Why are share prices delayed 15 minutes?

prestonway

It says the same on all websites that show the FTSE or other index.

Do the big financial institutions and their automatic trading systems have really live data and for private investors the lag is around 15 minutes?

Is there any way a private investor can see as soon as their is a market sell off, or do small investors just have to wait until all the market movers have offloaded their shares first, and act on the information 15 minutes later?

Theoretically with the internet it is possible to make data universally available to all at the same time. Why does it not happen with financial markets?

antenna

If you pay,then,live prices are displayed

ajsexton

look at a website called shareprice - if your signed in I believe they give you live prices for free (they used to at least)

Non signed in is 15 minutes delay

ajsexton

For reference I watched the massive rockhopper crash a few years ago live on shareprice - managed to buy a few more on the return bounce

Snap for a small company called berkeley mineral resources - they were at about 7p (again about 2 years ago), RNS came out started freefalling - sold at about 5.7 bought back at 5 on the bounce back up

westy22

Google Finance will also give you FTSE prices live - and it's free!

Biggles

westy22 wrote: »

Google Finance will also give you FTSE prices live - and it's free!

It does at the moment, though only a few weeks ago it had always been delayed.

When I was using Yahoo some years ago, it went to live for a few weeks, then they seemed to realise and it went back to delayed, so not sure how long Google will stay live.

westy22

It's been showing live FTSE prices for about 12 months AFAIK - as you say though, these days there is never any knowing how long something will remain free!

prestonway

westy22 wrote: »

Google Finance will also give you FTSE prices live - and it's free!

Great. Thank you.

2010

Google UK site will give live prices as well.