AOL Money & Finance launched real-time quotes this week. The site's quote pages still headline with exchange-provided delayed stock prices. But right below that now, you can see a real-time quote that is provided by BATS Trading, an electronic communication network, or ECN (more information here). It shows the prices that broker dealers use to trade big lots of stock among themselves. It is usually the same as the price the exchanges quote and is especially reliable for stocks with major trading volume.

This real-time information can be quite useful if you are checking a stock that is making a big move during the day. For example, General Electric (NYSE: GE) is reporting earnings tomorrow and is in the news today as investors anticipate it may soon announce some spin-offs. As I look at the quote now (1:40 PM), I see the main quote is $27.45. But the real-time quote is at $27.60. That tells me that GE is higher heading into its earnings announcement. (Here's an earnings preview from Peter Cohan). Maybe this would be a good time to buy?

Since BloggingStocks is part of the AOL Money & Finance family of sites and links to AOL quotes in posts, all you have to do is click on a link on this site and you can see real-time quotes for yourself.

More recent improvements to AOL quotes pages include information by ticker on:
Option chains (see Time Warner's)
SEC filings (see Microsoft's)
Conference Calls (see Yahoo's)
Earnings releases (see Apple's)
Dividends & Splits (see Dupont's)


Disclosure: Amey Stone, an editor of BloggingStocks, doesn't own GE shares. She is an employee of AOL, a division of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX).