[HN Gopher] A terminal stock watcher and stock position tracker
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A terminal stock watcher and stock position tracker
        
       Author : maydemir
       Score  : 342 points
       Date   : 2021-02-03 10:33 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | amerf1 wrote:
       | Love this! Would love to see more features in there I know
       | someone mentioned charts which is great! Other features could be
       | news/fundamentals! Let me know if you want to brainstorm my
       | Twitter is in my bio. I used to work at a data vendor that
       | competed with Bloomberg have plenty of ideas!
        
       | elhudy wrote:
       | This is nice, but what I would really like to see is a tracker
       | for heavy volume trading. If some hedge fund suddenly purchases
       | 1% of a pharmaceutical company, I want an alert on so I can act
       | on it quickly.
       | 
       | Does anyone know of a tool that does this?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | DLA wrote:
         | A Bloomberg Terminal, amazing but $$$$. If a _good_ hedge fund
         | does this then it will be done quietly and across accounts, in
         | dark pools, as a direct trade, or other  "off tape" move, often
         | reported later. They're not just going to throw a 1% sized
         | trade in as a limit order for you to see, so the "act on it
         | quickly" part is not as easy as you may think. (Former
         | professional trader)
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | Would be good to add support for trading indicators like MACD,
       | RSI, etc.
        
       | uberswe wrote:
       | I made something similar for cryptocurrencies a while back
       | https://github.com/uberswe/golang-cryptotracker
        
       | jgrahamc wrote:
       | What are people doing that requires this?
        
         | odiroot wrote:
         | Being bored at a desk job, would be my guess.
        
           | person_of_color wrote:
           | Yep, many FAANG employees got rich trading during lockdown.
        
             | valuearb wrote:
             | They all went busto yesterday.
        
               | frockington1 wrote:
               | Market was up almost 2% yesterday, great day for anyone
               | over the age of 20
        
               | Cthulhu_ wrote:
               | Only if they went all in on an overvalued meme stock like
               | GME; if they put money in an index, like the one that
               | follows the S&P 500, they would be up by anywhere between
               | ~10% and ~45% depending on when they got in. Long-term,
               | broad-spectrum trends have always been upwards.
               | 
               | TL;DR don't bet all your money on one horse. stock.
               | whichever.
               | 
               | (This is not financial advice, I am not a financial
               | expert, and results from the past are not representative
               | of future results)
        
             | doovd wrote:
             | Can't tell if this is sarcasm but this is, on balance of
             | probabilities, not true.
        
               | frockington1 wrote:
               | Lockdown was an incredible easy time to make money. The
               | market is up over 50% from the lows. Was an incredibly
               | easy time to make a lot of money with very little effort
               | or skill
        
               | mschuster91 wrote:
               | People who had the spare cash lying around to "buy the
               | dip" of the March 2020 crash
               | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_stock_market_crash)
               | caused by coronavirus panic and held their stocks until
               | now have enjoyed 58% growth of their investment even when
               | picking dumb index funds (e.g. S&P 500: 2237.40 at
               | 23.03., current 3826.31).
               | 
               | Crises of this magnitude always benefit those with liquid
               | assets / cash who can afford to buy out those who have to
               | exit out of (financial) pressure and ride out the crisis.
               | The 2008ff crisis was just the same - whoever bought a
               | house at fire-sale foreclosure rates back then now has a
               | lot of net worth.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | palebluedot wrote:
         | "Require" might be a strong word.
         | 
         | But here is why I find this project attractive: I like to check
         | out my watchlists and stock investments occasionally when
         | taking a quick break. But, I want to avoid being sucked into
         | the browser where the temptation is strong to check out
         | reddit/hn/twitter, and then lose 15-20min.
         | 
         | With this, I can just keep a terminal tab that I can flip to
         | with a hotkey. This way, I won't leave the terminal, and the
         | risk of additional distraction is lower.
        
           | valuearb wrote:
           | Psychology, monitoring long term investments closely is a bad
           | idea. Very seldom is price information actionable, and can
           | easily lead to frustration or boredom induced action.
           | 
           | 99.99% of investors should buy and hold and forget. If you
           | have the intelligence and interest to earn your CFA, you
           | should do your valuation analysis to set your buy and sell
           | prices for potential targets, and ignore their price action
           | until they near a target range.
        
             | palebluedot wrote:
             | Not sure if I agree, although I'm sure it varies per
             | person. I've been investing for > 20 years, and I enjoy
             | watching the daily movement as it helps me keep a mental
             | model of trends and performance. I seldom sell, but do buy
             | regularly, and I think having this information frequently
             | refreshed in my brain has helped my performance (of course,
             | no way for me to do an A/B comparison there, so I can't
             | assert it as fact).
        
               | valuearb wrote:
               | A Buffett story you might find interesting. He refuses to
               | look at the stock price of any potential investment while
               | he is doing his valuation for it.
               | 
               | His thinking is if he falls in love with the business
               | while reading their financial reports, and he knows the
               | stock is trading at $10, he's subconsciously influenced
               | to bias his valuation estimate over $10, because he wants
               | to buy it.
               | 
               | So he waits to ensure his valuation is as unbiased as
               | possible, and only when finished checks the price. Kind
               | of like the excitement of opening a present at XMas, not
               | knowing if it's a lump of goal or new AirPods.
        
             | smabie wrote:
             | What if your investments aren't long term?
        
               | valuearb wrote:
               | Then you are not an investor, you are a trader. And if
               | you are a trader, you shouldn't be distracting yourself
               | by writing code during market hours.
        
           | frockington1 wrote:
           | This is exactly what happened to me as I type this. I went to
           | check on futures after yesterdays rally, and 20 minutes later
           | I'm commenting on this post. Use case validated
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | I imagine it might show up in the background of some FinTech
         | hacker movie at some point.
        
       | belgianpi wrote:
       | this is fantastic. thanks.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | moontear wrote:
       | How is it that pretty much all stock trackers / APIs only support
       | US symbols? There are so many stocks out there that don't have a
       | symbol and have an ISIN. Is everybody only trading symbol-based
       | stocks? That seems very limited to me.
        
       | debarshri wrote:
       | The application uses Yahoo finance to fetch the market
       | information. It is generally delayed by 30 minutes for exchanges
       | like AEX or other european exchanges.
       | 
       | What I generally do it query the endpoint in EURONEXT's portal
       | https://live.euronext.com/en/intraday_chart/getDetailedQuote...
       | directly to get the current stock information which is almost
       | real time.
       | 
       | You can also track intraday price from EURONEXT via -
       | https://live.euronext.com/intraday_chart/getChartData/FR0000...
        
         | riku_iki wrote:
         | EURONEXT is only for European (not US) stocks, right?
        
         | omneity wrote:
         | Try Monitoro[0] on that website to setup alerts with Slack,
         | Discord, IFTTT, Zapier ... painlessly, no code. Our delay is
         | 1-2 seconds at most to delivery so you should get it pretty
         | fast.
         | 
         | (Disclaimer: I'm the founder)
         | 
         | [0]: https://monitoro.xyz
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | sub7 wrote:
       | You have no idea how useful this is for me. I have nativefier
       | wrapped yahoo finance/msn money/coinstats etc which are all
       | pretty bloated and this gives me all I need with around 1%
       | overhead. Many thanks.
        
       | teekert wrote:
       | Nice! This would be great if it could output HTML, then I'd
       | configure it with the Yaml, make cronjob on my homeserver to auto
       | update and point my browser to it (or more like point it to the
       | nginx container behind my traefik container). But still, this is
       | also very nice, will install tonight.
       | 
       | I made something like that myself with the Bittrex API (for
       | crypto) once myself (based on Python and
       | pandas.DataFrame.to_html()), very useful.
        
       | rayshan wrote:
       | Great work! I see that you're using Yahoo Finance data. Yahoo
       | deprecated its API so your data could stop flowing at any time.
       | You can try free services like Alpha Vantage [0] or Google
       | Finance formulas in Google Sheets exposed as an CSV / JSON.
       | Another way is to hook up a freemium service like IEX [1] and ask
       | your users to BYOK - bring your own key. I use IEX for my stock
       | watching browser extension [2] and eat the costs for my users.
       | It's not too bad.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.alphavantage.co/
       | 
       | [1] https://iexcloud.io/
       | 
       | [2] https://finance.shan.io/stock-inspector-discover-new-
       | compani...
        
         | xeonoex wrote:
         | Isn't AlphaVantage free limited to 5 requests a minute and 500
         | a day? And it requires an API key?
        
           | rayshan wrote:
           | I think it's a soft limit? I haven't run into the limit, but
           | then it's not my primary data vendor. Just ask them and
           | they'll give you an API key for free.
        
         | omneity wrote:
         | An alternative way is to monitor the data and extract it from
         | the Yahoo Finance website itself (or another one for the
         | matter).
         | 
         | We solve this at Monitoro[0] and we make it easy to receive
         | alerts or just store historical prices in SaaS apps and
         | automation platforms. No fear of losing access to the API, and
         | no need for coding in the first place.
         | 
         | (Disclaimer: I'm the founder)
         | 
         | [0]: https://monitoro.xyz
        
           | rayshan wrote:
           | I think your service is super helpful for many small volume
           | use cases! But it doesn't come with guarantees right? Like if
           | Yahoo moves its UI around, change elements and classes, etc.
        
             | omneity wrote:
             | not yet, but you will be notified that extraction has
             | stopped, and you can fix it in a few seconds.
             | 
             | We want to make it eventually robust to changes unless the
             | data was really removed from the webpage you're monitoring.
        
         | Glench wrote:
         | Have you considered charging for your extension? I just made
         | https://extensionpay.com which makes it easy to add payments in
         | your extension without needing to run your own server.
        
           | rayshan wrote:
           | I have! This is timely because Chrome Web Store just killed
           | its payment system. How does this compare to using Stripe out
           | of the box?
           | 
           | BTW I think someone was trying to start a browser extension
           | developer guild on HN, can't remember which thread... You
           | should tap into that community.
        
             | Glench wrote:
             | > How does this compare to using Stripe out of the box?
             | 
             | Basically you don't need to run your own server / database
             | / custom Stripe integration code / user management system /
             | custom extension integration, which is annoying to write
             | yourself and costs money to run a server. With ExtensionPay
             | you just add a little code in your extension [open source
             | here](https://github.com/Glench/ExtPay) and register your
             | extension in the web UI. I made it for use in my own
             | extensions :)
             | 
             | > BTW I think someone was trying to start a browser
             | extension developer guild on HN, can't remember which
             | thread... You should tap into that community.
             | 
             | Cool, I'll check it out, thanks. Any other hints to how I
             | could find it?
        
       | joncrane wrote:
       | Does it provide real time quotes for options as well?
        
       | popol12 wrote:
       | Nice tool! The ETH-BTC pair is limited by the 2 decimals display,
       | for instance, is this configurable somewhere? It would also be
       | great for crypto traders to source all trading pairs available on
       | coingecko.com, not just the few available on yahoo finance :)
        
       | pavlov wrote:
       | I remember what the stock market mood was like in early 2000.
       | Everyone breathlessly watching their favorite stocks, IPOs
       | jumping 100%+ on first day of trading, tech companies entering
       | large indexes...
       | 
       | This year feels exactly the same as 21 years ago, but people are
       | saying it's different because of Covid, Fed buys, etc.
       | 
       | Then again, "this time it's different!" is the rallying cry at
       | the peak of every bubble.
        
         | fred_is_fred wrote:
         | So many people fail to see this. The number of stock market
         | "investors" making Tik Tok videos and people gambling with rent
         | money might even be worse than 2000.
        
           | Someone1234 wrote:
           | People are bored and trapped at home. It isn't that
           | surprising that day trading as a hobby has picked up a
           | little.
           | 
           | A market correction wouldn't be that surprising in general,
           | but keep in mind a bubble and a correction aren't the same
           | thing. Plus, and maybe more importantly, even know a
           | correction _could_ occur without knowing _when_ isn 't
           | actually actionable information (could be tomorrow, next
           | year, or three years from now, and you would lose money if
           | you react at the wrong time).
           | 
           | So people saying we're in a bubble/correction is due, what
           | action would you have people take? If the answer is "nothing"
           | or "I don't know" then what good is that?
        
             | loopercal wrote:
             | >what action would you have people take
             | 
             | People can obviously do whatever they want as long as
             | they're aware past performance...blah...blah...don't invest
             | more than you can lose...blah.
             | 
             | I've pulled out from everything with a rich P/E ratio and
             | am only keeping money in companies that I feel are a)
             | stable and b) have a reasonable-to-low P/E ratio.
             | 
             | My thought is that new investors tend to go for well-known
             | companies or meme stocks, but either way driving up the P/E
             | ratio. I don't want to be caught in the downswing when
             | these investors leave.
        
             | fred_is_fred wrote:
             | The difference here is understanding that investing and
             | gambling are not the same thing. If they are investing for
             | retirement and buying low cost index funds, I would do
             | nothing. If they are gambling due to the dank memes, I
             | would ensure that I wasn't gambling anything I couldn't
             | afford to lose.
        
         | stouset wrote:
         | People have also been steadfastly insisting the market will
         | crash again for... well, actually, I don't think it's even
         | stopped briefly since the recession.
         | 
         | During the recession we were told that the days of 10%+ YoY
         | returns in the market were over and that we could expect to
         | live in a world with 3%-5% from here on out. The market
         | meanwhile has gone up _fivefold_ in the interceding 12 years,
         | or roughly a 15% annual return.
         | 
         | All along the way have been the doomsayers insisting that the
         | market will crash, that it feels like 2000 all over again, that
         | Trump, or COVID, or Biden will destroy the stock market, that
         | being at all-time-highs, having an unprecedented CAPE ratio, or
         | quantitative easing is going to send things tumbling... and yet
         | here we are. Sure, the crash will come at some point, but given
         | the thousands of failed predictions I've seen in the past
         | twenty years I have zero faith in anyone's individual ability
         | to correctly guess when it will happen.
        
           | pavlov wrote:
           | 2012-2019 offered great returns, but it didn't have the same
           | breathless mood as prevails now.
           | 
           | Taxi drivers want to talk about stocks. Every graph is
           | looking parabolic. Day trading has boomed. Last time these
           | things happened was 1999-2000.
        
             | vkou wrote:
             | Okay, do what's your play, here? You sit 2021 out, the s&p
             | froths up to 5.5k over the next 18 months, and then crashes
             | down to 3.7k? And you _perfectly_ time buying the dip?
             | (Unlikely.)
             | 
             | You'll still lose money, compared to just buying and
             | holding.
        
               | pavlov wrote:
               | Owning stocks is a good idea. But if you just buy the S&P
               | every month, you probably don't need a "terminal stock
               | watcher and stock position tracker", which is the program
               | being discussed here. It seems like a symptom of a short-
               | term exuberance that may not end well for most
               | participants.
        
               | maigret wrote:
               | Indeed. https://www.businessinsider.com/forgetful-
               | investors-performe...
        
         | chad_strategic wrote:
         | -> Then again, "this time it's different!" is the rallying cry
         | at the peak of every bubble.
         | 
         | It is different!
         | 
         | Trillions of dollars magically printed by the Fed. Bitcoin,
         | Doge Coin, Robinhood, Covid, GameStop, Trump, insurrection...
         | 
         | Fiat currency always ends the same, it's the duration of the
         | fiat currency that I believe is the variable.
        
         | yarky wrote:
         | I don't know in early 2000 but this time everybody's calling it
         | by its name, a bubble.
        
         | moksly wrote:
         | While I do think the low global interest rates, national debts,
         | general housing prizes, and, real valuable estate being hogged
         | by hedge funds makes things significantly different from the
         | 2000, I don't think middle class stock options have. Sure you
         | have fewer options because of the things I mention, meaning the
         | only place to keep minor wealth is in stock, but the danger
         | isn't different.
         | 
         | Diversify and put most of your money into boring industries
         | like water and energy companies that aren't stuck on a single
         | type of fuel, and you'll be alright.
         | 
         | People who shoot for the moon are playing the lottery and most
         | of them are going to lose. It's always been like that, and I
         | don't think that's different now.
         | 
         | I'm much more worried about the inequality we've created. I'm a
         | boring investor, and the worst stock I have from 2000 is
         | Vestas, and it's up around 900% since then. This isn't take me
         | to the moon money like the gamblers who get it right earn, but
         | it's 900% more than all the people who live pay check to pay
         | check.
        
         | hpkuarg wrote:
         | "This time it's different!" is also the rallying cry for people
         | trying to time the peak ;-)
        
         | nostromo wrote:
         | If you're going to pattern match, you're almost always wrong
         | calling any specific moment a bubble.
         | 
         | The S&P 50 has closed within 5% of its all-time high 32% of
         | days for its entirety. 1 out of every 15 days the market closes
         | at an all time high. And the vast, vast majority of those don't
         | end up being the precipice of a crash. In fact, even the ones
         | that do predate a crash almost always end up being perfectly
         | fine times to invest for long-term growth.
         | 
         | The null hypothesis really should be that most markets aren't
         | bubbles. So, a "why is this time it different" argument should
         | be required from people calling it a bubble, not from those
         | saying it's not.
        
         | mattnewton wrote:
         | I've heard this sentiment call hundreds of tech bubbles since
         | the dotcom boom, and we've seen only one in an unrelated
         | sector. I am not saying it isn't a bubble, just that market
         | enthusiasm tends to look like a bubble but happens all the time
         | without crashing everything.
        
           | vkou wrote:
           | This is the correct take on it. That kind of analysis has
           | predicted eighteen of the last three bubbles.
           | 
           | The problem is that while, say, stocks are frothy, eventually
           | inflation catches up to the froth - so even when the crash
           | happens, you end up better off than if you sat the frothy
           | market out on the sidelines.
           | 
           | It doesn't help to be right in the direction of the market,
           | when you're wrong in the timing of it.
        
             | brewdad wrote:
             | Agreed. As much as I wished I had sold some positions last
             | February when it was clear something big was building in
             | Asia, I am confident that I wouldn't have had the guts to
             | buy back in after the crash and would have missed out on
             | the rebound gains.
             | 
             | In the end, I'm probably better off having held and
             | continuing to buy every couple of weeks throughout than
             | trying to time the market swings from COVID.
        
               | oarsinsync wrote:
               | > As much as I wished I had sold some positions last
               | February when it was clear something big was building in
               | Asia
               | 
               | I did this.
               | 
               | > I am confident that I wouldn't have had the guts to buy
               | back in after the crash and would have missed out on the
               | rebound gains.
               | 
               | I did this too.
               | 
               | > In the end, I'm probably better off having held and
               | continuing to buy every couple of weeks throughout than
               | trying to time the market swings from COVID.
               | 
               | I wish I'd done this.
        
           | ROARosen wrote:
           | Exactly, the market is definitely overenthusiastic which we
           | can call a bubble. So we keep on hearing all those claiming
           | it is a bubble in the sense that it will imminently "pop"
           | because people will always want to say "I predicted the
           | bubble will pop". So they will wake up every few months (when
           | the market peaks yet again) and shout "bubble, bubble" so
           | that just in case it happens _now_ they can be the
           | foresighted ones.
           | 
           | The amount of times we've heard "bubble" over past few years,
           | even while/if true, in of itself keeps people from taking it
           | seriously.
        
           | freewilly1040 wrote:
           | What's possibly different with this alleged bubble is the
           | influx of retail into the market and day trading in general.
           | The wallstreetbets sub has grown at least 3x during this
           | episode, and I know personally of several people who were
           | previously uninterested in stocks now looking to trade.
        
             | mattnewton wrote:
             | Sure, but then the argument for it being a bubble is "it is
             | different this time." It could be, I don't know! But plenty
             | of interest in retail investing has not resulted in a bust
             | before.
        
         | pc86 wrote:
         | So the important questions then are 1) is it _actually_
         | different? and 2) if it is different, is it different in a way
         | that prevents or mitigates a bubble? I could see things like
         | COVID and Fed interventionalism changing the dynamics such that
         | a bubble is harder or less damaging when it pops. I could also
         | see the opposite. I just don 't know, and I was entering my
         | freshman year of HS in 2000 so I don't really remember what it
         | was like to be working and invested in the market at that
         | point.
        
       | pstadler wrote:
       | This seems very nice and I'll definitely give it a shot. If
       | you're looking for something simple, try ticker.sh[1].
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/pstadler/ticker.sh
        
         | FriedrichN wrote:
         | Looks cool! Also thanks for exposing me to jq, that will come
         | in handy for sure.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Wonnk13 wrote:
       | would this be considered best practices in terms of organizing
       | and testing a go package?
       | 
       | I'm brand new to the language, so curious if this could serve as
       | a reference project? For example, I'm not sure if it's standard
       | to use resty for a rest client as seen in this project?
        
       | sixhobbits wrote:
       | A see a lot of these that use Yahoo Finance API - AFAIU, it was
       | deprecated many years ago and I guess might be in something close
       | to a "forgot to switch off" state.
       | 
       | I wonder how much will break when they finally turn it off.
        
         | davidkuennen wrote:
         | There's still also a lot of apps around obviously using the
         | Yahoo Finance API. Apps with hundrets of thousands of
         | downloads. I'm curious as well.
        
         | ihuman wrote:
         | It looks like the same API that the Yahoo Finance website calls
         | (via react)
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | Doesn't the ios stock app also use yahoo finance api as well?
        
           | PartiallyTyped wrote:
           | Yes both the iOS and MacOS use yahoo finance api as well.
           | Perhaps Apple is paying the bill here.
        
             | tl wrote:
             | One difference between this and Apple: Apple's apps show
             | the news stories when you pick a stock where Yahoo
             | presumably can get ad revenue. I doubt this gets popular
             | enough to be targeted though.
        
               | wp381640 wrote:
               | Funny only recently I noticed the ads in the Stocks app
               | and thought it was very un-apple
        
         | chillingeffect wrote:
         | fwiw, idm, ISTR it being turned off around 2018, so I'm
         | surprised to see it working again.
        
       | nautilus12 wrote:
       | Anything like this with watchlist that dynamically populates
       | based on highest and lowest momentum?
        
       | submeta wrote:
       | Awesome! Anyone know a similar project in Python?
        
       | DLA wrote:
       | Brilliant work. Love it so much. With a black terminal it has a
       | nice pro feel to it. How I miss having a Bloomberg box. Great
       | app. Install was flawless. Love the CLI options. A little reverse
       | text flash upon price change would be amazing. Or a timestamp
       | with the last update time.
        
       | joelbluminator wrote:
       | It's nice, what API's is the author using I wonder? All free
       | stock APIs that I checked are no longer functioning, only paid
       | products remain.
        
         | maddyboo wrote:
         | Looks like Yahoo! Finanace:
         | 
         | https://github.com/achannarasappa/ticker/blob/8722bc93eed178...
         | 
         | DIY:                 curl
         | 'https://query1.finance.yahoo.com/v7/finance/quote?lang=en-US&r
         | egion=US&corsDomain=finance.yahoo.com&symbols=AMZN,GOOG,GME' |
         | jq
        
         | huhtenberg wrote:
         | It's right there, in the readme -                 Notes
         | Real-time quotes - Quotes are pulled from Yahoo finance.
        
         | andylynch wrote:
         | Looking at the European landscape, venues are required to make
         | trade & price data freely available 15 minutes after
         | publication - it'd be an interesting project to build something
         | to aggragate these.
        
         | tchalla wrote:
         | > Real-time quotes - Quotes are pulled from Yahoo finance which
         | may provide delayed stock quotes depending on the exchange. The
         | major US exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ) have real-time quotes however
         | other exchanges may not. Consult the help article on exchange
         | delays to determine which exchanges you can expect delays for
         | or use the --show-tags flag to include timeliness of data
         | alongside quotes in ticker.
         | 
         | The ReadMe says Yahoo Finance.
        
       | obayesshelton wrote:
       | I hope you support banana and show a diamond for every 100% gain
        
       | rcar1046 wrote:
       | This is very well done. Didn't realize Yahoo APIs were still
       | live. I made one using IEX.
       | 
       | https://stockdaddy.io/samples/dashboard/
       | 
       | They offer an excellent API for a very reasonable price and offer
       | it free to people if you're interested in a more comprehensive
       | solution for free. Also, take a look at IEX if you're interested
       | in getting into financial APIs.
        
       | hombre_fatal wrote:
       | Edit: Oops, thought this was a Show HN.
       | 
       | Looks pretty clean.
       | 
       | If you want a fun feature to build, add tiny sparkline graphs.
       | Maybe pressing z/x/c/v can switch between last
       | hour/day/month/year charts on each stock item.
       | 
       | Check out https://github.com/holman/spark for how to make graphs
       | with simple character glyphs.
       | 
       | I realize my problem with terminal programs like this is that I
       | forget to ever use them. That's why I prefer something like a
       | macOS menubar app that I can toggle to run at startup.
        
         | stanislavb wrote:
         | Thanks!
        
         | qorrect wrote:
         | Many of us don't use macOS, there are plenty of mac apps for
         | stock tracking.
         | 
         | My only complaint is it's always going to be 15 minutes behind
         | if you're using public sources, otherwise I love it!
        
           | zwily wrote:
           | Yahoo Finance API is real-time for Nasdaq and NYSE. Delayed
           | for most other exchanges though.
        
         | rhacker wrote:
         | It's amazing how many times the original author finds out about
         | random HN posts anyway...
        
         | Jtsummers wrote:
         | tmux. I have a set of tmux panes which show my current
         | financial status. It's just a couple keypresses away when I'm
         | on the terminal. Things like this, or a terminal weather app,
         | can easily become a quick dashboard using another set of panes.
         | But I practically live in emacs so being on the terminal is
         | natural to me.
        
       | colesantiago wrote:
       | This is neat and very cool, just installed it!
       | 
       | Since we're talking about API's and finance and not to hijack the
       | thread, does anyone know or recommend an economic calendar REST
       | API feed?
        
       | slig wrote:
       | For anyone looking for a Yahoo Finance API alternative, try
       | http://alphavantage.co/
        
         | jdoss wrote:
         | A free API key is great, but what is the catch? The whole
         | Robinhood drama about them selling data to third parties has me
         | leery about anything "free" in finance SaaS.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | kristopolous wrote:
           | It's tiered. They have a "pay me" tier.
        
             | jdoss wrote:
             | I totally missed that. Thanks!
             | 
             | edit: For those wondering what the price is it's on this
             | page https://www.alphavantage.co/premium/ which is not very
             | apparent from the front page.
        
               | Terretta wrote:
               | They mention they are "partnered with"
               | https://polygon.io/stocks and send you there for real
               | time.
        
               | welterde wrote:
               | Sadly the limits for the free tier look too low to even
               | run this CLI ticker application off of it (or is it
               | possible to query more than one symbol in one API call?).
        
               | slig wrote:
               | FWIW, last year I was playing with this API and they were
               | not verifying the key properly: just appended anything at
               | the end of the key and it worked.
        
           | alisonkisk wrote:
           | Robinhood drama isn't "selling data" it's selling access to
           | fulfill bids.
           | 
           | It's akin ordering delivery from a store and having Instacart
           | be the only option.
           | 
           | Most of the drama was misinformed speculation. A bit was
           | suspicion that the order fulfiller was untrustworthy (because
           | the reason they are willing to provide the service is that
           | they know you will make bad trades, so what happens if you
           | make a good trade that makes them lose money?)
        
         | hdra wrote:
         | I cant find any info regarding this, but do they have data on
         | global exchanges? More specifically those in Asia?
        
         | tbrock wrote:
         | Eh, no websocket for prices? I like finnhub
         | (https://finnhub.io) or alpaca (https://alpaca.markets/)
         | better.
        
           | slig wrote:
           | I forgot to write "a [free] alternative to Yahoo Finances"
        
           | jordache wrote:
           | public websockets API? Doesn't that introduce a lot of
           | scaling issues for the API provider?
        
             | jkarneges wrote:
             | It does, but it doesn't have to. :) https://fanout.io
             | 
             | (Disclosure: founder)
        
             | coder543 wrote:
             | Not really. A websocket is "just" a TCP connection.
             | 
             | If the API provider is using a language+framework that
             | can't easily handle lots of concurrent TCP connections,
             | then yes, that could cause scaling issues, but... that's a
             | choice.
             | 
             | There are plenty of ways to build scalable socket servers,
             | and it's especially feasible in languages like Go and
             | Elixir.
        
         | kruxigt wrote:
         | What would you say pros and cons are compared to yahoo?
        
           | slig wrote:
           | It's a supported API, with free and paid plans. The Yahoo API
           | has been officially dead for years, they just didn't pull the
           | plug yet.
        
             | kruxigt wrote:
             | Yeah, the state of Yahoo is really strange. It's still the
             | best free one I've found. Why I'm looking for
             | alternatives..
        
         | rcar1046 wrote:
         | I would look into https://iexcloud.io/ as well. I used their
         | excellent set of APIs to build https://stockdaddy.io/
        
       | kruxigt wrote:
       | Is anyone really using any of these stock trackers (including
       | those built in in OSX etc? I think the whole idea is broken. This
       | is why:
       | 
       | If you are interested enough to regularly check the price of
       | certain stocks and indices you know that the most important thing
       | is that the shown price is CORRECT. And you know that the most
       | trustworthy way to get a correct price is to go directly to the
       | largest brokers and the largest and most trusted portals like
       | Investing.com and Marketwatch.
       | 
       | On the other hand if you don't care that much. Why the hell would
       | you like to have a special application for checking when you
       | could as well go to any of the above?
        
         | dreamcompiler wrote:
         | If you're a long-hold investor who lives in the terminal, it's
         | perfectly fine. Plus watching GME crash in ASCII is
         | entertaining.
        
           | kruxigt wrote:
           | I would't call it perfectly fine. It's still not trustworthy
           | enough. You would certainly want to double check it, which in
           | turn makes it rather unnecessary in the first place.
        
         | KingMachiavelli wrote:
         | I typically keep a Windows VM running for the main purpose of
         | using my brokers very powerful trading desktop application.
         | While it is very useful and can do all sorts of calculations &
         | graphing, it is kind of slow and the UI is a little cumbersome.
         | The number of clicks to add a stock to a watchlist is very
         | high, etc. In comparison, it takes 1 button to add a stock to
         | mop [1] and I can keep it in a 'dropdown' terminal window
         | controlled by a keyboard shortcut.
         | 
         | Unless you are a HF trader, you probably only need the stock
         | price within a few minutes unless you are about to place a
         | trade. (And typically all these terminal stock tickers are
         | doing is scraping these sites anyway so the data is about the
         | same.) Therefore, during the day I can watch stocks in the
         | comfort of my terminal using mop [1] (or this if this has more
         | features and is as easy to use), and if anything strikes my eye
         | I can then go to my stock trading terminal and watch things
         | more precisely.
         | 
         | I also do have a custom search engine that can open any stock
         | ticker to finviz.com but I'd rather not have to have yet
         | another account on some random website that either has
         | distracting ads and/or pushes me to pay for more features.
         | 
         | There is a very large UX vs features trade off when it comes to
         | anything stock related so it makes sense to use multiple tools.
        
           | ezequiel-garzon wrote:
           | Thank you for your post, adding the reference:
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/mop-tracker/mop
        
           | malux85 wrote:
           | What's the desktop application you are using? Sounds
           | interesting
        
             | binaryblitz wrote:
             | If I had to guess, the Fidelity Active Trader Pro app.
             | 
             | It's a pretty handy app, that seems to be constantly up to
             | date, but it's garbage on Mac, so I setup a PC laptop next
             | to my main setup so I can have it running. Still a bit
             | finicky on PC, but way better.
        
         | Operyl wrote:
         | I play with fake money, in a Discord server with a bot we made
         | and a few friends. Sure, I'm probably not the norm, but I find
         | them useful :).
        
           | kruxigt wrote:
           | This might be the only real use case haha
        
         | w0m wrote:
         | I feel like it's an excuse to write a CLI app in your favorite
         | language. I dig it; tempted to clone it in python.
        
           | kruxigt wrote:
           | Nothing wrong with that! :)
        
           | brundolf wrote:
           | This was my thought too- it seems like a really fun and clean
           | and data-driven coding project, whether it's actually useful
           | or not
        
         | nine_k wrote:
         | You need an account with a broker to see prices with sub-minute
         | resolution. If you need that, you likely trade seriously, and
         | have more serious tools from a broker or two anyway.
         | 
         | But if all you want is to watch trends, not do HFT, being even
         | 5 minutes late is fine. Even just looking at how a day went
         | after hours is fine.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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