybe myTrack represents a decent price. You could subscribe to the myTrack quote service and do your trading with Datek, where commissions are just under $10.

On the other hand, brokerages such as Scottrade and Datek supply real-time quotes and in some cases Level II data for free or near cost to customers. (For more info, read in this recent What Works column by Jamie Heller.) Bottom line: Base your decision on how well you like the trading platform.

The Money.net Screamer: Cheap Thrills

Let's say you're the kind of trader that likes to watch stock prices during the day. You trade occasionally. But you're not upset if you don't get in with hedge fund managers and day traders hooked into the market via T1 lines. Money.net's $9.99 per month Screamer, a Java-based platform, might be just the thing. For that amount you get streaming real-time Nasdaq, NYSE and options quotes, along with real-time charts and scrolling news headlines.

Like myTrack, Money.net's Screamer wedges all this information into a single, well-designed window. For example, one column displays the recent tick or trend; that is, the last four sales of the stock. Each sale is represented as a color bar. Red is for a downtick in price, green is for up and white is for unchanged. This is a lot easier to grasp than the plus and minus signs some quote providers use. There's also a link to the Island ECN Level II order book. Owing to the volume of trading on Island, prices there closely approximate the best bid and offer available market wide.

(FYI: Archipelago provides an even better free ECN book, as it aggregates quotes from Island and REDI, as well as Archipelago.)

Call up a chart and you get a clean display showing where the stock's price lies in relation to its high and low for the day. These charts are pretty basic, however. Die-hard chartists will bemoan the lack of technical overlays.

Anyone looking for lots of indicators and toys should probably opt for a higher-end quote provider. However, if you want an easy-to-master tool, Screamer packs a lot of bang for 10 bucks.

Quicken Quotes Live!: Highly Intuitive

Quicken.com, an Intuit site has always made a strong commitment to ease of use and to educating users. That same approach has gone into the design of Quotes Live!. Download the program, and right away you're asked if you want to visit the online tutorial. Each time you log on, a tip box introduces you to the system's functions.

All this handholding certainly comes in handy, because Quotes Live! is close being to a full-featured quote delivery platform. Like other such platforms, it resides on your hard drive, giving it a fast, smooth operation.

Once it's up and running, Quotes Live! allows you to arrange several windows inside its main window, called a workspace. For example, you can place a Level II screen in one corner. Below it you might place a time/sales window, showing at what times and at what prices the last dozen or so trades took place. Alongside those two windows, you could place your streaming real-time portfolio atop an option chain for one of the stocks you're following. If you like this arrangement, you can give it a name and save it just as you would a word processing file. Next time you log on, you simply call it up again.

The windows I just described are only a sample of the data-display options available on Quotes Live!. With so many possible windows to display, your screen can start to get cluttered pretty fast. That's why serious traders opt for two or more monitors. (Look for a Tools of the Trade column on how to set up a multiple monitor system shortly.)

Also, Quicken gives you lots of ways to arrange column widths, choose typestyles and configure individual windows. After playing around with these, I still found the displays hard to read. Plan on spending some time tweaking this platform to your needs.

The entry-level price is $19.95 per month plus $3 in exchange fees for Nasdaq, Amex and the NYSE. (It didn't look to me like quotes on individual options contracts were available.) About $20 additional per month will buy real-time feeds from several Canadian exchanges. A bargain. To get options chains and Level II quotes, figure on spending about $66 each month. Again, that's less than what high-end quote providers charge.

If you want a feature-filled platform that leads you by the hand -- Quotes Live! may be the one. One thing that you won't get on Quotes Live! that you would on a true day-trading platform, however, is tight integration with the broker of your choice.

Final Thoughts

Which of these three platforms is best overall depends on your needs. myTrack.com is unquestionably the best designed of the three. myTrack was originally marketed to institutional traders, and it shows. Quicken's Quote's Live lets you configure a workspace allowing you to do many of the same things, and it costs less. But formatting requires more work from you. Money.net is by far the easiest to operate and the cheapest, but it's got the fewest frills. In the end it's kind of like choosing between a Saturn and a Cadillac. You've got to decide how many of the Cadillac's treats you'll really use.

Next week I'll take a look at advanced features you should look for on high-end streaming quote platforms. Following that, Tools of the Trade will evaluate three top online quote platforms for serious traders. I'll conclude this series with your emailed views on the quote platforms you've used. My thanks again to those of you who've already shared your experiences. Your comments are of enormous help in putting together these reviews. Please continue to send them to [e-mail].

Chat Time

My colleague Jamie Heller and I will be doing another live chat about online brokerage services on Thursday, March 15 at 4 p.m. EST. Please join us here on TSC.