With FreeRealTime.com, we provide real-time ECN quotes for free, along with 15-minute delayed exchange quotes.

If you want real-time exchange quotes, we provide two subscription services to accomodate you: FRT Express, for snap-shot quotes much like our free site, and FRT Stream, for a streaming real-time data service.

We provides coverage for the following exchanges:

• NASDAQ
• NYSE (New York Stock Exchange)
• AMEX (American Exchange)
• OPRA (Options Price Reporting Authority)

No, you can access most of our services without registering, such as real-time ECN quotes and delayed exchange quotes, charts, news, message boards, and more. However, with a free account, you also gain access to extended features like watchlists, a portfolio manager, daily summary emails, and our fee-based subscription products.

You can contact us via our online contact form.

A watchlist is a collection of stock and options symbols, much like a portfolio. The watchlists and their corresponding stock and option symbols are displayed at the top of most of our pages.

To view the data for all the symbols in a particular watchlist, click on the name of the watchlist - or for data for an individual quote, just click on the symbol name. Either way, viewing the entire watchlist or an individual quote is just a click away.

Each symbol displayed will also contain additional data such as the Last Price, Change, Bid, Ask, and Volume. Additional links are provided for viewing detailed Quote data, Time&Sales data, Options, Charts, News and Message Boards.

You can have as little as 1 watchlist or as many as 10 watchlists. However, it is recommended that you keep the number of watchlists down to a manageable amount, say 5 or 6, to maximize the viewing area on the rest of the page since the watchlists and it's corresponding symbols are displayed at the top of every page.

You can add as many as 2000 characters across all watchlists, which equates to about 300 - 400 symbols total. All of these symbols can be added to a single watchlist, however only the first 30 symbols in each watchlist will be displayed when clicking on the watchlist name. The remaining symbols can still be viewed via a single-click at the top of every page.

While viewing data on a specific stock or option symbol, simply click on the "Add to Watchlist" link at the end of the symbol-specific links. The symbol will be added to the first watchlist by default, although this may be changed on the Edit Watchlist page by selecting the "When symbols are added through the site, add them to this watchlist" option.

Alternatively, click on the Edit Watchlist link near the top left of most pages, and manually type in the stock and options symbols on the Edit Watchlist page.

Note that a symbol may only be listed once accross all watchlists.

While viewing data on a specific stock or option symbol, simply click on the "Remove from Watchlist" link at the end of the symbol-specific links. This link will only appear if the symbol already exists in one of the watchlists. Since the same symbol may exist on multiple watchlists, clicking on the "Remove from Watchlist" link does not remove all occurences of the symbol accross all watchlists. The actual symbol in the particular watchlist is highlighted in bold near the top of most pages where the watchlists and sybmols are listed.

Alternatively, click on the Edit Watchlist link near the top left of most pages, and manually remove the appropriate stock and options symbols on the Edit Watchlist page.

After adding some symbols to your watchlists, you can click on the "View Watchlist" link near the top left of the page. This link will display the first 30 symbols out of ALL your watchlists (including watchlist titles), so it's a good idea to place your most important watchlists/symbols near the top.

Altenatively, you can click on the individual watchlist title to view the data for just the symbols in that watchlist. The first 30 symbols in this watchlist are then displayed.

Note that you can also click on any individual symbol that is listed in any of the watchlists. This will display detailed quote data for the symbol, followed by all the symbols for that watchlist.

Simply click on the Edit Watchlist link near the top left of most pages. By default, the Edit Watchlist page allows you to enter symbols and preferences for a single watchlist. To add additional watchlists, click on the "Add More Empty Watchlists" button. The following fields are available for each watchlist:

• Title. Enter a name in the small text-box. This will be the name of the watchlist.
  
  
• Symbols. Enter stock and option symbols in the larget text-box. Separate each one by spaces (or by hitting Enter or Return). As previously mentioned, it is recommended to keep the number of symbols per watchlist below 30, so that you may view them all in at the same time when you view the watchlist. Feel free to order your stock symbols in a way that makes sense to you, as the order will be retained (see below).
  
  
• Default Watchlist. Click on this option to select your one default watchlist. This will ensure that symbols added via the "Add to Watchlist" link will be added to this default watchlist. Note that the "Add to Watchlist" link appears after you've manually typed in a stock symbol (or searched for it) and are viewing its detailed data (i.e. quotes, charts). If you don't select a default, the symbols will be added to the last watchlist.
  
  
• Symbol Sort Order. Click on this option if you want the symbols to be sorted alphabetically when you save your watchlist, Warning: This will permanently sort your watchlist symbols in alphabetical order, and your original ordering as entered will not be preserved. If the original order is important to you, do not select this checkbox! (Note that you do have the option to temporarily sort the watchlist symbols by any field, including symbol, when viewing the watchlist data - see further below for temporary sorting of watchlist date).
  
  
• Watchlist Ordering. If you decide you want to reorder the watchlists themselves, you can use the "Move Up" or "Move Down" buttons appropriately. If you want to move a watchlist a number of "steps" in either direction, first select how many steps to jump by using the number pull-down beside the button, and then click the button indicating which direction you want to move it.
  
  
• Deleting a Watchlist. To permanently delete an entire watchlist, first select the checkbox beside between the "Delete this Watchlist" button and the "Yes" label, and then click the "Delete this watchlist" button. Both these actions are required to prevent an accidental watchlist deletion.

If you make a mistake at any time, you can click "Cancel" to exit back to the "View Watchlist" page without changing your watchlists.

Once you're done adding, removing, or reordering your watchlists, click on the "Save My Watchlist" button. You'll then be taken to the "View Watchlist" page with your new watchlists presented to you.

Simply click on the "Edit Watchlist" link near the top left of most pages, and type in the title for each watchlist in the "Watchlist Title" text-box. Use meaningful titles to help categorize your symbols (i.e. "My Stocks", "Hot Picks", "Just Watching"). To then view the quotes for a particular watchlist, just click on the watchlist title.

When viewing your watchlists, you may temporarily sort the columns simply by clicking on the column headers.

The first time you click on a column header (eg. "Change"), it will sort the list in ascending order (lowest to highest). You will also see a small arrow indicating the direction that the numbers increase. You can click the same column again to reverse the order (descending). Each click toggles this behavior. The one exception is the "Symbol" column - normally the watchlist is listed in the order you entered them the first time (or added them individually). The first click sorts them alphabetically in ascending order (A-Z), but the second click will return to your original order (ie. NOT descending).

Note that the sorting methods described here are temporary, meaning that the ordering is not preserved if you click away from the watchlist views. Upon returning to the watchlist views, the ordering will be by symbol as entered in the Edit Watchlist page. Just click on the column name you wish to sort it by again.

To permanently view your watchlist symbols in sorted order by symbol, click on the Edit Watchlist link and select the "Permanently sort this watchlist alphabetically when it is saved " option.

Split your large watchlists into several smaller ones. For example, you may want to track indices, stocks, and options separately. Or perhaps group similar industry stocks together. Also, for performance reasons, we can only display the first 30 stocks out of any watchlist. But if you wish to track more than 30, you'd have to manually click each stock to see how it's performing. By breaking them up into groups of less than 30, you can click on each watchlist title to get the data for those symbols.

Watchlist titles and symbols can only contain letters, numbers, and a few special characters (+ - . @). Anything else will be removed when you save it.

Keep your most-important to track symbols near the top, as only the first 30 stocks out of all your watchlists will be displayed when you click the "View Watchlist" link.

Simply click on the "Symbol Search" link near the top center of most pages. This will display the Ticker Symbol Search page. Enter the partial name of the security/company you are searching for, and click on the Search button. A list of matches is then displayed, along with the symbol.

FreeRealTime provides the ability to track various indices in your watchlists. Some of the more popular indices are listed below:

Exchange or Index	Symbol
Dow Jones Industrial Average	INDU.X
Dow Jones Transport Average	TRAN.X
Dow Jones Utilities Average	UTIL.X
NASDAQ Composite	COMPX
NASDAQ 100	NDX.X
S&P 500	INX.X
S&P 100	OEX.X
Russell 2000	RUO.X.X
Russell 1000	RLG.X.X
NYSE Composite	NYA.X.X
10-Year Bond	TYO10.X
30-Year Bond	TYO30.X
Volatility Index	VIX.X
Semiconductor Index	SOX.X
Internet Index	IIX.X.X
PHLX Gold & Silver Index	XAU.X.X

To view a complete list of indices, do a Symbol Search on "index". This will display all trackable indices, along with their symbols. This includes the aforementioned indices, country and industry specifc indexes, as well as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) such as iShares and HOLDRs.

Note that the 10-Year (TYO10.X) and 30-Year (TYO30.X) Bond quotes will be off by one decimal point when using the symbols.

Preferred stocks symbols are typically prefixed with a "-". For example, the symbol for Alcoa is "AA", and the symbol for Alcoa Preferreds is "AA-".

To determine if a particular company trades preferred stocks, do a Symbol Search on the company name (i.e. "alcoa"). The results from the Symbol Search will display all securities related to the company, including preferred stocks.

To view a list of preferred stocks, do a Symbol Search on "PF". Since most preferred stock names contain the word "PF", this will display most securities that provide preferred stocks.

To view the options available for a particular stock, click on the Options link when viewing data on a particular stock. For example, when viewing quote data for INTC, the quote box is displayed. Just above the quote box are links that provide additional information on the stock being viewed (i.e. Quote, Time&Sales, Options, News, Charts, etc.).

Click on the Options link, and this will display the Option Chain for the most recent month. Option Chains for all available months may also be viewed by clicking on the specific month/year, or the Show All link to display the complete Option Chain for the stock being viewed.

For example, while viewing the Option Chain for INTC Jan 2006, the individual Calls and Puts are displayed. To view details for a particular option (i.e. bid/ask, open interest, volume), click on the options symbol (i.e. WNL_AH is the symbol for the INTC Jan 2006 $45 Call). You may simply add the options symbol being displayed by clicking on the "Add to WatchList" link just above the quote box.

Alternatively, to enter an option symbol directly, you'll need three pieces of information:

1. Option Root symbol
2. Option Month Code
3. Option Strike Price Code

For example, the option symbol for the INTC Jan 2006 $45 Call is WNL_AH. WNL is the Option Root symbol, A is the Month code, and H is the Strick Price code.

Option Root symbols are specific to each option, and can be found by viewing the Option Chains for a particular stock symbol, as describe above.

Option Month Codes are displayed below:

Month	Call	Put
January	A	M
February	B	N
March	C	O
April	D	P
May	E	Q
June	F	R
July	G	S
August	H	T
September	I	U
October	J	V
November	K	W
December	L	X

Option Strike Price Codes are displayed below:

Call	Put
5	A
10	B
15	C
20	D
25	E
30	F
35	G
40	H
45	I
50	J
55	K
60	L
65	M
70	N
75	O
80	P
85	Q
90	R
95	S
100	T
7	U
12	V
17	W
22	X
27	Y
32	Z

The watchlist feature is used for simple tracking of securities that you're interested in - you merely enter the stock symbols, and can then view the daily movement for the stocks in your watchlists.

The Portfolio Tracker is a more sophisticated method of tracking historical transactions for stocks you own. It keeps track of each purchase and sale of stock, and presents you with both a DAILY and TOTAL dollar gain or loss for each of your portfolios. The TOTAL percentage return for each of your portfolios is also provided.

You can have up to 10 different portfolios, each with up to 75 different securities.

For just the basic FreeRealTime site, the data is delayed at least 15 minutes. For the FRT Express product, stock data is displayed in real-time and is direct from the exchanges.

For each symbol in your portfolios, the usual fields are listed (Stock Symbol, Company Name, Last Trade, and Today's Dollar and Percent Change), as well as these unique to the portfolio tracker:

• No. of Shares - the number of shares of this security you currently own
• Current $ Value - the current total value of those shares (shares x last trade)
• Today's $ Chg. - the dollar change in value for today (shares x change)
• Portfolio $ Gain/Loss (%) - this is the value amount for the entire history of this stock while you've owned it, including any subsequent trades you may have made while holding it.

Additionally, below each portfolio is a summary of how it has performed:

• Cash Position - This is how much money you currently have available for trading in your account. It will get subtracted from any time you enter a buy transaction, and added to any time you enter a sell transaction.
• Total $ Value - This is the current value of your entire portfolio (the sum of all the Current $ Values)
• Total Cost Basis - This is how much it has cost you to own the stock in the portfolio, including any commisions paid or monies earned.
• Total Today $ Chg. - This is how much the entire portfolio has changed in value today (sum of all the Today's $ Chg.)
• Total $ Return - This is how much you have earned or gained, including commisions and all trade transactions you've made.
• Total % Return - This is just the same as the $ Return, only expressed as a percentage of the total amount you've invested.

To start the Portfolio Manager, click on the "Portfolio Tracker" link situated beside the Watchlist and Symbol Search links. This will display the Portfolio Tracker data just below the watchlist symbols.

To create a new portfolio, click on the "Create Portfolio" link (this is also the same screen you are presented with the first time you use the portfolio tracker). Enter a unique portfolio name, an optional starting "cash position" (the current cash balance in your trading account), and the stock symbols which you currently own, separated by spaces. Alternatively, you can check the "import from watchlist" box to import all of your watchlist stocks into this newly created portfolio. Finally click the "Create Portfolio" box to continue.

Now you can enter in the price you bought the stocks at, number of shares, the date the transactions occured, and the brokerage commission. This will set up your portfolio with a base starting position from which you can later alter as you perform trades. Optionally, you can leave this info blank, and it will fill in transactions at the current price with no shares - you can modify this at any time later by clicking on each stock's "View/Edit History" link.

If you've just purchased some shares in a new security, and want to track it in one of your portfolios, you must first select the portfolio you wish to add it to by clicking "View <portfolio_name>" (where portfolio_name is the name of the portfolio you want to add this to).

You'll then notice a sub-menu beside or below the portfolio's name that opens up. Click the "Enter Trans" link in this sub-menu. You can then enter in the stock symbol, number of shares, price per share you paid, and the brokerage commision. After clicking "Add Transaction", the stock is now a part of this portfolio.

When viewing your portfolio, each symbol has a series of links to the far-right. Look for the stock that you wish to enter a new transactions (buy or sell), and click it's "Enter Trans." link. Then enter in the type of transaction, number of shares, price, and commision as before.

There are two ways:

1. If you wish to view all of the transactions for a given portfolio, first make sure you're viewing just that one portfolio (and not all of them) by clicking on "View <portfolio_name>", and then click Trans. History. You will be shown a list of all of the transaction performed for this portfolio, plus the net cash in/outflow.
   
2. If you wish to only view the transactions for a single security in your portfolio, click the "View/Edit History" link to the far-right of that securtiy while viewing the portfolio. It will show the same list as above, but only for that one stock symbol.

You can change any historical transaction, or delete them outright, by selecting the "View/Edit History" for that stock while viewing the portfolio. Two links are presented on the far-right: "Delete" and "Edit". Editing or deleting the transaction will remove it entirely from the list, which will affect your portfolio values appropriately.

First "View" only that portfolio, so that the sub-menu appears, and then select "Delete Portfolio". A confirmation page will appear to prevent accidental deletion. Be advised that this is irreversible - all transactions that you have entered into that portfolio will be forever erased!

Each portfolio maintains a cash position value, which is an optional field to keep track of how much cash you have on hand. To the far-right of the cash position, under the "Links" header, is an "Edit" link which will allow you to manually adjust that portfolio's cash.

Any time you buy, sell, short or cover a short, your cash position will reflect the inflow or outflow of cash. When you buy or cover, your cash will drop by the value of the transaction (plus optional commision). When you sell or short, your cash will rise by the value of the transaction.

Note that there is one exception to this rule: when you are first creating a portfolio, the very first transaction you enter in "step 2" of that process will not affect your cash position, as it's assumed you're entering the portfolio entries from an existing portfolio with your broker. If this is not the case, be sure to manually modify the cash position appropriately as stated above.

The Total $ Value, Total Cost Basis, Total $ Return, and Total % Return fields only reflect stocks which you presently hold. It does not reflect historical transactions. So once you've bought and then sold a stock in its entirety, the only reflection of this will be in your cash position (as well as when viewing your portfolio's historical transactions).

Shorting a stock means that your are temporarily borrowing stock through your broker to sell it, before you actually own it. The idea is to then buy the stock at a lower price later on. In essence, you're betting that it will go down in value. Please refer to other online sources or books for a more detailed discussion on the pros and cons (and risks) of shorting stocks.

When you enter a Short transaction in the Portfolio Tracker, it will show a negative number of shares (since you've just sold shares you don't actually own). Likewise, your cash position will have a positive inflow of money. Then as the stock value decreases, your gains increase, and vice versa.

The opposite transaction for a Short sale is to Cover your Short, which means you are now buying the stock that you borrowed for the initial sale. So your cash position will go down by the value of the purchase.

The Total $ Value, Total Cost Basis, and Total $ and % Return fields may seem strange at first when you mix and match Short sales with regular Buys/Sells, due to the reversal of order between them. But this is a natural mathematical occurence. To help keep it straight, you may opt to keep your Short sales in their own portfolio.

Click on the Edit Watchlist link near the top center of most pages. Scroll down past the "Edit or Setup your WatchLists" section. Near the bottom of the page is a checkbox to have the FRT Daily Email Summary emailed to you. Simply click on the checkbox to ensure that it is seleted. You can optionally select the email format you'd prefer: HTML or Text.

The FRT Daily Summary is an email that is sent daily shortly after market close, and includes the closing indices and prices of the the stocks in your watchlist. Note that only the first 30 stocks in the watchlist are included in the email.

Click on the View Watchlist link near the top center of most pages. Just above the watchlist data is an "export data" link. Click on the "export data" link, and a window will be displayed asking you to Open or Save the file to your computer.

If you select Save, a "Save As" window is displayed with a default file name of Watchlist-YYYY-MM-DD.csv (i.e. Watchlist-2004-04-16.csv). If you select Open, an Excel window is displayed that contains the watchlist data.

Click on the View Watchlist link near the top center of most pages. Just above the watchlist data is an "Auto-Refresh Watchlist Pop-up" link. Click on this link and a new window is displayed that contains the watchlist data. This new mini-window displays the watchlist data in a compressed format, and allows you to conveniently view your watchlist. This window is automatically updated every minute.

By aligning the pop-up window to the left of the main window, you can simply click on the symbols in the pop-up window and have the quote data displayed in the main window.

Note the "Auto-Refresh Indices Pop-up link" found just below the "Auto-Refresh Watchlist Pop-up" link. Clicking on this link will pop-up a new window that contains the charts for the DJIA, Nasdaq Composite, and S&P 500 Indices. This window is automatically updated every minute as well.

Note that you must disable your browser pop-up blocker to allow the FRT watchlist / indices auto-refresh pop-up windows to operate:

• If you're running Internet Explorer with the Google Toolbar, simply click on the Options link and disable the Popup Blocker option in the Accessories section.
• If you're running Mozilla, click on Privacy&Security in the Preferences window, then click on Popup Windows, and deselect the "Block unrequested popup windows" checkbox or click on the "Allowed Sites" box and add "freerealtime.com" to the list of "Allowed Web Sites".
• If you're running Mozilla Firefox, click on Web Features in the Options window, then deselect the "Block Popup Windows" or click on the "Add Site" box and add "freerealtime.com" to the list of allowed web sites.

Please refer to our thorough guide on the extensive charting features.

"Trade" is when securities actually change hands. The "bid price" represents the highest price that somebody will pay for a stock at a particular point in time, whereas the "ask price" is the lowest price at which someone is willing to sell a stock.

Yes, we have a scaled-down version of FreeRealTime for wireless devices. If you have a WAP-enabled device (such as most modern wireless phones), and are subscribed for wireless data access with your provider, you can go to this address: wap.freerealtime.com.

Then you can log in with your FreeRealTime username and password, and get access to your watchlist and other quotes.

Unfortunately, each phone and provider has a different method of allowing you access to arbitrary WAP sites, so we are unable to provide more detailed instructions. Please contact your wireless provider for more information.

You can access the following on your WAP-enabled device, after logging in:

1. quotes for any security
2. view your Watchlist
3. view a market snapshot of various major indices
4. view market movers, such as dollar and percentage gainers/losers