DATE: Monday, August 18, 1997               TAG: 9708160248

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D6   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY MARK EDELEN, PILOT ONLINE 
                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

KEEP TRACK OF MARKET ON NUMEROUS WEB SITES

Keeping track of the roller-coaster stock market these days - not to mention individual stocks - can be a white-knuckles affair. The Dow soars, it dips, it flirts with records. And you can watch every hairpin turn (if you dare) on dozens of World Wide Web sites.

Of course, Hampton Roads-based companies are along for the ride, making headlines as they go. Smithfield Foods' sales and net income have been soaring even as the company was recently slapped with a $12.6 million fine for polluting the Pagan River. Norfolk Southern Corp. fended off CSX to get a split of Conrail. And Jackson Hewitt, the Virginia Beach-based tax preparation service, offered 1 million new common shares on Nasdaq, July 31.

How are they holding up?

To find out, we jumped onto the Web and checked out the local companies on a few of the major stock-listing services. Nasdaq itself has a Web site offering delayed quotes and news. The New York Stock Exchange is online with historical data but does not offer daily quotes. The American Stock Exchange provides a daily market summary online.

That leaves a growing number of upstart services slugging it out for the stock-quotes title. All provide the usual data: last quote, the daily and yearly highs and lows, volume, change.

StockMaster, a granddaddy of Web stock services, gets bonus points for letting you enter the name of a company directly into its opening-page search form. There's no need to know or look up the ticker symbol first as there is on most other sites.

So we typed in ``Smithfield Foods'' to get the closing numbers last Thursday. Peaking in June, Smithfield's stock was dipping through July and August, according to a quickly-drawn fever chart.

But the real meat came in clicking to Hoover's Online, partnered with StockMaster, for a free company capsule, Securities and Exchange Commission filings from Edgar Online, and recent company news.

It's a good thing we knew Smithfield Foods' symbol (SFDS) from StockMaster, because PCQuote's database couldn't find it when we entered the name. But, with the symbol, PCQuote did win points for providing easy-to-read charts, news (though from limited sources) and Wall Street recommendations on the earnings report.

To check out Jackson Hewitt, we jumped to DBC Online. Unfortunately, DBC requires that you know the symbol of the company or else go to a letter-by-letter index.

But we eventually got our symbol, JTAX, and the quote: no charge Thursday at $24 1/8. A more detailed, 90-day chart showed an increase of about $2 since the new shares were offered; exact numbers were hard to read. There are a variety of charts, tables, company reports and news, and you can select a brokerage and do a fast trade.

Quote.com, another early comer in the online stocks game, boasts a quick search engine that helped us get the symbol for Norfolk Southern Corp. (NSC) with that in hand, we quickly got our quote (down $3 last Thursday), then checked out charts showing the stock's performance by the minute or by the month (up about $18 since last October). Java-based ``live charts'' that you can modify on the fly are impressive.

Quote.com, unlike many other services, offers advanced, personalized packages for an extra charge, ranging from $9.95 to $99.95 a month. For $19.95, plus monthly exchange fees (about $4), you can get real-time quotes over the Web.

Before you get too high on your burgeoning bull portfolio, you might want to get a few doses of reality: Betting on the Market is special report from the ``Frontline'' series on PBS, portentously subtitled ``America's obsession with Wall Street and its implications for the country.'' In the discussion area, you can ask questions of personal finance pro Jordan Goodman of Money Magazine or express yourself as a bear or a bull.

If you prefer your stock advice with a dose of whimsy, check out The Motley Food, the online-original service that proved so popular on America Online that an expanded Web version as launched (when else?) this April Fool's Day.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu