You can profit from vital share information on the go, just like a City trader. Find out how!
In the good old days, before Jeremy Clarkson had coined his first hyperbole -- "This pram's turning circle is tighter than Thrifty McThrift's Book of Belt-Tightening for Boys" -- you might have found your butler bending deferentially by your armchair to whisper: "Your broker is on the telephone sir."
Now that decent butlers are hard to find, we need a better way to keep up with our investments. Companies can announce price-moving news at any time. At 8:34 on Tuesday, European Motor Holdings
(LSE: EMH)
revealed that it is in talks with potential bidders. At 10:59am on November 30th, Clinton Cards
(LSE: CC)
told the market that trading was improving.
If you own these shares or are thinking of buying them, this is information you need and can have in minutes.
Here's how you can make a computer slave all day looking for announcements about shares you own:
1. Register for stock market announcements with uk-wire
On our website fool.uk-wire.com click on Alerts by E-Mail to register your email address.
2. Create a list of alerts
Login on the Alerts by E-Mail.page and add your shares using the Add new alert box. There's a limit of about thirty. UK-wire will email stock market announcements, often called RNSs, to you as soon as they occur. Most RNSs are published between 7am and 8am.
3. Set your PC to pick up emails frequently
Your email program may only check for emails every half hour or so. If you want to be notified within minutes of an RNS coming out during the day, change your email programme setting to check for new messages every few minutes (assuming you are on broadband and not dial-up). This setting is usually in Tools->Options or Tools->Accounts.
Keep updated on the move
You don't have to be at your desk to be in the loop. If your mobile can access email you can get RNSs sent to it by adding these two steps to the three above:
1. Create a new email account
If you don't already use email on your mobile, it's best to create an email address just for your phone. Yahoo mail is a good choice. Be sure to enable POP (= POP3) access -- on the yahoo mail web page select Options, POP Access and Forwarding. Choose an address that doesn't contain common names - these tend to get much more spam.
2. Set your mobile to pick up email
This is usually the hardest part. If you aren't a wizz at configuring email and mobiles then contact your mobile operator. They will need to enable data access if they haven't already and you'll want to decide on a data tariff. They may also send SMSs to automatically set up your mobile.
A pay as you go tariff (usually £2 to £3 per megabyte) is fine for a few short emails a day. Email access may be free on your contract.
Even checking the email server for new mail uses about a kilobyte of data, so the more often your mobile contacts the server the more it may cost you.
Uk-wire sends only a link to the text of the RNS. You can read this if your mobile has a web (not WAP) browser. The RNS subject is normally enough to know whether you need to read the whole thing or not. If you have a company that's buying back its shares like Vodafone
(LSE: VOD)
has been, many RNSs are Transaction in Own Shares. Yahoo mail has a Filter option with which you will be able to ignore these RNSs and others if you wish.
Is more better?
Having more data to base your investing decisions on is all very well but before you think that more is necessarily better, remember the words of John F. Kennedy. "The greater our knowledge increases, the more our ignorance unfolds."
