Reading a Stock Market Page
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How Do I Start And Where?
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Find the area of the stock pages that pertains to the particular exchange you're interested in. According to Pace University's "How to Read Stock Market Quotes" (see Resources), the New York, NASDAQ and American National Market listings have 10 columns; the NASDAQ Small Caps has four.
Find the name of the stock in the third column under the alphabetized list. Don't look for the ticker name or symbol because those aren't listed alphabetically. Look for the company's stock name.
What Do the Numbers Mean?
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The first column is the stock's 52-week high-low range. These are the highest and lowest points of the stock price in the past 52 weeks.
Under the "Div" column, some stocks will have the amount of dividend paid out per share to stockholders in the past year. Publications such as the "Wall Street Journal" might include letter codes next to these amounts that refer to other sections of the paper.
"%" is the annual percentage of yield, or return, that an investor can expect that year from the stock.
The next number is "P/E," or the price-to-earnings ratio. Investors use this to rate a stock's performance. If this ratio is high, then people are optimistic about getting good value and payout from their investment. Pace University's "How to Read Stock Market Quotes" states that there are many factors behind the numbers, including "the company's growth outlook, the industry the company is engaged in, company accounting policies and whether the firm is a startup or a more established business."
The next column is "100s" and shows trading volume. Multiply the number here by 100, and you can see precisely how many stocks traded that day. If the number is prefaced by a "z," that means the actual amount is listed--no multiplication necessary.
"Hi/Lo" is the high and low for the trading day. Don't confuse it with the first column, which is a yearly average.
Last, "Close" and "Net Chg" tell what price the stock closed at and how many percentage points' difference occurred. Net change is the difference between the present day's closing and that of the previous day.
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Reading Other Stock Pages
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Many different sites such as Google and Yahoo! offer stock pages. These tools often put the information on one screen, complete with graphs, news stories and other links of interest to investors.
The Google stock listings offer additional tools such as a beta graph that charts the stock performance in comparison with general results of the stock market. The Simple Dollar (see Resources), an investment blog, favors the Google page for beginning investors because "it presents the basic information [investors] need in an easy-to-read format on a single page. Even better: It's a one-stop shop for the basic information that a beginning investor would need when examining a stock."
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Resources
- Photo Credit 2007 Helico / Creative Commons
