What is ‘Real Time’
When a system relays information to a user at a speed that is near instantaneous or has a short delay from when the event actually occurred. Online brokerages often provide a real-time data feed that displays stock quotes and their respective real-time changes, with a very insignificant lag time, so that clients can base their investing decisions on the most up-to-date information.
Explaining ‘Real Time’
While many financial websites do offer free stock quotes to the general public, many of these feeds are not real time and may be delayed up to 20 minutes. Therefore, when viewing stock quotes from any financial website, be aware of the time that is posted near the stock quote to verify whether the quote is actually in real time.
Possessing accurate real-time quotes is especially important for traders, as even the smallest time discrepancy between a provided quote and the real-time situation can change a profitable position into a loss.
Further Reading
- The psychophysiology of real-time financial risk processing – www.mitpressjournals.org [PDF]
- Real-time measurement of business conditions – amstat.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- The unreliability of output-gap estimates in real time – www.mitpressjournals.org [PDF]
- Monetary policy rules based on real-time data – www.aeaweb.org [PDF]
- Real-time price discovery in global stock, bond and foreign exchange markets – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
- Micro effects of macro announcements: Real-time price discovery in foreign exchange – www.aeaweb.org [PDF]
- Market efficiency in real time – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
- Toward real-time pricing of complex financial derivatives – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Exchange rates and fundamentals: new evidence from real-time data – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
- Estimating equilibrium real interest rates in real time – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
