May

31

The Best (Free) Tools on the Web for Finding Momentum Stocks

May 31, 2007 | 2 Comments

StockTA. Whoever owns this site could use a decent web designer. Anyways…it does concisely display many of the momentum indicators and attempts to score each stock based a combination of these indicators. At some point I’ll try implementing these indicators myself as part of a Wordpress plugin.

stockta

Reuters PowerScreener Lite. Requires free registration. Try the ‘Price momentum’ screen.
StockCharts.com Predefined Screens. Try the ‘Oversold with an Improving RSI’ or any of the candlestick patterns.
Vector 2000. This is a pay site, but it has a free short-term momo screener which is quite nice.
Stock Consultant. This is another pay site, but it offers 10 free stock lookups a day.

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May

30

Scottrade vs. Zecco

May 30, 2007 | 6 Comments

Thru the years I’ve tried a number of online brokerages including both Ameritrade and TD Waterhouse (before they merged), Wells Fargo (WellsTrade), ShareBuilder, and Scottrade.  Scottrade has been my favorite–have had an account maybe 5 years.  One complaint is that they never added back ACH out after a security issue arose maybe two years ago (despite saying they would).  Anyways, that’s not what this post is about… 

Last Feb. I was hearing quite a bit about the free and uber low cost brokerages starting up, including Sogo Invest, Zecco, and Just2Trade, and a change to free at Bank of America for accounts over $25,000 (note: Wells Fargo recently started offering free accounts too).  I dismissed Bank of America because they aren’t offering any interest on cash. 

Now, I’m not sure whether free trades will turn out to be a fad, and Scottrade trades are already a low $7.  Yet, the appeal of free is that I can make small trades without guilt.  For example, if I want to place a bet of $1000 on a very speculative stock, at Scottrade the buy and sell will eat 1.4%.  Which is why I don’t usually make trades that small on my Scottrade account.  Anyways, I thought I’d give one of these free trade brokerages a try.  Below is my original homework… 

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May

20

Embedded Stock Data Wordpress Plugin

May 20, 2007 | 23 Comments


Description
Wordpress plugin for placing stock data directly into posts. Data comes from Yahoo Quote Server, and is refreshed when browser is refreshed.

>Download v0.2
Fixed Yahoo URL change. Many thanks to those who left comments about this error!!

>Download v0.1

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Mar

23

Yahoo Stock Data for WordPress Plugins

March 23, 2007 | 2 Comments

I’ve been looking to create some stock related plugins for WordPress. As a first step I need to figure out how to access quote data. The Yahoo Quote Server appears to be the best bet. It has an api for acquiring both current and historical quotes and an array of attributes. The data is accessed via a url as seen in the example below. The ticker itself follows the s=. The f= portion is where paramters are supplied. 

Yahoo Quote Server Example

http://quote.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=goog&d=t&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgvj1pp2wern

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Feb

20

WordPress Plugins for Investment Blogs

February 20, 2007 | 7 Comments

There’s a genuine scarcity of Wordpress plugins for bloggers in the investment sphere. Which means I need to get to work :) Seriously…stay tuned.

In the meantime, the three plugins I’m aware of are below. The first two were created by Andrew Hill, the third by Patrick Chia.

1. Stock Quote Tooltip
This is quite nicely done. Also links to Yahoo finance, which is a nice touch. Just mouse over GOOG to see it in action.

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