Thought I'd respond to your post with an idea, even thought it has been a while since you posted.  Might help someone out who stumbles across your post.  I've added this functionality to several orgs - the quickest and simplest methods I used:

For the Left column I've found using a Yahoo! Finance Badge to be the easiest for sidebar real estate (although if you don't want Yahoo! branding, not the best solution.)

http://finance.yahoo.com/badges/

There are some limitations in respect to how much content you can include, but it does a fairly good job.  I opted for this version with charts & headlines - limits to 3 stocks, however.  They have 2 other versions that allow you to specify up to 10 stocks

You can also run a streaming ticker across either the R or L column.  I just did this recently using content from BarChart.com - here's the code I put into a home tab HTML area custom component.  Great thing is that you can very easily customize the indicies and stocks however you wish:

<applet id="TickerX" name="TickerX" code="Ticker.class" archive="Ticker.jar" codebase="http://java.barchart.com/ticker" height="40" width="100%">

<param name="panels" value="1">
<param name="1:symbols" value="'Indices,$NYS:NYSE Comp,$NASX:Nasdaq Comp,$DJX:DJIA,$SPX:S&amp;P 500,'Stocks,GS:Goldman Sacs,BAC:Bank of America,CRM:Salesforce.com">
<param name="1:scroll" value="-1, 50">
<param name="1:bgcolor" value="#000000">
<param name="1:fgcolor" value="#FFFFFF">
<param name="1:pscolor" value="#00CC00">
<param name="1:ngcolor" value="#FF3333">
<param name="1:hilight" value="#FFFF00">
<param name="1:font" value="Arial, Bold, 12">
<param name="1:multiline" value="true">
</applet>

<script language="JavaScript">
var initDelay = 50;
var initDirection = -1; var curDelay = initDelay;
var curDirection = initDirection; function changeScroll(dir) {
if (dir == 0) { curDelay = 0; curDirection = 0; }
else if (dir == curDirection) curDelay -= 10;
else { curDirection = dir; curDelay = initDelay; }

if (curDelay < 5) curDelay = 5; var a = document.getElementById('TickerX');
if (a) { a.setScroll(1, curDirection, curDelay); } }
</script>

<br>
<center>
<a href="javascript&colon;changeScroll(-1);" style="text-decoration: none;">&lt;&lt;</a> •

<a href="javascript&colon;changeScroll(0);" style="text-decoration: none;">||</a> •

<a href="javascript&colon;changeScroll(1);" style="text-decoration: none;">&gt;&gt;</a>

<br>

<font style="font-family: Verdana,Helvetica,Sans-Serif;" size="1">
*click the arrows to speed up, slow down, or pause the ticker*
</font>

</center>
<br>

 These are the two sites I looked at for content:

http://www2.barchart.com/ticker.asp
http://www.thefinancials.com/mfr_free.html

The financials sends you code via email - it ended up in my spam and I ended up not using it.