What's up with Yahoo Finance?

Has anybody tried using the Yahoo! Finance site lately? It flat out sucks.

I used to visit the site all the time, as it was a convenient location for basic stock market info and quotes.

Yes, the fundamental information in the stock profiles was notoriously unreliable, but it was a good place to go for quotes, company news, and creating and storing personalized stock watch lists.

I started visiting the site less frequently a couple years ago, so I was only mildly disturbed by the site's increased suckiness and its change-for-the-sake-of-change site redesigns. I figured that as long as my Watch Lists (now renamed, "My Portfolios") and other basic market data were there, I'd use those features and ignore the rest.

The problem is that the whole site is now totally unappealing to many of the original users (myself included, obviously), as it's been transformed from a dominant user portal for stock market information into a ghetto of cutesy personal finance claptrap.

Apparently, many new users like the "new" Yahoo! Finance. I guess this reveals their taste for self-promoting personal finance gurus who take the seminar stage and preach personal "empowerment" and enlightenment (audio books and DVDs help), a la Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, and Matt Foley. They're certainly in abundance on the "new and improved" site. But I digress...

Back to the site features. As I came to find out the other day, even the very basic (and previously useful) stock symbol lookup tool no longer works! Thankfully, I was able to find a working version of the previous symbol lookup over at Yahoo! Finance Singapore. Save this link, you may need it.

In the meantime, I'll have to revisit some of my other options for quotes, watch lists, and market data. I used to be familiar with a number of sites serving this area, but so much has changed in the last couple of years, I'm not quite sure what's out there now.

I've seen Google Finance, and use it for a few simple features, but I think they still have a way to go with developing that site into something more powerful and useful.

In the meantime, if you have any recommendations for some good market data websites, we'll be glad to hear them.

Update: (November 20, 2007). Symbol lookup at Yahoo! Finance's US site is now working fine. Glad to see this fixed as it is a much needed, and frequently used, feature.