How to Track Stocks on the iPhone

These are instructions on how to setup your iPhone to track your favorite stocks, indices, futures or bonds.

This tutorial is basic in concept; however, there are a few problems you might run into when doing this by yourself. For example if you were trying to setup the S&P 500 you will notice that a search doesn't yield results!

Step One
Press to launch Stocks from your SpringBoard.



Step Two
Notice that Apple has preset some common symbols for you: Dow Jones Industrial, Apple, Google and Yahoo.


Step Three
To add a stock press the i in the bottom right hand corner of the window.


Step Four
In this screen you will have the ability to add and delete stocks. To delete a stock simply press the "No Entry" icon to the left of the stock symbol. Lets add a symbol by pressing the + button at the top left of the screen.


Step Five
Here is where you can enter a symbol to search for. You will notice that some indices and futures will not be found under a basic search. The iPhone uses Yahoo as its quotes server. So we need to find out the symbol Yahoo uses.


Open http://finance.yahoo.com and locate the index, future, bond etc you would like to track. Notice that beside the name Yahoo puts its symbol in brackets. For example the S&P 500 has the following symbol id: ^GSPC

Take this symbol id and enter it into your iPhone. Its name will appear in the list below. Press to select it.


Step Six
You will not notice the symbol added to your list of Stocks. If you would like your symbols tracked by % change then press the % button at the bottom of the screen. Otherwise press the Numbers button and then press the Done button at the top right of the screen.


Step Seven
Your newly added symbol will not be included in the stock list that your iPhone tracks!