Kudos to the Google Finance team.  While Google Finance’s first lead, Katie Stanton is off galavanting somewhere within the Obama administration (go Katie!), Google Finance hasn’t missed a step.  While I may be criticized as a G Finance pump monkey, I’ve always enjoyed their simple platform.  For looking up quotes, monitoring the portfolio and simple charting, it’s always been my first stop online.  For more in-depth research, like poring over balance sheet info or looking at industry information, I still use Yahoo Finance and a slew of others (I really like what Wikinvest is doing with their data — check it out).

For a simple overview, check out my article comparing both Google Finance and Yahoo Finance.

While Yahoo has always been the 800 lb gorilla in online finance sites, Google has not seen a lot of success here.  I think a lot of this had to do with the sheer amount of information Yahoo has on its platform.  From press releases to news to blogs, Yahoo’s effort was about creating a good user experiences across numerous different content and data sources.  Google Finance, as per its search background, was always about figuring out what users were looking for in the research process and just pointing them there.  Less time on the site the better.  Outside of some basic charting and portfolio tracking, Google Finance was classic portal.

So, without much fanfare, Google Finance rolled out a slew of new functionality and a nicer interface last week.  While there is nothing groundbreaking here, I do think that the new changes represent a change of thinking on the Google Finance team.  Instead of merely pointing users out of Google and sending them on their way, this new iteration of Google Finance understands that online finance users are looking for an environment that has a unified feel to it and doesn’t require hunting down information on numerous other sites.

I just wanted to call out a couple of interesting things here in the new version of Google Finance:

Some Changes

Homepage

• Improved layout and customization elements: I’ve always liked that you could get everything that you needed on a stock in one page on Google Finance.  That overarching usability is improved upon and Google has added more to a single page and still retained its usefulness.  Users can add, subtract or move different modules on the homepage (I want to see top news first and then, portfolio-related news or vice-versa).
• Recent activities module: Both Google and Yahoo allow you to see instant stock quotes on recently viewed stocks.  Google Finance takes this a step further and allows you to retrace any of your previous activities.  This is really useful for those of us with ADD stock research tendencies.  In seriousness, stock research is frequently interspersed with other activities and more often, when we see one data point, it requires us to jump to another.  These research bread crumbs allow us to retrace our activities to recalibrate.  It’s useful.  By the way, you can also create a quick watchlist portfolio populated by recent stock quotes.  I see how this can be useful if you are in heavy research mode.
• World markets module: It’s nice to see currency movements AND how other markets performed on the homepage.
• Bond yields: Also important and useful to have here.
• Sector comparisons: It’s nice that Google allows you to do this.  It aids stock discovery, but it’s pretty bare-bones.  I’d like to see some more output here.

Stock pages

• Cleaned up quote box: Google has cleaned up its quote box (see below) and has placed alongside it how well the stock is performing against the overall market and its sector.  Google has also added some relative data into the quote box, including today’s volume and how it relates to average volume.  Also helpful.

• Expanded comparative companies module: This module gives you a quick view for sizing up a particular stock against its sector or competitors, including some customization that allows users to display which information is most useful to them.  Not sure how useful this is, though, in relation to how much real estate it gets.
• Key stats and ratios: There appears to be more meat here on the individual page as it relates to financial metrics which a link to more info at Thomson Reuters.  I’d like to see some more Google smarts put to use here and add real ratios according to industry metrics (like Wikinvest is doing).  If Google doesn’t want to, port in some of Wikinvest’s data because it’s really useful for stock-specific research.
• Technical charting: Google has introduced technical chart overlays on top of their basic chart, which I thought was one of the easiest to use and most useful in the industry.  Now, investors who use the MACD or RSI technical can do so.  Some smarts in the system here: I played around and empowered the SMA technical and wanted to add not only the 20-day but the 50 and 100-day and Google allows you to add more technicals like this and even pre-populates the check boxes accordingly.  Makes things easier to use.  I founds some of the charting a little buggy.

Anyone else have any feedback?  Let me know in the comments below.

Google Finance has been gunning for Yahoo Finance for years.  This new interface takes them part of the way.  I’m looking to Google to mix it up a bit if the company is really serious about competing in this space.

Additional Resources:

• Google Finance vs. Yahoo Finance
• Top 5 Investment Sites
• Google Finance’s post on learning about the new interface

I’m not a parent but I did spend many high school summers babysitting and tutoring my younger brothers and sisters. I’m afraid what we did is terribly old fashioned: swim at the local pool, tromp through neighborhood stream, design forts, etc. So I updated my list with low-budget or free activities. Feel free to add your own ideas by leaving a comment!

1. Public library often have for free events for children

2. The local department of parks and recreation may have low budget summer camps or one-day programs

3. Look for free days at local museums

4. Design a scavenger hunt for your kids with 10-15 items they can find nearby. You get a break while they search!

5. Help them set up a lemonade stand

6. Check if local retailers are offering in-store workshops or classes

7. Subscribe to FamilyFun Magazine, which has craft and project ideas mostly using supplies you already have in your home. Ten issues over a year are $10.

8. Purchase a sprinkler to connect to your hose so the kids can frolic in the water and cool off. (Note: if your water use is restricted, opt for a wading pool instead.)

9. Buy a bubble machine, which are relatively cheap. Make your own
bubbles with dishwasher soap and water.

10. Pull out the chalk sticks and let the kids loose. They are limited only by their imagination and sidewalk space. Hopscotch? Self-portraits? Tic-tac-toe?

11. Set up a schedule with other parents so each person has a day where they have all the kids over and run a camp at their house. They plan the activities while other parents get a day off.

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This guest post was contributed by the Go Frugal Blog where each day you’ll find valuable tips and money-saving ideas from some of the web’s foremost deal-hunters, savvy shoppers and cost-conscious bloggers. Go Frugal is part of FreeShipping.org.

It appears as if Smith Barney is preparing to leave the Citigroup umbrella and join Morgan Stanley as troubled Citigroup looks to unload assets and raise capital.  Over 9 million investment accounts and over $1 trillion in assets look ready to join Morgan’s extensive brokerage operations.  As more and more consolidation occurs in the investment research community, there is going to be a gaping void felt by retail investors worldwide.

Morgan Stanley’s CEO John Mack

Historically, investment banks were the engines of equity research.  Research worked for investment banks even though the research was given away freely to account holders.  Investment banks were essential in demand creation for equities and research paid for itself many times over via investment banking fees from the issuing companies.  With investment banks clinging to one another for dear life in order to shore up their own balance sheets, the research industry is undergoing a sea-change.

I’ve spoken previously about the opportunity for New Rules type companies to step in and fill the void.  Expert communities, crowd sourcing and piggyback investing will all continue to gain prominence in the investing ecosystem in years to come.  IR firms who “get it” will play a valuable role for investors and firms trying to get their story out.

As the research game field changes, Roger Ehrenberg thinks the name of the game is disaggregation and specialization:

The difference between how it used to work and how it will work in the future is the disaggregation of Equity Research. The major securities houses will have global distribution platforms for connecting issuers and investors, and to provide markets on a worldwide basis. There will be relatively few of these players as the cost of maintaining a global distribution platform is huge and, in my opinion, a natural oligopoly. But research will be “open sourced,” as the charade sometimes called “Wall Street single-stock research” is finally exposed.

Having the securities underwriter issue a “puff piece” as part of the IPO selling process is a waste of time, money and is fraught with conflicts. The Global Settlement was just that – a settlement. It wasn’t a solution. There only reason for bulge bracket firms to pay for costly research operations is if they help Investment Banking land deals. Bulge bracket research budgets in the early 2000s were in the $500 million to $1 billion+ range. If one were to disaggregate commissions into payment for research and execution, it is safe to say that investors attributed little value to Wall Street research. So how did the gap get filled? Investment banking mandates, together with outsized commissions on “hot” IPO deals that precipitated the Global Settlement in the first place. Transparency will enter the research venue, where investors buy research from the best providers at a known cost. There is no reason why a securities dealer should have better research than anyone else, and given that this is not their area of specialization it isn’t clear that they should be in this business at all. Added complexity is almost always a bad thing, and securities dealers have enough to manage without operating a separate research arm.

avoid getting lured in by false investment performance claims

I grew up with two grandfathers who loved to fish.  From a very early age, I learned not only how to bait a hook but also how to craft a story around that hook.

You know the kind: Man, the fish I caught and released was *THAT* big.

Every bit as important as what actually occurred on the boat was the story that followed.  As a first-hand participant in the investment community, I understand now that the investment community has its own form of fish-y story.

Joshua Brown’s got quite an interesting post today on his blog, The Reformed Broker.  The Interview with Johnny Upside is a parody of hedge-fund types, claiming to always be ahead of the game, positioned perfectly to make a mint.  When backed into a corner, it’s clear that investors are only getting part of the story.

Well, you’ll say, what about their marketing materials?  They say that they’re up X%.   While not outright lying, funds conduct performance smoothing, taking returns and sprucing them up by comparing them to favorable benchmarks or specific to particular entrance dates into the fund.

While not outright lying, funds do good marketing by trying to make their performance look as good as possible. As Bernie Madoff has taught everyone, sometimes too good of a story turns out to smell like fish.

So, how does one avoid getting lured into investing with someone too-good to be true?  I think answering this question requires framing the problem: how does an investor truly size up performance of a fund manager? Can you really believe performance quoted by managers?

Couple things:

1. Investor communities create better visibility.  Investment newsletters are great at giving selective performance numbers.  They aren’t audited and they typically claim that they’ve made 3000% on a trade (without saying how all their trades have panned out — check out Stock Gumshoe to dig deeper on newsletter teasers).  Companies like Covestor (read here for more coverage of Covestor) are comprised of communities of investors submitting their trading to real-time auditing for performance. Performance and metrics are completely above board and when looking at a manager, what you see is what you get. If all funds participated in investor communities, we could have avoided a Madoff-like scandal.
2. Broker performance is by nature hard to quantify.  Any advisor who creates personalized portfolios doesn’t have an all-encompassing performance metric to tell you how good his advice is.  So, it’s difficult to really assess performance.   Instead,

• • Ask how his best clients have done
  • Ask how his worst clients have done
  • Ask if new accounts are coming in
  • Ask if people are pulling their money

Do some extra homework when looking at performance to ascertain whether performance is as good as it looks or just another tall tale.

From the Springwise blog:

“Abu Dhabi-based Hydra Properties just recently completed excavation for Eve’s Tower, which it says will be the world’s first exclusive tower for women entrepreneurs. Located in downtown Dubai’s Business Bay, Eve’s Tower will be part of the iconic Hydra Towers Project comprising five uniquely shaped, high-rise towers. It will feature a sleek design and high-tech facilities, rising 20 floors and facing Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world. While men will be allowed to work there, only women will be able to own office space, and women will enjoy special entrances, elevators and car parks as well, according to a report in Arabian Business. Sulaiman Al Fahim, Hydra’s CEO, explains: “We have conceptualized the building as a tribute to the nurturing spirit of womanhood, world over. I’m confident that the tower will lead to a new awakening and unleash the latent entrepreneurial talent of UAE women and contribute to the overall growth of the nation and region.” Eve’s Tower is slated to be completed by 2010.”

Just to be cynical: I’m not sure the building has been designated women-only in order to pay “a tribute to the nurturing spirit of womanhood, world over”.  Could it be that the separation between the sexes in Dubai has taken on a whole new meaning that we need separate buildings?  Anyway, it’s an interesting trend and will be interesting to watch to see how this all pans out.

What do you think of when I mention “investment newsletter”?

Many will answer referencing the numerous emails (spam?) they receive on a daily basis with information “that’s guaranteed to triple your money!” While that’s a preposterous boast, I think the most important thing to do when starting a financial newsletter business is picking the theme of the newsletter.

Picking a niche topic versus building a general investment newsletter

The key in the investment newsletter business is positioning (see this for an explanation about your Unique Selling Proposition), just like in many other consumer-focused businesses. Success in branding, marketing and distributing your newsletter will be built upon your investment newsletter’s theme. e-books, like newsletters, follow similar rules.

So, is it better to go niche with your newsletter (and publish the clean technology newsletter) or stay broad with a loosely-defined universe (like Joe’s Top Stock Picks)?

I think there is a fine balance between being to tightly-defined (Chuck’s Tech Stocks that Begin with the Letter ‘A’) and standing out from the rest of the pack.

See what else is out there

Go to Forbes Newsletter site.  Forbes runs a whole business where they distribute and market other people’s newsletters.  Check out some of the leading titles.  You’ve got

• personality newsletters — newsletters that are sold leveraging the reputation of an individual (e.g. Gary Shilling’s Insight, Gilder Telecosm Forum)
• sector-focused newsletters — investment newsletters focused on different industries (e.g. Forbes Wireless Stock Watch)
• product newsletters — newsletters focused on investing in specific products (Forbes ETF Investor)
• geography-limited newsletters — investment newsletters focused on opportunities in certain countries (Canada Report)

The majority of the investment newsletters tend to fall in the broad category.  This is probably because the audience served by a broad newsletter is larger than any of the other options.  If you choose to go this route, you fall into the space with the greatest noise.

Buck the trend

The reason so many newsletters have to resort to such slimy marketing tactics is because they lack differentiation because they are so broad.  If you want to stay above the fray, get better defined, without becoming so niche that you become irrelevant.

Have the foresight to scout future trends.  Analyze new investment products as they gain traction.  Scout new geographies where visibility is poor (China hasn’t been taken seriously enough).  Have the insight to pick an investment newsletter focused on the next hot sector in technology.  There will always be buyers (albeit, fewer) for more niche newsletters.

But here’s the thing: they’ll pay more for your expertise.  So instead of finding yourself in the $39-$149/year club, you’ll push the upper range.

As submitted by NewRulesofInvesting

This is a side to side comparison of two of the best online financial sites: Yahoo Finance and Google Finance.  Yahoo is still the largest and most popular finance site by far but Google is serious about finance.  Let’s see how the two financial portals stack up against each other.

Speed

Google Finance: Typical fast-loading Google pages.  Google’s site is broad and doesn’t go deep.  Pages for individual stocks are only 1 page deep (Google links out for things like option chains, major holder, etc.)

Yahoo Finance: Yahoo Finance is fast.  As opposed to Google, Yahoo content resides primarily on Yahoo pages and Yahoo is responsible for page load speed throughout the site.  This can fluctuate as any large website can throughout the day.

Charting

Google Finance: Google primarily uses a simple javascript-loaded chart without any bling.  It loads fast and allows easy to manipulate x-axis (time period).  When you’re figuring out what a particular stocks has done over the past 17 days, the chart also calculates the return for a given time frame beyond the standard 1-day, 5-day, 3 month, etc. time period.  Google also plots news events onto their charts which is kind of cool (not necessarily tradeable).

Yahoo Finance: Yahoo Finance charts are much more robust.  Advanced charts have incorporated a similar charting function like Google’s and provides an overlay of numerous technical indicators (MACD, RSI).  Because these charts are so powerful, they also tend to be bulky and seize up.

Real Time Quotes

Google Finance: Google provides real time quotes both during market hours and pre- and post- market.  Google’s quotes on market indices tend to skew erratically during the transition to an open market as well as trails when the market makes large moves to the upside or downside.

Yahoo Finance: Yahoo also provides real time quotes both during market hours and off.  Yahoo’s premarket quotes are not as reliable as Google’s.  Yahoo occasionally doesn’t have a price premarket for a wide array of stocks.  Yahoo has a scrolling ticker as well for stocks that is personalized to the behavior of the user.

Breadth

Google Finance: Google gives basic info all on one page.  Anything more a user needs to link off.  News, financial info, blogs all included.  Very shallow, quick and dirty use.  Google does a good job bringing in blog content but lacks good, standardized PR content, still necessary in the research process.

Yahoo Finance: Yahoo provides an entire research environment.  All the content and data is supplied by Yahoo.  From major holders to options chains to blogs and PR, Yahoo is a virtual poor man’s Bloomberg.

Innovation

Google Finance: Google allows users to download data, making the site more portable than we’ve traditionally seen.  Google portrays the data environment well around a stock.  Beyond that, nothing particularly innovative about what Google’s done so far.
Yahoo Finance: Yahoo Finance is the 800lb gorilla and essentially helped to democratize financial information.  Yahoo has done a good job bringing in financial blogs in a controlled environment, using SeekingAlpha to help filter.  Charts are very powerful.  Not too much current innovation going on either on the surface.

With so much focus on Barack, we were interested in seeing what his first lady, Michelle Obama, had to say about child rearing.  As a mother of two young children, it’s interesting to read her views on raising a family.

Know when to fold them: In an interview aired in September on the season premiere of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Michelle Obama was asked whether she and her husband were planning to have a third child.

“I think I’m done,” Ms. Obama told Ms. DeGeneres. “I think our third child is this campaign.”

Co-opt their father into helping more:  From The Chicago Sun Times, “Michelle keeps him very grounded. She makes him throw out the trash,” said Davila.  “He makes the bed when he’s in town. They are a couple. He’s a husband and father, so when he’s home he has to do things the way other people do them.”

Incorporate more snuggle time: From the Wall Street Journal, Michelle Obama talks about the effects of the presidential campaign on family life.

WSJ: With Mr. Obama traveling almost nonstop, are you doing anything differently with your daughters?

Michelle Obama: Without Barack there in the morning, the girls and I have “snuggle time” in my bed. I turn on the lights and we stay there cuddling … have deep conversations and talk about what it would be like if we could stay in bed all day but that wouldn’t be realistic, we wouldn’t learn to read…

October 5-11 is Fire Prevention Week. The theme is “Prevent Home Fires”. Clearing clutter in our homes is important as it creates space and peace of mind. It can also help to prevent fires. As we go about clearing clutter from room to room let’s take a look at some of the things we can do to keep our families and our homes safe from fires.

In the Liberty Lines newsletter from Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Glenn Richards, a former firefighter offers these tips on small appliances safety:

• Always follow the manufacturer’s operating instruction.

• Never use an appliance with a frayed, worn or damaged cord.

• Plug appliances directly into the outlet; avoid adapters and extension cords.

• Look for new safety features on appliances you buy. As a professional organizer I admit I am conscientious about clearing clutter in my home and in other people’s homes but I have used an appliance with a worn cord and I just taped it with electrical tape. And I use extension cords all the time. (Shame on me) I am turning over a new leaf starting right now.

• Don’t allow children to play with appliances.

• When buying small appliances, look for the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) mark. These have been tested by an independent laboratory for public safety and they meet applicable requirements.

• Unplug small appliances when not using them. You’ll save energy and won’t have to worry about whether you left them on when you leave home.

I had a friend who left her clothes iron on and left her home for four days. They felt very lucky their house hadn’t caught on fire. Even if the appliance has an auto shut-off feature, turn it off in case it malfunctions.

Do you have any experiences or way you have prevented fires in your home?

Marilyn Bohn is an energetic, lively, compassionate, hard working and creative organizer. She was born to organize! Before becoming a professional organizer she worked professionally in diverse environments. She is involved in her community, providing her clients with a broad base of experience and knowledge.  She is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).

Don’t know about you, but I could really use a pick-me-up.  Markets are bad, people losing jobs, a lot of fear in the world.  When I stumbled upon this video, it actually made me happy.  More than that, it actually made me feel good.

Get up and dance!
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

(Hat tip to Presentation Zen)