this is what happens when you--okay, this cannot be a sane life lesson

So market_roulette is sort of--getting away from me.

There's a reason there is no single great and wonderful site to get up to date stock quotes for every exchange in the world. I don't know what it is, but it has to be there, since I can't find one that will give me global range (lots of partial). Which means I'm having to pull from a surprising number of sites.

You would think--theoretically--that I'd conclude that the reason is it's kind of fucking impossible since I can't even get public listings from the Iranian Oil Bourse (did you know they don't take US dollars but do take yen? I'm so going to win at Jeopardy someday) and good luck getting anything on Islamabad Stock Exchange in Pakistan. Cause I'm having problems.

Part of it could be that my Arabic is non-existent, granted, but I'll be frank, that's not the problem here. I don't actually need stock quotes from Pakistan, the Channel Islands, and Tunisia. I mean, really; my participants are honestly not losing out because I can't get a full length company list and stock quotes for the--and wow, didn't see this coming--billion stock exchanges of the world. I used to think I was good at geography. Not since the Channel Islands and Tunisia. And apparently Northern Cyprus may or may not be an independent nation only acknowledged by Turkey, and I'm starting to think in GMT and I'm GMT -6 and why do I say that before I say US Central Time now?

Right, getting back.

So there no single powerful entity that has all the stock quotes of the world (not to mention a complete list of stock exchanges; Tunisia. God). There are amazingly good reasons, I'm sure, like accessibility, ease of use, language barrier, and some countries really don't like other countries to look at their exchanges. And yet, I haven't slept in twenty four hours because I'm a completionist; there should be a single, shining, worldwide site where you can get stock quotes from Japan and Morocco and Lebanon all in one-stop shopping.

The thing is, I know I cannot with the power of the import functions in googledocs create a magical spreadsheet that has every public company, every ticker, and every stock price in the world on every single exchange in the correct local currency with an insta!converter for currency exchanges. I mean, I do know this. I just haven't convinced my completionist instincts to stop leaving an Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and--*breathes*--Greek dictionaries (do not judge; Athens Stock Exchange is awesome) open for when I stumble across another financial site to add to my import list.

I feel this will end either in insanity or possibly, tears at the fact that I cannot learn to read Japanese in five hours to figure out if they have a cvs download function on Yahoo's Japanese finance site. And China's. And India's. And maybe Taiwan's?

I really have no other news. God, that's sad.

Comments

[the_future_modernes]

No its not sad! its fucking awesome that you have awoken such an interesting search for knowledge! For one thing, your curiousity and completionist instincts will lead you to learn a fuckload, which is always good! And for another your users will benefit and be able to have an even better experience! Which is also awesome! I look forward to reading more about your adventures in the realm of international stock markets!

[scy]

Did you need help with the arabic? I mean is it in script or text? Script I can deal with - and translate the stuff I can't make out or look up.

*whistling*

[nagasvoice]

You do realize this is a huge gap in the market for information?
Correction: free information. It's possible this may be partially available somewhere if you pay to get into their playpen. But I also bet, for the same reasonas you're having trouble, that none of it is completist.
And that maybe some people would, like, pay for even a partially-agglomerated view like that.
And that possibly other people would help out on making this at-least-more-completist view actually happen, much like DW itself happened. Especially if there's some possibility of getting paid, or at least rewarded for learning and practicing their programming chops.
I mean, just sayin'...

Re: *whistling*

[seperis]

Apparently, I am buidling a googledocs search engine or something. *blank look* My God.

Re: *whistling*

[nagasvoice]

Ayyyuuup.
That right there.
*embarrassed cough*
Which of course could be presented to them as a useful and viable app for, oh, rather a lot of folks.
Yeah, I'd suggest keeping some nice solid documentation which you have mailed to yourself so you have postmark untouched-envelope proof about the date of your concept, the way some of the creative folks with media ideas to protect might do.
Now, there is the awkward little question whether this might be stepping on the toes or the expertise of quite a lot of other folks who make a living coordinating all this stuff in that very fallible human way, in their heads. But of course Google et al have dealt with that kind of challenge before (mapping comes to mind as a specialist thing) and of course they could *hire* those folks for their expertise.

[mermade]

*tilts head*

Okay, why do we need all the markets for m_r? Quite frankly, I think all the players would all understand if it was limited whatever markets chosen by ya'll.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Oh, wow, that really is spectacular devotion to accuracy. *Goes to find out about Northern Cyprus*

As for thinking in GMT -6: welcome to the club! GMT +11 speaking here. :) And I really, desperately wish *everyone* gave their times in GMT, it would make Life On The Internet so much easier.

[nianeyna]

market_roulette! I completely forgot that was happening. Is it too late to join the fun?

Also, I... know how that goes. Since I just spent... *checks*... about five hours playing a videogame, not advancing the storyline or anything, but collecting cooking supplies. And it's legitimately bothering me that the maximum number of an item you can have is 8, but there's only 6 Red Bulbs in the game. I have eight of everything else but only six Red Bulbs. ARGH.

It's probably a good thing I didn't play pokemon as a child. I would have been obsessed. >.>

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

I am so happy I am not playing this with you. I'm already insane enough.

[in-the-bottle.livejournal.com]

If you need anything in Chinese translated, simplified or otherwise, I can give it a try. Come to think of it, I've actually been to the Shanghai Stock Exchange a few years ago. Huh.

Been trying to look up info about stock investments and how one go about doing it and whether managed funds would be easier than stock trading given my lack of time. And whether borrowing money to invest is a good idea or not and all that happened was I got even more confused. Now I'm wondering if I shouldda signed up for this project of yours. :P

[seperis.livejournal.com]

You're welcome to join if youwant to. *g* I' kind of having a really great time, in a very Obsessive Compulsive way right now. *bounces*

[in-the-bottle.livejournal.com]

Maybe I would! I tend to get excited over something and then lose interest though, might not be a good attitude for for share trading. LOL!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Yo, my real life trading cycles like that. Which is good; I get riskier the longer I go, so three months of intense interest, I start looking for something else. The last tiem I had a realy intense session, I was liquidating and buying google stock in real time. Time to back off and let it grow on its own. *g*

[in-the-bottle.livejournal.com]

I have been thinking of doing trading IRL (putting aside a small amount like $500 or something to test the water or something), but I haven't really a clue how to do it, and being stuck in an office most of the day with work blocking a lot of sites is not really a good place to be doing that. :(

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I started with forty so I couldn't get myself in trouble. Two months later, I was up to seven hundred a month; all my disposable income, literally, but by then, I had a goal in mind for the money and I was pulling it from pretty much everywhere. I"m a lot less now unless I plan to actively trade that month, not simply auto trade.

Any of the self-service brokerage sites have a lot of the basics and will have walk-throughs. It's really freaky and terifying, then you have like, four different stocks, you're losing money, and you stop being scared of it and its' fine. I got--hilariously--lucky with the economy--so many daytraders were desperately pushing stocks up and down that if I had a bad stock, I just had to watch until that one for no reason suddenly became worth a lot and sold fast.

I also had a set amount that if I was actively trading to amke money, it got there, I sold, no matter how much I wanted to see if it went higher. In theory, I could have had a lot more profit on some of those, but also in theory, I would have been screwed when it crashed. And when I did that, I kept my expectaiotns low--I think I would set it at two or three dollars per share. So not a huge profit, no, but I've never lost money. Even when I sold at a loss, whatever I bought with it usually doubled it.

Personal anecdata: treating it like a game of penny poker and not insta!millionaire was pretty much teh way to go about it. I think tis' a lot easier to approach it goal oriented with a specific set of (very careful) rules for yourself after you've done a couple of months of trading.

Ther'es also automatic trading--you contribute X amount per month that's invested for you in X stock of your choice/stocks of your choice. It's mostly what I do and just check up every so often. And since it takes five days to get my money if I dissolve anything, it's pretty much impossible for me to drain it with a sudden bout of shopping. *grins* Which I do pretty much always, so

[in-the-bottle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that all makes sense. Though with transaction/brokerage fee of $19.95 per trade, $40 won't get me anywhere.

I just went and sign up for an ETrade account. Can't trade yet since 1) it's public holiday in Australia today, 2) I need to go into my bank branch and get them to issue a paper bank statement to prove that yes, I am the owner of the nominated bank account, and 3) post it all to the brokerage place so they can process it and open my account for me. Which will be next week.

I think I'll start playing with $200 and see where it goes from there. Start small and build, that seemed to be the way to do things. I've been thinking about doing this for a couple years now and it's time to stop thinking and just do something about it.

I also had a set amount that if I was actively trading to amke money, it got there, I sold, no matter how much I wanted to see if it went higher.

Yeah, that's a really good practice. My mum does that as well but my dad keeps saying it'll go higher, it'll go higher and end up selling it at a lower price because it suddenly crash. I don't think they are doing that much trading now since dad's job's gotten a bit busier lately and he can't spend half a day at home just sitting in front of the computer with the financial news on the TV just trading. And he's probably the last person I'd go to for investment advise, really! I don't really have a good sense when it comes to making money or saving, but he's worse than me, which is saying something.

I have no idea there was such a thing as automatic trading. Am going to log into my brand new shiny Etrade account and check out the features. Can't trade yet, but they recommend getting familiar with the functions, tutorials and all sorts of other stuff on it while waiting for the account to be approved.

I feel so grown up now... :P

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

...I should be doing this, shouldn't I? *hangs head*

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

It seems that if you could pull the Great Universal Stock Exchange tracker together, there'd be a market for it with international brokers or something.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

you know, a great many stock market trades are made based on statistical analysis conducted by computer programs based on the idea that if they sell milliseconds later, they might make a few cents per stock.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/13/132629284/how-high-frequency-trading-is-changing-wall-street

Also: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/05/three_letters_to_keep_in_mind.html