Top 5 Stock Tools

1. Talking Stocks: It's lonely watching your financial net worth plummet. If you're looking for a companion to ride out this bear market with you, this tool may be what you're looking for. The program sports an animated, nerdy, space-age character (wearing a green leotard and yellow boots) who reads your stock prices as they fluctuate. All you do is set what stocks you want tracked, and the program takes care of the rest.

You can set alerts that will notify you when stocks reach a specified target price, and you can also determine what your character will say and do. The program supports more than ten international stock markets. This latest version of the program retrieves quotes in real time, so you don't have to refresh your Web browser.

2. TradeTrakker: If you're a brave soul who refuses to live in denial when it comes to your portfolio's performance, this program may be for you. It calculates each day's gain and loss as a dollar amount and as a percentage, and it shows you the total market value of your holdings, letting you monitor your portfolio in real time. What separates TradeTrakker from similar programs is its level of detail and its ability to analyze your holdings. It uses 50 parameters to calculate your net worth, including buy/sell, stock splits, and dividends.

You can create links to stock news, charts, SEC filings, and personal online trading accounts, as well as arrange alerts for when a certain stock price or volume reaches a specified low or high. You can export all data into Microsoft Excel, print summaries and reports, and have your stock data transmitted to your pager.

3. Wall Street Raiders: Prepare for sweaty palms as you play this nerve-wracking, cutthroat simulation of the stock market. You compete against opponents by investing in or taking over any of 250 companies. Once you control a company, you can negotiate tender offers, file antitrust suits, hide under tax shelters, and announce mass layoffs.

All of this wheeling and dealing occurs against the backdrop of a nonstop "live" stock ticker tape and a constantly shifting economic and political environment. Speedy decision-making is of the essence as you try to keep your company's earnings on an upward track--and keep yourself out of bankruptcy court.

4. Personal Stock Monitor Gold Edition: Let this obedient servant keep you informed. It can pull quotes and news headlines from popular financial Web sites, organize them into convenient views, and display them in a scrolling desktop ticker. It works quietly in the background, but it can also automatically inform you about events of interest to you, based on rules you set. It can also page you if you're away from your desk.

Included is an asset allocation graph that shows where your money is working for you, along with intraday and end-of-day graphs that let you keep track of current and past trends. Import and export functions make it easy for you to move your data to and from programs such as Quicken and Money.

5. Netropa Internet Receiver: This free scrolling ticker streams up-to-the-minute stock quotes, news, sports, and weather forecasts. Unlike similar programs that hog your screen with windows that you always have to close, Netropa fits snugly on your desktop. It's easy to install, too.

Of course, the real value of these types of programs isn't their mechanics but their content. Luckily, Netropa is surprisingly rich in that respect: You can read news from Business Week, CNN, Forbes, the Industry Standard, and TheStreet.com. And in a lighter vein, you can read stories from Cosmopolitan, ESPN Headlines, Hollywood.com, Jokes.com (for a "Joke Du Jour"), NASCAR Online, and Yahoo Health. It's easy enough to add channels; you simply click on the links and download them as you would an ordinary file.