Old Habits Die Easy
I’ve been using Yahoo Finance to keep tabs on my stocks for as long as I can remember. Ten years maybe? It’s a simple, fast-loading page which lists all of your stocks and any news associated with them. It’s perfect for my simple needs. But after Yahoo’s redesign a week or so ago, Yahoo Finance has been pissing me off. I know this may seem like a minor thing, but Yahoo is now forcing users to log in every 24 hours. For someone who uses two or three computers (or even one computer, really), this is a major pain.
I went to my Account Settings page on Yahoo to see if perhaps a preference got flipped, and to my delight I saw a panel which let me set the frequency of login prompts. Great! Upon visiting the panel, however, this is what I saw:
What a useless set of options! Every 15 minutes? Who the hell would choose that? Who would want any of those options? Why not have one for “every click” as well? You could call it the MySpace Setting.
Anyway, this is becoming a real nuisance so I’m going to kill my Yahoo Finance habit and find another site to track stocks on ASAP. Does anyone have any suggestions? Google Finance maybe? What do you use?
I’m constantly amazed at how fast google finance loads. I’m not a power user of either though so I don’t know what features each do and don’t have.
Log a bug. File a complaint! Indeed, that would piss me off too. Eventually enough people on flickr complained about the same thing, so go for it :)
I guess its easy since they are my brokerage, but I always use E*Trade to check my stocks. Gives me all the stats I need and you can even manage loans and savings accounts, if you have them. I’m sure the login would be much more of a pain though.
That sucks. What happens if you don’t log in every 24 hours?
Aha, so it’s not just me! That was almost the only change I really noticed of the redesign, along with the drop-downs menus. Not exactly the most stunning redesign I’ve seen.
I coincidentally just liquidated my brokerage account, so I’m in the market for a fresh… everything. I’m really digging Google’s charts, but I haven’t tried managing a portfolio with it yet. I’ll be watching this one for more suggestions.
There is always the option of quicken, which is what I use. If you are using three computers though, this isn’t a good option. To tell you the truth when I’m not using my windows box for testing it really only serves as a quicken box because my mutual fund doesn’t sync with quicken for mac.
By the way, what are you doing with the $97 you just got from dreamhost? heh.
One vote for MSFT Money for tracking investments although Quicken probably works in a similar way. Nice to see your annual ROI, Gains, etc.
Even worse… I’ve been using Excel’s ‘Import Web Data’ ability to read the tables from Yahoo Finance pages to track my portfolio in a custom spreadsheet… of course, I should have expected that if the page layouts changed, my spreadsheet would break. Here’s to planning ahead! Luckily, it’s a relatively quick thing to go in and re-map the tables.
Damn, if only we (NetworthIQ) had that part of our site implemented. I’d tell you to use it. It’s in the plans, but we haven’t gotten to it yet. It is good to know there is room for an alternative.
Do I sense finance.newsvine.com coming in the near future? ;)
I agree with Mike Henderson – a Newvine stock tracker would be sick.
I’m a big fan of Google finance. It does a really good job of integrating news items into the stock history, although it sometimes throws in some odd news picks. I also have used TD Ameritrade (formerly Ameritrade, then formerly Datek on account of mergers), and I really like how comprehensive the portfolio view is – but I think you have to be investing with them to have access to those tools.
give it 6 to 9 months and you might be happy with what thestreet.com will be offering…
Google Finance is great. They have everying, It is very easy to use and you can “buy and sell” stocks as much as you want to see how you would do if you used real money.
I also have started using Google Finance for a quick snapshot. You can edit a portfolio that contains all of your stocks, at the various share prices where you got in. And that charting thing they have is great. The page loads very quickly.
I still look at Yahoo! Finance, but only when I’m curious certain data that aren’t included no Google, like the current bid/ask spread of a particular stock, or the dividend/yield.
Re: E*TRADE, If you use Safari, E*TRADE is one of the few sites that Safari won’t automatically fill in your login data for (via keychain). Very annoying! OTOH, E*TRADE has nice watchlists you can create, view and export. I export mine daily (or every few days) and run a FileMaker script to update everything in my accounts (a set of FileMaker files). I’m sure Yahoo or Google have more or less the same features so I imagine it’s just picking one that you are the most happy with. Nothing lasts forever (or even a long time) on the Internet. What makes you smile today will make you frown tomorrow, and vice versa.
As you wanted to know what others are doing I can tell you I went ahead and wrote my own ticker app after having tried out quite a few on-line services that were either prompting for logon OR taking up way to much space with ads and/or other irrelevant information.
So, I basically kept my accounts at the free sources on the web and now read them through an application that keeps all my passwords, automatically logs on and also filters out all the rubish; a filtering mini-browser.
http://www.davidincyberspace.com/projects
there isn’t anything yahoo does that doesn’t annoy me..
i’d say go with Google Finance. there’s something about using it that is very satisfying..
Google Finance is awesome and fast, vote with your eyeballs and flush Yahoo down the toilet.
Yep I said goodbye to Yahoo! finance the first time I tried out Google finance. It’s just no contest.
At one point you could poll your different stock trading accounts into Yahoo! (which was really cool) but they killed that service a couple years ago.
I’m so glad to have found this blog. I’m tracking not only my own portfolio but my mother’s. I used to use two browsers, so that each would always stay logged int to one. Now, I have to log in to each account, every day. It IS infuriating, mostly because there was no warning for it, and because I don’t have to the option to override it.
For any of you who have been contemplating the following, don’t bother:
I used BBEdit to manually edit the cookies preferences list for my browser (Safari on OS X). Even though I could locate several cookies related to finance.yahoo.com, it seemed to ignore the date change I made. It didn’t prevent me from logging in, and it didn’t log me out. it just expired as usual after 24 hours.
I guess I’ll look in to Google.
I just sent yet another E-Mail today to all the addresses at Yahoo that I know of relating to customer service (VERY QUESTIONABLE) and the 24-Hour login requirement. After reading their canned responses, it should be obvious to all the followers of this blog the apathy Yahoo has for its users . . .
To: “Yahoo Finance Administration”, finance-admin@yahoo-inc.com,
mail@yahoo-inc.com,
quotes@yahoo-inc.com,
account-security@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Back in june, I sent in a feedback about the MAXIMUM non-login interval of 24 Hours before requiring another password login. NOT ONCE, did I receive an intelligent answer even indicating that someone had ever READ my input. No, all I got were canned responses asking if I had error messages, problems logging in, how to request a new password, etc., etc.
I just checked again, and find that you have not changed the “Prompt for Password” interval to any frequency longer than “Every Day”. Here is a copy of my original question. Let’s hope that someone can give me an intelligent answer this time. . .
*****************************************
THE ORIGINAL QUESTION (from 12 June 2006):
Auto-Generated Response did not answer the question:
Why the change to require logins within 24 hours? Why don’t you at least add a weekly option to the pop-down menu and let the user decide how often they think they need to do a security login? Having to log in every 24 hours is a royal pain in the ass – it’s not like I have any national secrets that need to be protected.
*****************************************
14Jun2006:
(Yahoo Tech):
I thought my question was clear enough. Recently, some changes have been made to the Yahoo portfolio/finance pages. One of these changes has been to logging in, in that unless a user has logged in within the past 24 hours, they must again enter a login password. This has never been the case before, and I have used the Yahoo portfolio for at least the past 9 years. My question was why isn’t there an option for the user to select how often THEY want their most recent login to expire? Some people might want their login timeout to be a short period of time, while other people (like myself) do not need the added security of having to log in again every 24 hours. I suggested that there be an entry in the dropdown menu for a weekly timeout, which would probably kill 99% of the complaints about having to login again, since most people probably go online at least once a week.
*****************************************
20Jun2006:
Why doesn’t somebody ever read user feedback? My Original question, which, as of now, still hasn’t been answered or even remotely addressed:
Recently, some changes have been made to the Yahoo portfolio/finance pages. One of these changes has been to logging in, in that unless a user has logged in within the past 24 hours, they must again enter a login password. This has never been the case before, and I have used the Yahoo portfolio for at least the past 9 years. My question was why isn’t there an option for the user to select how often THEY want their most recent login to expire?
Some people might want their login timeout to be a short period of time, while other people (like myself) do not need the added security of having to log in again every 24 hours. I suggested that there be an entry in the dropdown menu for a weekly timeout, which would probably kill 99% of the complaints about having to login again, since most people probably go online at least once a week.
*****************************************
27Jun2006:
Excuse me, but my question has no relation at all to secret questions, date of birth, etc., and your ability to answer my question should have no bearing on whether or not you have this info. I don’t believe that I ever entered a birthdate or a secret question for my Yahoo account anyway, since it has existed for at least 9 years. My question was very simple to answer if anybody ever took the time to read it:
Why isn’t there an option for the user to select how often THEY want their most recent login to expire? Some people might want their login timeout to be a short period of time, while other people (like myself) do not need the added security of having to log in again again every 24 hours. I suggested that there be an entry in the dropdown menu for a weekly timeout, which would probably kill 99% of the complaints about having to login again, since most people probably go online at least once a week.
Original Message
From: “Yahoo! Mail”
To: xxxx
Sent: Sunday, 25 June 2006 23:12
Subject: Re: Feedback – Other
> Hello,
>
> Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.
>
> We really appreciate your patience in this matter and apologize for the
> delay due to verification formalities. We appreciate you writing us
> regarding this issue. In order to help us ensure the integrity and
> security of your account, we would like to verify your account
> information. This helps us confirm your account ownership. We will not
> be able to discuss account related issues or perform technical
> troubleshooting within your account without proper account verification.
>
> Please provide all of the following information:
>
> 1. Yahoo! ID – You have this as part of the feedback subject
> 2. Please provide BOTH pieces of information below:
> * zip or postal code – xxxxx
> * alternate email address – there is only one email address:
>
> 3. Please provide at least one of the following:
> * secret question and answer associated with this account – I have
> never provided a secret question and/or answer to my knowledge.
> * date of birth
>
> Once we have successfully verified this information, we will be happy to
> assist you.
>
> Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.
> Regards,
>
> (Yahoo Tech)
> Yahoo! Customer Care
*****************************************
After I received this last response, I gave up 3 months ago.
Maybe, just maybe, if enough people E-Mail them, they may listen, but don’t count on it. . .
I tried to raise the 1-Day login issue with Yahoo Finance again on 3 October 2006, and after the about the same number of worthless canned responses, which I kept returning with “I’m not having a problem, so please just answer my question this time!”, I finally got a response from a human organism. . .
*****************************************
Hello Olav,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.
First of all, I apologize for the miscommunication that
contributed to your frustration. We write every response with an
intention to provide a resolution.
At the moment, we do not currently offer the feature you’ve described. Please be assured that we will keep your concern in mind as we improve the Yahoo! Mail service.
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.
Regards,
(Yahoo Tech)
*****************************************
Sooooooo. . . It looks like we can all look for more of the same ambivalence from Yahoo regarding this matter.