Software Quickens Net Return Intuit Product Faster Than Browser
The Internet wins praise for giving small investors access to financial information once available only to Wall Street types.
Where it falls short is ease of use. Unless you’ve mastered those strings of dashes, Web browsers and connections to access providers, you may spend more time reading software manuals than annual reports.
And time is one thing you won’t have. Most of it will be used jumping from site to site on the World Wide Web, looking for a stock quote here, a research report there and chat from other investors somewhere else.
Enter Investor Insight. It’s an online service owned by Intuit Inc., the software company that publishes the best-selling Quicken personal-finance program. Investor Insight supplies everything an at-home investor may need - stock quotes, company background, analyst reports and breaking news - in an easy-to-use format.
Unlike the Internet, which is a public computer network available to anyone with a personal computer and modem, Investor Insight uses a private network available only to its subscribers.
This means there usually are no delays retrieving, downloading or reading the information it offers.
While rival investment sites on the Internet feature lots of colorful graphics and gee-whiz stock price banners, they’re painfully slow compared with Investor Insight. Someone who simply wants to check the stock price of Netscape Communications Corp., for example, could use Investor Insight in a fraction of the time it takes to access that same quote on the Net.
The latest version of Quicken includes the software needed to sign up for Investor Insight. Or, you can get a free disk from the company.
Investor Insight’s basic option of $9.95 a month lets a subscriber follow the stock prices and news reports of 10 securities. For $19.95 a month, the customer gets to track a portfolio of 50 securities.
The $9.95 is in line with fees charged for a few hours of use on online services CompuServe Corp. and America Online Inc. Internet access generally runs about $19.95 a month.
America Online and CompuServe give you electronic mail and chat rooms, which Investor Insight doesn’t offer. But then, the financial information sections of those general-interest services aren’t as thorough as Investor Insight’s.
The main screen of Investor Insight shows a list of the stocks the subscriber wants to follow and icons that bring up wire service stories, price and trading volume charts, company reports and history.
The list of reports Investor Insight offers is among the most complete in the online world. There are overviews from Standard & Poor’s Corp., earnings estimates from analysts who track the stock, and tables that compare companies in the same industry. Dow Jones & Co. supplies breaking news.