Adding Market Data Feeds to a Web Site

There are a number of ways that investors go about making decisions to buy, sell, or hold. Collecting, viewing, and analyzing an immense array of data is common practice. Investors will routinely review market data points in an attempt to predict price movements for a particular commodity or company’s stock. There are a number of ways that investors will gather this information, but one of the ones that most people are familiar with are market data feeds.

Think about many news-oriented web sites. You’ve probably noticed a “ticker” on some of these sites that lists off any number of market data sets. It could be a real time or end of day market feed, and could be for a number of different markets (futures, stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, or indices).

These market data feeds may appear to be an easy addition to a web site, but they are often quite complex to create and set up. The technology involved is complicated, as is ensuring accuracy of the information pulled and presented by the feed.

Fortunately, there are companies who specialize in creating these market data feeds in “off the shelf” formats that allow businesses to add feeds to their web sites without hiring an expert to develop a custom solution. In this way, companies can offer this useful information to their customers with relative ease. An “off the shelf” solution means that no (or very little) customization is needed in order to be implemented.

One company that provides this service is Barchart. They offer data feeds to a wide range of businesses, including agriculture businesses, large brokerage firms, and news agencies and web sites. Feeds offered by Barchart include, real time and delayed data feeds, raw exchange data feeds, query/response (on demand XML) data feeds, historical market data feeds, or an end of day market feed. The feeds can be delivered in a variety of formats in order to be compatible with nearly every web site’s requirements. Barchart began offering feeds in 1995, giving them a long and proven track record for providing reliable information that is accurate and thorough.

Adding a feed - like an delayed market feed, for example - to a market-related web site is a great way to add value for site visitors. However, the feed must be executed well, or it will only serve to frustrate visitors. This is why using a feed service like the ones offered by Barchart (www.barchartmarketdata.com) can be a great, efficient and cost-effective solution.