How to Download Stock Data

Downloading stock data is easy and free.

There are two main ways to invest in a company: bonds or stocks. Bonds provide the owner with interest income, and stocks provide dividends and the opportunity to participate in share price appreciation. Analysts use fundamental analysis, or looking at the company's value, to decide which stocks to purchase and technical analysis, or historical trends in pricing, to decide when to buy. The best way to research stocks is to download historical stock data into a spreadsheet.

Things You'll Need

• Excel, or other spreadsheet software

Instructions

1. Go to your favorite investment research site. Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance are top-rated sites that provide free price quotes. You may also be able to download stock data directly into a spreadsheet from a company's website.

2. Input the name of the company or the ticker symbol in the Quote Box for a quote. For example, the ticker symbol for General Electric is GE, and you would input GE to get the data.

3. Click on "Historical" or "Historical Prices" in the left-hand pane.

4. Input the date range you want to study.

5. Click on the time increment for sorting the data. Options include daily, weekly and monthly price charts.

6. Click on "Get Prices" for a list of historical stock prices. In Yahoo! Finance, to download the data to a spreadsheet, scroll to the bottom and click on "Download to Spreadsheet." In Google Finance, this is located in the right-hand pane.

Resources

• Google Finance: GE
• Yahoo! Finance: GE