If you've dabbled in the stock market, you've probably opened the business section of your favorite newspaper. Once there, you found a few charts, most of which served as explanations for articles. For stocks they didn't write about, your only clues as to trends in their prices were the previous day's price and the 52-week high and low.

That's not what the pros use. People who trade stocks for a living have expensive software and subscriptions to services that can call up a myriad of facts about nearly any stock. Having gotten some idea of what those cost while working for a stockbroker two years ago, I was pleased to see the information now being distributed free on the Internet.

Intuit, a company that made a name for itself in personal finance with the venerable Quicken, recently expanded into the field of investments with its website, "Quicken.com" (actually quicken.excite.com, but who's counting?) What impressed me about this site was that it made good use of my web browser's capabilities. Sites that offer recent stock prices are not new; discount brokers have offered delayed quotes for some time. What is new is a site that offers not only delayed quotes but a graph of past prices. This type of graph makes it simple for users to analyze trends in a stock's prices and learn something about its volatility. This helps risk-averse investors to find stable stocks and lets self-styled cowboys find their wild rides, again providing the average investor with information formerly the province of professional stockbrokers. "Value Line," costing over $500 per year (albeit available at many local libraries), provides similar information -- and it's updated once every few months instead of once a minute during trading hours, like Quicken.com.

The site's flexibility was another improvement over older designs. Users can select the desired time-frame for their graph, from one day (in one-minute increments!) to five years. Up to eight different stocks and three market averages can fit on the same graph for easy comparison.

With the current trend towards individual investing in the stock market, a tool like this can help reduce the disadvantage individuals face compared to professional stockbrokers. The pros get their data first, but there is often some profit left for the well-informed individual - and research tools like these charts help people become well-informed.