MacTicker is an impressive utility which allows you to bring the stock market to your desktop with a ticker that occupies little vertical screen space and can span the entire length of your screen. MacTicker allows you to view up to the minute information (minus the usual 15 or 20 minute delay) on any number of stocks you select, both through the aforementioned stock ticker that offers the usual stock information and through individual windows, displaying many relevant stats about the stock.
Macticker is a great application to keep you updated about your personal stocks, without needing to go through internet all the time. You can enter any number of stocks you own or are interested in, and it will then track their prices. To do this, it needs a direct internet connection through an IP, meaning Compuserve and AOL won't work. MacTicker will then connect to the Internet and receive stock quotes from one of several free sources, including Quote.com and Yahoo.
MacTicker is a breeze to use. Just open it up in the morning, and leave it in the background. You can resize the ticker to fit in a tiny space and leave it in the background all day, checking your stocks whenever you wish. You can set it to alert you when any stock drops or rises a certain percent, which is a great feature to keep you updated about big changes. Naturally, MacTicker must update its information periodically (at whatever intervals you specified) which means that every few minutes your internet connection will be monopolized by the program. This is not a problem for users with fast connections, but modem users may find it annoying when their browsing experience slows to a crawl as MacTicker, running in the background, gets the new information.
MacTicker is a handy application for any trader, but it's truly great for anyone who holds stock in fast moving companies, whose prices are likely to change quite quickly. Apart from the coolness factor of having a live ticker scrolling across your monitor, MacTicker offers some very convenient features. For the casual trader or the trader who doesnšt check their stock every few minutes, youšre probably better off relying on a simple bookmark from a stock site that will get you all the information on-demand in your browser.
