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Website
of the Month: Yahoo Finance
By
Susan B. Anders
SEPTEMBER 2005 - Yahoo Finance is part of the Yahoo family
of online products and
services and can be accessed from www.yahoo.com
or finance.yahoo.com.
Yahoo Finance is a consumer website that offers basic financial
information, services, and useful tools gathered from subsidiary
Yahoo sites. Tax materials will not be addressed here because
this column reviewed the Yahoo Tax Center in January 2004.
Although designed to assist consumers in managing their
own finances, Yahoo Finance has many resources that will
interest CPAs, educators, and students. The introductory
material may be helpful in understanding new concepts or
explaining them to others. In addition to several resources,
the website provides good examples of user-friendly navigation,
materials in HTML format, and multiple routes to access
particular resources.
Most of the webpages are busy in appearance, packed with
information content as well as with advertising. The organization
within the specific subject groupings is generally easy
to comprehend, but the overall arrangement of the hyperlink
index on the homepage seems haphazard. The menu buttons
at the top of the homepage are categories that may be popular
with consumers, but some of its best resources cannot be
found there.
The homepage is organized around late-breaking investment
news listed in the center of the page. The left side of
most of the main pages is the key navigation tool, presenting
an index of hyperlinks. The horizontal menu bar at the top
of the homepage presents a few of the major categories of
resources, and replicates some of the hyperlinks in the
left-side index. CPAs will probably want to start with the
left-side index, while consumers will find the horizontal
menu most useful. The right side of the homepage, and many
other pages, are dedicated to advertisements.
Many subsidiary pages are similar in appearance, with a
left-side index specific to each group and the center of
the page devoted to hyperlinks. Generally, navigating between
different subsidiary groups requires returning to the homepage.
Investing
Yahoo Finance provides a substantial amount of resources
in its investing section. “Today’s markets”
offers a variety of resources, such as current market and
financial news, real-time quotes and research reports, and
exchange rates. “Stock research” presents resources
such as company earnings and reports, analyst research,
and historical and real-time quotes. Other major investment
categories include “mutual funds,” “exchange-traded
funds,” “bonds,” “options,”
and “international finance.” Stock quotes, market
statistics, and charts can be found throughout the website.
Personal Finance
The personal finance section includes several categories:
“bill pay,” “banking,” “loans,”
“insurance,” “planning,” and “taxes.”
This section offers a fairly comprehensive selection of
the topics generally addressed in a financial plan. Credit
reports can be accessed under several categories.
The “education center” is one of the excellent
pages on the Yahoo Finance site. The hyperlink is buried
in the middle of the “investing” index, but
it should be placed more prominently, as it provides a comprehensive
look at financial matters beyond investing. The educational
material includes several primers on investing and personal
finance topics, including beginning investing, and a financial
glossary. Practitioners that assist clients with financial
planning will be interested in the “Choosing a Financial
Advisor” article, available under “beginning
investing.”
Susan B. Anders, PhD, CPA, is an associate
professor of accounting at St. Bonaventure University, St.
Bonaventure, N.Y.
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