How to Use QuidCast: every feature, explained

New to finance? Perfect — QuidCast was built for you. This walkthrough covers every feature with real worked examples, so in ten minutes you'll know exactly how to turn confusing financial news into decisions you actually understand. Everything is free, nothing needs an account, and your data never leaves your device.

01.Your first five minutes

Here's the fastest route from "never used this" to "getting real value". Five steps, one minute each:

02.Live market data

The numbers along the top of the site update every 60 seconds. Here's what each one tells you:

• FTSE 100 — the 100 biggest companies on the London Stock Exchange. When it's green, UK shares are up today. It's the quickest single read on "how are markets feeling?"
• GBP/USD — how many US dollars one pound buys. It matters for holiday money, import prices, and anything priced in dollars (like oil and most tech).
• Brent Crude — the global oil price benchmark. It feeds into petrol prices, energy bills and, a few months later, food prices.
• Bitcoin — the largest cryptocurrency, included because it moves fast and lots of readers track it.

The scrolling ticker carries more: S&P 500 and NASDAQ (the big US indices), DAX (Germany), GBP/EUR, Gold and Ethereum.

03.News + "What This Means For You"

The News tab is a live feed of finance stories. But the headline feature is the button on every story: What This Means For You. Click it and Claude (the AI) reads the story and rewrites it in plain English — what happened, why it matters, and what it could mean for your mortgage, savings, or shopping basket.

1. Open the News tabThe lead story is at the top; categories (Interest Rates, Inflation, Housing…) filter the feed.
2. Click "What This Means For You" on any storyA panel opens with the AI's plain-English breakdown.
3. Look for the ticker chipsIf companies are mentioned, you'll see chips like + TSCO.L — one click adds them to your My Stocks watchlist.
4. ♥ the stories you find usefulLikes are anonymous and power the "Most Liked" view, so the best explainers float to the top.

04.Portfolio Impact — the magic button

Next to every story there's a second button: Portfolio Impact. This is QuidCast's signature feature. Instead of explaining the story in general, it explains it for a portfolio like yours. You pick one of three ready-made profiles (or your own stocks — see My Stocks below):

Don't know which you'd be? As a rough rule: Cautious suits people near retirement or who hate seeing numbers go down; Balanced is the classic middle ground; Growth suits younger investors with decades ahead. Tick "remember my choice" and every future analysis uses your profile automatically.

05.My Stocks — track what you own (privately)

My Stocks is a personal tracker for shares you own or are just watching. Prices update live every minute, and everything is saved only in your browser — nothing is sent to any server.

1. Open My Stocks and enter a tickerA ticker is a stock's short code: AAPL is Apple, TSLA is Tesla. UK stocks end in .L — SHEL.L (Shell), LLOY.L (Lloyds), BARC.L (Barclays). Quick-add buttons cover the popular ones.
2. Optionally add shares and average costLeave them blank to just watch the price. Fill them in and QuidCast calculates your live profit/loss.
3. Watch the summary barTotal value, total cost, P&L and holdings count, updating as markets move.
4. Unlock the fourth profileOnce you have stocks saved, Portfolio Impact gains a ⭐ My Stocks option — news analysed against your actual holdings.

06.My Money + your Financial Health score

My Money is where QuidCast becomes a genuine financial dashboard. Enter up to eight numbers — monthly income, outgoings, savings, pension pot, age, debts, mortgage balance and rate — and two things happen:

1. You get a Financial Health score (0–100) built from four checks that financial planners actually use:

• Savings rate — are you saving toward the ~20% of income benchmark?
• Emergency fund — how many months of outgoings could your savings cover? (3–6 is the standard target.)
• Pension trajectory — is your pot roughly on track for your age?
• Debt load — how heavy is non-mortgage debt versus your income?

2. Every calculator pre-fills automatically. Open the Pension Estimator and your pot, salary and years-to-retirement are already typed in.

07.The six calculators

All free, all instant, all pre-filled from My Money if you've set it up:

• Compound Growth — the most important maths in investing. Example: £200/month at 7% average growth becomes roughly £104,000 after 20 years — of which only £48,000 was money you put in. The rest is compounding.
• Mortgage Calculator — example: £250,000 over 25 years at 4.5% costs about £1,390/month; the compare-rate column shows what a better rate saves you per year.
• Pension Estimator — projects your pot at retirement from current pot + monthly contributions + employer match.
• Inflation Calculator — shows what today's money is really worth in future — and why cash under the mattress quietly shrinks.
• Budget Planner — income in, expenses out, see exactly where the money goes.
• Emergency Fund — example: outgoings of £2,100/month with a 6-month target means a £12,600 goal; it tells you how many months until you reach it at your savings pace.

08.AI Lab — the "what if?" machine

AI Lab lets you stress-test a hypothetical portfolio against scenarios before they happen — with a simulated £100,000, so no real money is ever at risk. Pick a profile, then pick a scenario ("Central bank surprises with a 0.50% rate cut", "Oil spikes 20%", "UK enters recession") or type your own, and the AI walks through how each slice of the portfolio would likely respond — with the reasoning, not just a verdict.

09.Analyse Any Article — bring your own news

Found a confusing article somewhere else — BBC, Reuters, anywhere? Two ways to get the QuidCast treatment:

1. Paste the linkOpen Analyse Any Article, paste the URL, click Analyse. QuidCast fetches the article and Claude explains it — including the personal-finance impact and tickers mentioned.
2. Install the bookmarklet (power move)Drag the orange "QuidCast Analyse" button to your bookmarks bar once. Then on any article anywhere — even ones you're logged into — click it and a QuidCast tab opens with the analysis ready.

10.Guides, Glossary & the small stuff

• Guides — 21 plain-English explainers (mortgages, ISAs, pensions, investing, credit scores…), each ending with the matching calculator. Browse them all →
• Glossary — every confusing term (base rate, gilt, FTSE, CPI…) defined in one or two sentences.
• Dark mode — the moon button, top right. Your choice is remembered.
• ♥ Most Liked — at the end of the category row; sorts news by what readers found most useful.

11.Quick FAQ