Live Pricing

Live pricing is a premium feature of some online trading platforms that allows you to see prices in the market for particular stocks on a minute-by-minute basis. This contrasts with delayed pricing, where prices are generally 15 to 20 minutes later than they actually occurred in the market. It becomes important to have live pricing data in a rapidly changing market. For example, sometimes when major news events occur, such as an interest rate rise, the market can change dramatically in just a few minutes, as investors en masse become more confident or less confident about the overall economy. In these cases, live pricing will tell you up to the minute prices that are being paid for given stocks, as opposed to a delayed quote which might have come from before the news announcement. Live pricing is also important when the market is “on the move”. For example, when the market as a whole is moving rapidly throughout the day, perhaps in response to events and results from Wall Street the night before. Again in these cases, knowing what happened 15 minutes ago may not be the best source of information. It???s also useful to have live pricing when looking at the prices for smaller and less-traded stocks, where the impact of a small number of trades can have a big impact on price. Live pricing generally costs more on most online trading platforms, but in some cases you may get the fee waived if you are trading at a particular level.