The turbulence and wild swings of the world’s financial markets have been enough to make even the sturdiest of investors a little queasy as of late. If you haven’t already, you will likely lose most of your appetite for risk as the global recession runs its course. But it’s important to keep your head in the game. Several years from now, we’ll no doubt look back at some of these prices and be wishing we’d backed up the truck.

Everyone is looking for an edge in their investment strategy. We think we may have one for you. Hot Stocks is a social finance app from Yahoo’s Media Innovation Group that lets you stay engaged and explore trading ideas with a little help from your friends and other investors on Yahoo!, Facebook and MySpace. Anyone can play regardless of their investing background or financial expertise.

Hot Stocks keeps you up to date with your favorite stocks and lets you watch the latest business videos from Yahoo! News. But the main premise of the app is to share your opinions about different companies using the stock rating widget. The widget appears throughout the app and will continually ask your opinion about various S&P 500 stocks. Drag the slider to express your bullish or bearish sentiment. Click on the stock ticker symbol to see how others feel about it.

Get your friends involved!

Things get interesting when you invite a couple friends to join in the fun. You can compare their favorite stocks with your own and see how each of your top five picks has performed not only today, but also over the past week, month, quarter or year. Use it to help identify your most financially informed friend! Perhaps it’s you?

The wisdom of the crowd

If you’re looking for investment ideas, check out the collective financial wisdom of the different social network crowds. Under the community tab, you’ll see which stocks people are most bullish or bearish on recently on Yahoo!, Facebook and MySpace or across all networks.

Helpful Tips:
• Enter a ticker symbol into the box on the top right of the app and click the Go button to be taken to its stock sentiment page, where you can leave your rating or comment.
• Your Top Five stocks will be automatically created based upon your highest rated stocks. If you’d like to manually edit your Top Five, click on the My Stocks tab and drag any stock that you’ve rated over your Top Five to add it to the list.
• Clicking on a company name or ticker symbol on the Home page will take you to its stock sentiment page where you can leave your sentiment or see how other users feel about it.
• The stock rating widget displays some valuable information about the current stock, including its sector and industry and how heavy or light the stock is trading today.
• Click on the different stock performance periods just below the tabs to change the default period that is used to calculate the percentage change for all stocks.

We hope you’ll find Hot Stocks a fun and engaging way to follow the market and interact with friends online. Please let us know what you think!

William White
Yahoo! Media Innovation

Try it on:

• Yahoo!
• Facebook
• MySpace

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Engineers, programme and product managers in eight Yahoo! offices and four time zones worked as One Yahoo! to make the vision of a Global Finance Team a reality. Until six months ago, the vast majority had never worked together or even met – but this hasn’t stopped us working as a team and delivering a great product.

Together, we’ve upgraded the technology behind the scenes and linked together the EU and US infrastructure systems. We’ve successfully piloted brand new Global Finance QA processes and run joint EU/US maintenance sprints.

We now work in a 24 hour cycle. The US programmers assign everyone their tasks. The US engineers code, the QA team in Grenoble tests the code whilst the EU engineering carry on their work, the product mangers and production team prioritise the bugs, update specs and do translations in time for the evening call. And then we start all over again.

This means we get great products to market quickly and we’re better supported than ever.

And the pages we launched? Well – the quotes pages now have automatically streaming share prices to keep our users up to date and some pages have been given a fresh look designed to make it easier to digest the financial information. In the current climate it’s never been so crucial to know what’s going on. Here are some links:

• New share price summary page
• Multiquote page
• Portfolios – if you’ve got a Yahoo! login create portfolio on the site

So what did our users think of the new pages? Here are just a few of the emails:

Jena: “The new look & design is what I have been waiting for. This is fabulous, 5***** quality. Keep it up.”

Adam Buchannan: “New portfolio page is brilliant, especially the streaming data.”

And this is just the start. We’re working together on the news article pages for launch in the US this month and new charts and search functionality for the EU in November. And there’s sooo much more to come! Finance IS exciting – and it’s never looked so good.

Well done the Global Finance Team!

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The new ticker tape, prominently placed, displays the most recent quotes you last looked at. This is the same useful functionality we offer on our front page. If you want more information on a stock, just click on the name it will take you directly to that quotes page. This saves you time by surfacing the basic price information on your current page as well as no longer making you type in the symbol for the stock you want more information on.

We also offer you the option to change your preferences. If you don’t like the scrolling, then turn it off. You can also change the speed.

Lastly, if you want a more holistic view of the market, you can switch the display to market overview, which shows the major indices.

For the past few weeks, we have been in beta, listening to your feedback and improving the product. Now that we are in GA, we still want your input. Please let us know what you think

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If you’ve clicked the thumbnail chart — or a time period link below it — on our quote page, you’ve likely visited our Interactive Chart. The Interactive Chart is a relatively new addition to Yahoo! Finance; it became generally available in April. There are several things you can do on the Interactive Chart that you can’t do on the Basic Chart. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Drilling down for more information: When you see a dramatic change in price or volume, move the Interactive Chart’s cursor to a specific point on the chart to read the date/time and price and volume.

2. Comparisons: You can compare any security to any other security. Start by clicking the Compare link. The Compare dialog then shows you key competitors and indices. Check the box next to the ones you want to add for comparison. If you want to add a comparison security that’s not in the list, simply enter the security’s name or symbol in the text box.

Click the Draw button when you’re done, and you’ll see the Interactive Chart update to plot the comparison securities and/or indices you requested.

3. Customization: You can change the plot line (candlesticks, line, or OHLC), chart scale (linear or logarithmic), and even the chart cursor (ball, crosshairs, or none). These options are under the Chart Settings menu. If you miss the open, high, and low values we once showed by default, you’ll find the option to turn them on in this menu, too.

4. Technical Indicators: Choose from 12 indicators (plus volume) by clicking the Technical Indicators menu.

After you select one from the menu, you can customize its input values.

5. Time Range adjustment: You can change the beginning and end date of the chart plot. If you know the dates you want, type them in the FROM and TO boxes and click Enter on your keyboard. Alternatively, you can use the graphical time range adjustment at the bottom of the chart. The slider bar moves the time window back and forth in time. You can change the size of the time window by clicking and dragging the handles.

To save you the hassle of reconfiguring your settings, the Interactive Chart carries over your technical indicator settings and chart settings as you plot different charts. The settings also carry over to the next browser session as long as you don’t clear your browser cookies. You can force-clear the Interactive Chart’s settings at any time by clicking the Reset link above the chart.

There are also some key links beneath the chart. Note the link to the Basic Chart, which you can use in case you prefer its simpler presentation. The Print link allows you to print the Interactive Chart area of the screen. Finally, click the Send Feedback link beneath the chart to send us your impressions and ideas. We’ve made changes to the chart in response to user feedback, so please keep it coming.

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With the markets being volatile and earnings right around the corner, it is important to be aware of any trends in the market. See how the earnings announcements not only affect a single symbol in real-time, but how this influences the industry.

Our multi-quotes Real-Time ECN view (see below) will save you time by allowing you to see several real-time quotes on one page without logging in.

You can get to this view by putting multiple symbols, separated by a space, in the search box, or by clicking here.

Additionally, save even more time by viewing your watchlist and investments in real time. Just use the Real-Time ECN view on your Portfolios page every time you return to your portfolio.

Let us know what you think!

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