The stock market may be suffering, but Internet-based stock services are thriving. Visits to stocks and shares-related sites shot up to their highest number in three years on “ Black Monday ,” according to new data released by Hitwise. The research firm found 1.63 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic went to those services when news of the Lehman Brothers ‘ bankruptcy and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch sale broke.
Broker dealers got the bulk of the visits, with four times the amount of hits they saw a day earlier.
The overall winner may come as a surprise: Yahoo Finance saw more U.S. traffic than any other stocks/shares site, Hitwise says, taking 24 percent of all the stock-related visits. That’s 167 percent more than it saw the day before.
By the way, the second highest stocks/shares traffic day Hitwise has measured also came this summer. It happened on July 17, when the Dow dropped below 11,000.
