A financial dashboard, and the three numbers most of them get wrong

Number one: how old is it

Almost no dashboard says. A figure from four seconds ago and one from four minutes ago look the same, and the difference only becomes visible when somebody acts on the second. Putting the read time next to the number, in text, costs nothing and is the single change that most improves how much a dashboard can be trusted.

Number two: what a position is worth

Most dashboards value a holding at the last traded price, which is what one unit sold for rather than what your position would realise. In a deep market the difference is negligible. In a thin one, or a large position, it is the whole point. A dashboard that knows the order book can show what you would actually get; one that does not should at least not imply precision it has not got.

Number three: unrealised profit

It inherits every problem above and adds one: it is computed against an entry price whose definition varies. Average cost, first in first out, or the price of the specific lot, all give different answers on the same holding, and few dashboards say which they used. Worth reading as a direction rather than an amount unless you know.

What to show when the source is down

Nothing, and say so. The tempting behaviour is to keep displaying the last known value, because the screen looks broken otherwise. That is precisely the wrong instinct: an empty panel that says the exchange did not answer is honest and mildly annoying, while a stale panel that looks fine is dangerous and invisible. This is the one design decision in a financial dashboard where the ugly option is correct.

Live, right now, on this page

Read from a live market as this page rendered, through a public endpoint that needs no key. Read at 2026-10-13 18:32 UTC; accurate as of that time and not afterwards.

Common questions

See the number itself

Pages that read a live market and show what they read, updated while you look at them.

• Circle stock price, and why it moves with interest rates, a stablecoin issuer whose revenue is the rate on its reserves.
• Robinhood stock price, and the perpetual beside it, a listed brokerage traded as a perpetual on a crypto venue.
• Stablecoin lending rates, live, a live rate worth putting on a dashboard, with its own caveats.
• Bitcoin price today, the panel almost every financial dashboard starts with.
• Live FX rates, and the three prices people mix up, bid, ask and spread on four currency pairs, read at page load.
• Nvidia stock price, live, with the tape underneath it, a full signal panel on one equity: range position, realised volatility, book cost and basis.
• Netflix stock, live, through the tokenised share, a share where reported profit and cash flow diverge, which a dashboard has to show separately.
• Coca Cola stock, live, through the tokenised share, a reported number moved as much by the dollar as by sales, the classic currency panel problem.