MakeUseOf has always offered solutions to financially savvy geeks, such as the article I wrote earlier on 3 blogs to get you out of debt, or Kaly’s 15 cool tools to track expenses and budget, but if you have a financial blog or website of your own, now you can embed free website stock tickers into your site with very little effort.

Thanks to the wonderful Web 2.0 world of widgets, there are a number of quick and easy tools to integrate real-time stock information on your site. If you can copy and paste, then you can have updated stock information on your website.

How to Use Free Website Stock Tickers

When selecting the best stock ticker widgets, I searched for those that are versatile enough to work on any blog platform or website. The stock widgets listed below are not only universal (most of them utilize Javascript), but they’re easy to customize for the exact stocks that you want to display on your website. These particular widgets aren’t just a standard stock ticker with just scrolling text, these all display stock data in a more graphical real-time format.  Just review the following list, select your favorite and embed it on your own site!

FreeStockCharts are Interactive and Free – It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than That

One of the best free stock charting widgets comes from FreeStockCharts, which actually lets you choose between one of two formats. You can either use the standard graphical chart that streams the data for the stocks that you specify, or you can use the “Hover Chart,” which automatically locates the ticker symbols in your content and provides your visitors with the ability to hover the mouse over those symbols and see a real-time chart of that stock. That’s a very cool feature to have on any financial website.

Once you choose whichever chart you want, you can customize it to suit your needs. Customizing only requires filling out a very simple one-page form where you can select the ticker symbol, update time, colors and other features for the chart.

Once you’ve finished customizing all of the chart features, all you have to do is copy the code that’s automatically generated at the bottom of the screen and paste it into your website or blog platform where appropriate. For my example, I’m going to embed the chart into my Wordpress blog FreeWritingCenter, which is just a matter of pasting the code into the Wordpress widgets section. After you’re done, the finished real-time chart will appear on your blog or website as shown below.

The NASDAQ Market Ticker

No list of free website stock tickers would be complete without an honorary mention of the one offered by NASDAQ. This graphical ticker will actually work either on your computer desktop or on your web page. Once you click the “copy me” button on the widget page, you can choose from a list of services where you want to embed the widget. This lets the application customize the code to work best on your Blogger account, Facebook page or anywhere else. In my case, I just want the straight HTML embed code.

Once you have copied and pasted the code into your blog – you’re good to go. Unlike FreeStockCharts, you don’t have to sign up with your email address before you can use the ticker. Personally, I like the look and feel of the NASDAQ ticker better than most of the others.

With this ticker, your visitors can actually customize it to their own liking. If they click on “ADD,” they can enter their preferred ticker symbol and that stock will show up under the “My Stocks” tab. Now that’s coolness.

The Yahoo Stock Ticker – For Financial Yahooligans

Yahoo Finance is one of the most popular online financial resources on the net today, so it stands to reason that Yahoo would offer their own free stock ticker. Yahoo lets you choose from three types of modules for your site – large (quotes, charts and news), medium (quotes and charts), or small (quotes). You can customize the data with up to 10 ticker symbols, adjusting the width of the display, and choosing the color scheme.

Just like the NASDAQ ticker, you don’t have to enter your email, you only have to accept the terms and conditions to get access to the code. Usually I don’t really like Yahoo products because they’re typically kind of “plain vanilla,” with very few features. However, in the case of this stock module, the ability to customize it with up to 10 ticker symbols and choose from a variety of color schemes is very cool.

SaneBull Displays Data From Global Markets

SaneBull, briefly reviewed before by Makeuseof, offers a whole range of awesome plugins for Facebook, iPhone, Mac and many other platforms. One of the best ones is the “World Market Watch” widget, where you can display stocks from markets all over the globe on your website.  Like the NASDAQ widget, there are automatic installers for platforms like Blogger, Facebook and a variety of others.

If you do use any of these social networks, I highly suggest using this tool, especially if you’re not the type that likes to play around with adding the code yourself. However, I’m old fashioned – so I always go for the copy and paste approach. I’m weird like that.

I like the look and feel of the Sanebull stock widget – however if you don’t, then you’re out of luck because there’s no way to customize the widget. You get what you get. The extent to customization is that you can select only American, Asian or European markets instead of displaying them all at once.

Using StockTwits for Stock Tips

While not technically a stock ticker widget, StockTwits is a very useful stock widget for financial bloggers. Want to give your readers access to the latest stock tips? The StockTwits widget is a direct plugin to Twitter feeds of market investors. As investors “twit” personal stock tips, the StockTwits widget automatically updates the feed on your web page.

The major drawback with this particular stock widget is that you can’t customize it – not only in terms of its appearance, but also what information comes through. The feed is basically about any stock tip whatsoever, so expect to get a stream of random tips on any stock imaginable. Of course, for day traders or other folks who are always on the lookout for hot stock tips, that’s a great thing.

Do you use any stock widgets on your own website or blog? What are your favorites? Share them in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• UpDown Online Stock Market Trading Simulator Lets You Play Without Losing Money (13)
• TAS – Free Easy To Use Financial Accounting Software (19)
• SimpleD Budget – Free Budget Tracker Software (Windows) (9)
• Manage Your Money Safely with ClearCheckbook (7)
• 5 Online Tools to Help You Manage Your Money (11)

The thing is, the best way to learn about these things is just to get involved. Put some money into the pot, and call it a learning experience. Since that’s easier said than done, there’s a way to play with what’s essentially “Monopoly” money – it’s called  UpDown.

UpDown gives you a virtual portfolio of money to manage and invest, while teaching you about how finance, stocks, and the like really work.

Creating a free account with UpDown is easy – just supply usernames and passwords, and you’re set to go. You’ll have to wade through a bit of advertising, but it’s a pretty simple process to get UpDown up and running for you.

Once you’ve got an account, you get to start investing! UpDown provides you with $1,000,000 USD that you’re free to invest any way you want – you can make trades and invest by clicking the “Trading” tab. Buying and selling stocks is easy because, well, it isn’t real money.

The rest of the whole system is real, though. The stock prices are a reflection of the real market, and the process of buying and selling works much like it would elsewhere. There are tons of tools to track how your stocks are doing, what’s causing their rise and fall, and how your money would be faring if you were investing real money. Your goal is to make as much money as possible by investing. That’s really the only difference between UpDown and say, eTrade – you’re not using money you can lose.

UpDown’s whole purpose is education – it’s a super-low risk way to learn a lot more about the markets, and how money and stocks really work. I’ve found that even things like the vocabulary of finance is difficult; UpDown helps you figure out what the heck an annualized return really is. The site provides a constant stream of news and information related to both the markets as whole, and the particular stocks and companies you’ve invested in.

The “Home” tab provides a great overview of what people are talking about on UpDown, as well as what the markets was like and how your stocks fared in the last day. You can compare companies by their critical statistics – things like revenues, earnings, and more. UpDown tries to give yo (the fake investor) a sense of the numbers and data you’ll need to make informed decisions, and teaches you how to read the information as well.

The really cool part of UpDown, though, is how well the community works together. It’s easy to see what other people are buying and selling, to get a sense of what the UpDown market is doing at any given time. There are also groups and networks that you can join based on your interests or background, both of which help you with investment advice, lots of tips and a greater understanding of the whole process.

You can add friends on UpDown as well, and communicate with them about anything you’d like. It’s always nice to have someone looking over your shoulder as you invest, and UpDown allows your friends to do just that.

In reality, that’s just the tip of the iceberg – UpDown hosts tons of contests, keeps a variety of educational tools on hand, and does a great job of keeping you actively investing by providing a stream of tips and tools for improving your skills in (fake) investments. And that’s the beauty of UpDown. It’s a no-pressure, easy-to-learn, simple way of gaining an understanding of how the financial world really operates. There’s no risk of money loss, no gaming of systems – just a plethora of tools designed to help you better understand how to invest your real money wisely.

UpDown has been described as “fantasy football meets the trading floor” and that’s exactly what it is. It’s a way to learn the players, learn the system, and see how the game works before (or while) you get involved in a meaningful way. If you play it well, you can even make a few real bucks through contest and referrals.

Not into stock markets? How about spending your money wisely?

Are there other sites like this to help you with your investment skills? What’s your favorite?

Photo: Donald1976

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 5 Free Website Stock Tickers for Financial Geeks (6)
• Use BudgetSketch To Make A Household Budget That Works (25)
• TAS – Free Easy To Use Financial Accounting Software (19)
• SimpleD Budget – Free Budget Tracker Software (Windows) (9)
• Manage Your Money Safely with ClearCheckbook (7)

Luckily for people like me, the internet has spawned yet another reason for us to avoid that crazy place we call the real world. It’s called the simExchange, an online prediction market that centers around the real world sales numbers of video games.

Unlike most other prediction markets the simExchange uses a stock market-like system in which you use virtual play money (called DKP) to buy stocks in games that are “under priced” then sell them at a higher price. The price in this case is the amount of copies a particular video game will sell in its lifetime as predicted by simExchange users (at a rate of one DKP per ten thousand units sold). Thus a game’s value increases when you buy into it and decreases if you sell. Every user starts out with one million DKP and it’s your job to turn it into an even bigger pile of cash. Don’t worry if you have absolutely no experience in this kind of thing as the mechanics are simplified enough for even someone as inept as me to manage. And if you do screw up royally you need not worry about losing your shirt –virtual or otherwise.

To aid you in your struggle to the top of the leaderboard the people behind the simExchange have built a rather impressive infrastructure. In many ways the simExchange epitomizes the Web 2.0 movement as nearly everything on the site is either user-submitted or rateable. To give you an incentive to submit news, videos, or thought-provoking comments additional DKP is awarded for submitted material that is well liked by the community. In this way, you can help yourself while at the same time helping the community; certainly a clever setup.

The simExchange is particularly enjoyable to gamers perhaps because it feels so much like a game. Of course another part of its appeal is that it’s all about video games, but at a deeper level the simExchange is a game in itself. It is a competitive journey to the top but without all the responsibilities and consequences that come with the same kind of journey in the real world. Traditional action gamers that crave a continuous stream of high intensity gaming may not enjoy the simExchange, but those people that enjoy games at a slightly slower pace are sure to find enjoyment. If nothing else it’s a great time sink for those boring days at work.

But does It work? Although there is a certain group of people who are content with just playing the simExchange “game” others –especially real world investors– want to know just how accurate it is. Does the data the simExchange gathers at all reflect real sales data or is it little more than a fun diversion? In a word, maybe. Both this article from TheStreet.com and the simExchange’s own blog are enthusiastic about the possibilities, but it’s important to realize the limitations of data obtained from the simExchange and thus maintain a level of caution.

The simExchange uses the “Wisdom of Crowds” to gather its data, but is a crowd of five thousand gamers, each with average knowledge of the games industry really any wiser than one well-informed professional analyst? I can not even begin to answer that question, although I can say that any prediction of the future is by default imperfect, so much so that market analysts are often jokingly referred to as soothsayers. From this perspective I can say that the simExchange’s predictions are no worse than anything any other group or person can form, but at the same time probably no better.

If you use the simExchange, let us know your thoughts on the site.

(By) Abraham Kurp was introduced to open source software a few years ago and it was love at first site. When not preaching the virtues of open source he enjoys reading classic science fiction, playing obscure video games, dabbling in programming, and of course writing.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• YouTube.com – Online Video Sharing Site (23)
• Yo Frankie! – Free Open Source Platform Game (16)
• Yahoo! Games: WordRacer is my Boggle Game of Choice (6)
• Yahoo Answers – Get Fast Answers (4)
• Wikipedia – Biggest Online Encyclopedia (13)