I was not/am not aware that yahoo finance and other brokerages do it for free. Didn't find it immediately with a quick Google search either, so I'd appreciate the link (though I found another site that is new to me and seems to provide similar service)
At the time I wrote it, I couldn't find other instances of this service online.
I could constantly poll stock prices on my phone to see if my price points had been reached, but what I wanted was to not have to pay attention and be notified when an event occurred.
whoa, +1 uptown. i'm sort of bummed that I didn't know about that before. Seems like I should have found that.
1. Have you used this (and did it work)? I just tried registering an alert and I never got the notification from yahoo, despite the fact that the alert condition was met. I was also able to set an alert to get notified when SPY fell to $500 (currently trading 108.70). I also got a 404 in the 3rd step of the phone registration process, but it somehow saved the number anyways.
2. I got a 404 in step 3 when i registered my cell phone to receive alerts.
I guess I'm trying to figure out if this service is still operated at all by yahoo. Of course, it could be equally damning if yahoo decided that its not worth supporting and just nexted the product.
Regarding brokerages offering alert capabilities: I'd be interested in finding out more. I use Interactive Brokers personally and Quote Sentinel was originally actually a python script hooked up to the IB api.
Obviously trying to monetize a service that is being offered for free by many more established parties isn't the smartest idea... Can't really make excuses for why I didn't find that earlier though (functional or not).
I have no idea whether they maintain it or not, though it's linked to from every company's summary page within Yahoo! Finance right underneath the chart. E*Trade offers a similar feature, and I do use that one.
At the very least, I guess you've found that the Yahoo! product isn't the best ... so perhaps there's a market for your product. Something else you may be interested in is the Google Finance spreadsheet features.
Not sure whether there's a way you could add a hook to send an alert when certain prices are met, but their in-spreadsheet stock prices are pretty slick and very easy to use. Probably not something you could resell, but for personal use, it's a good tool.
