StockWatch for Windows

Stockwatch is a very basic way to view and monitor your stock values. With a setup that is incredibly simple to navigate and provides just the essential numbers, this is a great tool for beginning stock traders.

We had no trouble with the program's interface, since it was built with Excel and is basically a well-designed spreadsheet. At no point in running this program did we feel like we needed any guidance. We enjoyed the simplicity of Stockwatch; it contained simply a tab for Current stocks and one for Sold stocks. The program smartly included a box to fill in a ticker symbol, which took us to an online page with its current value. We would have liked to see the program input this information automatically, but weren't too turned off by entering its price in the spreadsheet. We did appreciate that we simply entered our purchase price, commission, and current price and the program did all the other math regarding the money we'd made and lost. The program was so basic it lacked any eye-popping features, though its capability to look up stock prices from nine different Web sites was a nice touch. While the program required us to do a little manual input, overall we thought it was successful.

Stockwatch is a freeware program. It comes as a compressed file and installs desktop icons without permission. Since this program is so good at doing its very basic function, we recommend it.