How to Track a Stock Price History

Track movements in your stock positions regularly.

Every investor aims to keep a record of stock price history to determine the changes in the value of his or her investment. It is also important to know the individual stock price history to estimate the value of an individual’s portfolio. Any investor, business or institution interested in stock investments needs to track the stock price history to make informed investment decisions.

Instructions

1. Go to a finance website such as Yahoo! Finance, MSN Money or the Wall Street Journal. Suppose you visit Yahoo! Finance: type the name of the company in the field that says “Get Quotes.” For example, if you type International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), you will be directed to a page that stores daily data for the company.

2. Click the option for “Historical Prices” under the heading “Quotes.” This will direct you to a page that lists daily historical prices for the company stock for the last two to three months.

3. Type the start and end date into the fields provided on the page to track the stock price history for the exact dates that you require. Also, choose the frequency of price data that you need to obtain. The Yahoo! Finance frequency choice options listed on the same page include daily, weekly, monthly and dividends only. For example, suppose you type that you require the daily price data from Jan 2, 2008 until today.

4. Once you have filled the dates for the required data, click the “Get Prices” tab. This will download the data requested by you.

5. Go to the bottom of the page and click on the option “Download to Spreadsheet” to obtain the complete information in an organized form in the Excel spreadsheet.

6. Use the "Adjusted Close" prices for any calculations, as these prices adjust for stock splits and other events that may distort the actual performance value of the stock.

Tips & Warnings

• The data appears in descending order, as it lists the latest information first. If you need to make return calculations in ascending order, you may use the sort function in Excel. The sort function is available on the right-hand side of the Excel spreadsheet and is very simple to use; all you need to do is to select the data and chose the ascending or descending option on the sort filter.

• Do not forget to check the frequency for which you intend to download the stock price data.

References

• "Investing From the Scratch: A Handbook For the Young Investor"; 2007
• "Yahoo! To the Max: An Extreme Searcher Guide"; Randolph Hock; 2005
• "Google Hacks"; Rael Dornfest, Paul Bausch and Tara Calishain; 2006

Resources

• "Handbook of Financial Analysis, Forecasting and Modeling"; Jae Shim and Joel Siegel; 2006