MSN Stock Price Add-In For Excel

One of the handiest investing tools I've come across is a free download available from Microsoft that allows you to automatically update an Excel spreadsheet with stock prices from MSN Money. After installing the tool in Excel, an "Insert Stock Quotes" button will appear in the toolbar at the top of your spreadsheets. When clicked, the button opens a dialog box in which you specify the stock ticker you'd like to track, and a list of market data you can have imported into your spreadsheet. After you choose which ones you'd like to import and hit "OK," formulas like this will appear in whatever Excel cells you're working in: =MSNStockQuote($B25,"Ask Price","US")

You'll also see a button labelled "Update Quotes" in the Excel toolbar. When you click this, whatever stock quotes you've added to your spreadsheet will be updated automatically with the latest price data from MSN Money.

The quoting tool allows you to track information about your stocks including their:

• 52 Week High
• 52 Week Low
• Day's High
• Day's Low
  
• Open Price
• Last Price
• Ask Price
  
• Ask Size
• Bid Price
• Bid Size
• Company Name
• Quoted Currency
• Date of Last Sale
• Earnings Per Share
• Market Capital
• P/E Ratio
• Percent Change
• Previous Close
• Shares Outstanding
• Size of Last Sale
• Time of Last Sale
• Volume

I use this tool to quickly update historical price data about my portfolio of stocks, which I then run through various technical analysis equations to determine whether any of them have reached a good buying or selling point.

All in all, the MSN stock quote add-in can be a very convenient way to import key data about your stock portfolio directly into a spreadsheet. To get this free add-in, just download it from Microsoft's site and go through the quick installation process. Here's where to download the stock quote add-in.

Happy trading!