http://ftp.icarusindie.com:2004/stocks/index.php This is a temporary location for the site while it's being developed. I'm looking for feedback on the look as well as features you want. Currently you can submit stock symbols (I have thousands but they're always changing). You can search for stocks within a price range and view their previous close in relation to their 52 week high and 52 week low as well as see all the charts that Yahoo has available for the stocks. You can create an account simply by choosing a username and password. There's no way to recover either so write them down before you create an account. No personal information is required or requested. Your portfolio contains your entire transaction history as well as a summary showing the total value for all your current and past holdings as well as the total amount of cash deposited. So for example if you buy 25 shares of something and then sell 25 shares the summary will show you have 0 shares and the amount you lost or gained. If you have more than 0 shares of something it will show how much you have gained or lost based on the previous day's closing price. The goal for this site is to not only make it easy to see how well you're doing on the stock market by keeping tabs on real investments but also to create fantasy accounts so you can buy and sell stocks with fake money to try your hand at getting rich without risking anything. This site makes use of Yahoo's stock information so if your stock symbol isn't already in the system, make sure you use Yahoo's version of the symbol. Sometimes there is a discrepency between Yahoo's stock symbols and other companies' stock symbols. This site is intended as a tool to help you invest and track your investments. Your investments are your own responsibility.
Just a quick FYI for the search engines... http://quote.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv appears to be no longer in use http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv is the new URL for pulling stock information from Yahoo.
I think the overall layout can be redone to look more web 2.0. Try changing the font style.. you can find a tutorial at my site: http://www.mojopixels.com that shows you how to make a better like this: You can also use the same effect on the font. For your yellow buttons, I would change it to grey instead..
This is really cool, and FAST! However, you'll need to work on methods for attracting people. Just looking at it, there's nothing that says "this is a quick and easy way to track your real or fantasy portfolio". It just looks like yet another stock lookup tool. Once you have the technology finished, create a great front-end and homepage to highlight the features, and you should be successful.
I would recommend changing the logo to two variations on the same color, green and blue looks kind of jank. I also recommend cutting a hole into the "O" and centering the whole design.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to stick with (and improve on) the web 2.0 look. Historically my sites have been shades of blue. I want this to be colorful so it looks like a toy. But it's most definitly not just a toy. I'll have an update late today that improves the portfolio page. You can see your percentage gains or losses per stock and over all now. I'm also planning out content for explaining what exactly the site can be used for as well as tips on investing and finding stocks. The whole thing came about because Yahoo's stock screener doesn't show you the charts up front. It makes it a slow tedious process to narrow down the stocks. When I invest the first condition is a price range. I like to own at least 100 shares. The second condition is the long term performance. My tool makes it easy to find cheap stocks that don't obviously suck since you can quickly see the long term stock performance. From there I'm going to add in resources to direct users to more advanced research tools to help predict where the companies are going.
The new location of the site (same database is being used) is http://stocks.icarusindie.com:2004/ The account page has been improved quite a bit.
The final location has been set at http://www.dawnofthegeeks.com/stocks/ GoDaddy breaks CURL for no good reason which makes it impossible to update the stock values directly. But, I've found a way around it. It's not an ideal solution but it works.