Bright Hub's Picks for the Top 5 Free Desktop Stock Tickers

A desktop stock ticker, or crawl, can be a handy tool for traders and investors to monitor their investments while accomplishing other tasks on the computer. They are customizable to reflect the user's preferences, desired stock symbols, and can provide both real-time and delayed quotes. Here are the best five free desktop stock tickers.

You need a desktop stock ticker, a good one. No, you need the best. Here are the Top 5 Best Free Desktop Stock Tickers.

1. Free Stock Ticker
2. Yahoo! Stock Ticker
3. CoolTick
4. Ticker Tape
5. Market Browser

See below for links.

Maybe the best free desktop stock ticker, Free Stock Ticker provides an unlimited amount of symbols and near real-time price data. Using Yahoo! Finance as its data engine, Free Stock Ticker is fully customizable and can be resized to work on any desktop configuration. It offers an adjustable scroll speed and updates automatically.

While we're on the subject of Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! offers their own desktop stock ticker. Boasting a different look and feel than Free Stock Ticker, Yahoo! Stock Ticker is more like a CNBC summary screen. Obviously based on the Yahoo! Finance engine, the quotes are near real time.

If you're looking for a funky, but very functional, desktop stock ticker then CoolTick might be just the ticket. Offering many different fonts and alarm bells that go off when a high or low is achieved, CoolTick is a very popular desktop stock ticker. The one drawback to the free version is that it is limited to only two stock symbols. By registering the shareware and paying a one-time $19.95 fee, the software is unlocked and will display an unlimited number of symbols.

Another cool program is Ticker Tape. Ticker Tape does what every other desktop stock ticker does with two unique upgrades. Ticker Tape enables users to communicate with other investors through the ticker program, and it offers a portfolio tracking feature that keeps total portfolio values updated constantly. The ticker program can be used without registering, but users must register to have access to the communications features of the program. Registration is free.

MarketBrowser is a great desktop stock ticker for technical analysts. In addition to providing stock quotes, when a user clicks on a symbol the program opens a screen with 12 different charts on the stock. Very handy for traders who rely on technical analysis more so than fundamental.