Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) is collaborating with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) to expand the use of real-time U.S. equity market data by individual investors.

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Image: Nasdaq joins Microsoft to increase access to real-time US equity market data. Photo: courtesy of Gabriele Giuseppini/Wikimedia Commons.

Through Excel, Bing, MSN, and other platforms and services owned by Microsoft, the general public, including individual investors and students, can now leverage real-time U.S. stock equity market data from Nasdaq Last Sale to inform research and trade ideas, while improving financial literacy.

Microsoft Excel, the industry-leading spreadsheet program, is a powerful data visualization and analysis tool used by more than 1.2 billion people. Excel features calculation, analytics and graphing tools, pivot tables, and a programming language to build and power applications. Microsoft and Nasdaq together now empower Excel users to track the latest stock prices, trading volume and more, without ever leaving Excel to search outside sources.

“At Microsoft, our mission is to enable every person to achieve more,” said Rob Howard, Senior Director, Microsoft. “Pulling real-time and historical U.S. equity data from Nasdaq right into Excel helps users track personal investments better and make informed decisions faster.”

“Expanding the reach of real-time market data through our collaboration with Microsoft is a significant step towards bringing important market information to Main Street,” said Oliver Albers, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategic Partnerships for Nasdaq’s Global Information Services. “Microsoft’s focus on empowering individuals aligns with our mission to make financial markets more accessible to all.”

Nasdaq Last Sale provides access to trading data globally, offering millions of people around the world Nasdaq-validated data in real time. Nasdaq Last Sale data is designed to encourage universal distribution of Nasdaq real-time trade data to the public via the Internet and other electronic media. It enables firms to create dynamic stock tickers, portfolio trackers and time/price graph products for public use.

Source: Company Press Release