Free Stock tickers are everywhere! You view them in the Finance Section of every single leading TV networks, running in the bottom or top of the screen. Each on line stock trading company has one. The main benefit of stock tickers are that you get a rapid overview of share prices in a particularly intuitive method. And you can with no trouble get your own personalized real time stock ticker.

There are various special styles of stock tickers, all with their own characteristics, but they also share many features. The most widespread 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 loads of different ticker software available for your desktop, so you too can have a tape stock ticker running on your computer. The majority of desktop stock tickers are relatively tiny applications, 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 swiftly. The desktop stock ticker can be downloaded from a lot of of the online stock trading companies. Since the tickers often are very small applications, the download and installation is fast and easy done.

Real Time or Near Real Time?

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

Prior to buying stock online, remember to download a desktop stock ticker, as desktop stock tickers are easy to use and gives a great overview.