Any plan for Apple to provide real time stock quotes in Numbers?

There are many rules (set by the SEC in the US, and by other regulatory bodies in other countries) regarding real-time data.

Generally direct access is limited to brokers and members of the relevant stock exchange, and comes with significant costs, regulations, and liabilities. Ostensibly it's designed to stabilize the market and limit the impact of runs on the market (think stock market crashes... if everyone knew real-time that a stock (or market!) was dropping, it would accelerate to $0 pretty quickly). By limiting real-time data to 'trusted' brokers, and insulating Joe Public from millisecond-level dips and spikes, the whole thing is stabilized, and the SEC (or others) can put a hold on the market before it runs away too far, before the general public are even aware anything happened.

If you have a brokerage account (presumably you do), you may be able to get 'real-time' data from them (or at least 'near-time', since there's some inherent delay if you're not directly connected to the stock market's network). Either way, it's specialized data that most people aren't going to need, so is unlikely to get added, IMHO. Your broker is the best place for this, and they likely have some portfolio management solution for your accounts.

[point of interest - I've been in some of the datacenters at the heart of the stock market, and the controls they have in place are borderline insane :) ]

As per the definition, STOCK() is based on the last market close data.

There's no real-time data support in Numbers (nor in Excel, which uses a 30-minute delay for US markets, which is better than Numbers, but still not real-time).

No one here can make that change for you. The next port of call is likely to be: Feedback - Numbers - Apple although real-time quotes are really the purview of stock trading platforms, which is not really Numbers' purview, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

When the STOCK function was first introduced Numbers briefly had intraday (slightly delayed) quotes! That ended not long after another company acquired the parent of the data provider Yahoo! Finance. (That's where Numbers still gets the end of previous trading day quotes.)

Spreadsheets are great for financial analysis (which, unlike trading, does not require close to "real time" quotes) but are not the best choice for those who need a "real time" portfolio tracker.

SG

Hi SG,

Just a thought, but maybe a delay on revealing stock prices is deliberate. I am thinking back to the stock market crash in the late 1980s when many investors lost money. If "real time" prices (i.e. seconds or even milliseconds) were available, I can imagine stock markets were reporting, and computers around the world were bouncing back buy/sell requests. Such requests would affect the stock prices within seconds (or milliseconds). Stock markets then bounced back new prices. This positive feedback could get out of hand. Crash!

Good on you Excel for a 30 minute delay. Good on you Numbers for previous market day's closing price.

Just slow down, folks! Life is too short!

Regards,

Ian.

There is often a delay in quotes for individual investors or for free services. That delay is not mandated by the SEC. SEC rules addressing the distribution of quotes and transactions are not so much designed to maintain market stability (e.g., prevent sudden drops, or rises) but to maintain market integrity by encouraging transparency and fairness and preventing manipulative or misleading practices.

The delay mainly results from the desire of the exchanges and of data providers to encourage use of paid services for "real-time" data.

People who really need real-time data know who they are, and are willing to pay for it. Generally they won't be using it in tools like Numbers! (As an aside, there have been intermittent reports in this forum, none in the last few months, about problems with the quotes in Numbers not updating.)

For intraday data of varying delays that is more recent than the previous day's closing price you can get from the STOCK function in Numbers, try Excel, Google Sheets, and (close enough to real time to meet or exceed the needs of almost all individuals) your broker's website.

SG

It usually shows the price from yesterday's close, which isn't all that great. I say "usually" because right now it's not even doing that, rather, it's showing closing price from Jan 13, instead of the Jan 15. Yikes.

You mean like:

=STOCK("AAPL", price)

Update: I closed and opened my Numbers spreadsheet one more time, and this time the stock prices updated to yesterday's close. So that glitch seems to be behind us now.