This award focuses on the quality of information, research, dataflows and analytical tools provided by investment websites. Most are users of several websites, and many readers found it hard to nominate one that satisfied all their needs.
Still, around 55 per cent did register their preferences. A cluster of providers jostle for pole position, among them Bloomberg, iii, Yahoo Finance, Digital Look and the investors chronicle website - but at the head of the list this year is ADVFN.
Launched in 1999, ADVFN now has over 750,000 registered users globally, and the numbers continue to rise: more than 170,000 have joined in the past year alone. Most make use of the free service that offers a comprehensive set of analytics, including quotes, charts, news, financials, forex, and futures and options. But subscribers can access a range of higher-level 'premium products', including Level 2 (which ADVFN was the first website to make accessible to private investors) and 'uncontended' access to real-time prices.
It's a highly dynamic website, too, with new tools and functions added to the site at a rate of one per week, on average. Recent additions include Pink Sheets - price data for US micro-caps - and a 'Level2Scope', which shows the flow of orders for a specific stock.
Much of the company's brisk expansion is no doubt due to its global perspective. It has recently launched a string of native-language sites in France, Italy, Japan and China, among other countries. What's more, there's a corresponding focus on access to global data, with stock-price information available for a growing range of exchanges from Bombay to Brazil, plus free coverage of several major international exchanges and indices on a 15-minute delay basis (there is a charge for real-time access).
