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Introduction

Before the age of the ultimate electronic information superhighway, there were not that many ways for a person to get information regarding the stock market. One way was to look in the newspaper and another way was to take a look at a publication put out on a regular basis by the particular stock exchange of interest. However, if one was looking for much more than just the current price of a particular stock, then the beast became different because they were looking for a stock quote. A stock quote contains much more than just the latest price of the stock and in many ways is a snapshot of the stock right now and in the recent past. This is all information that you can use in a technical analysis of the stock and for that reason stock quotes are extremely popular amongst investors. Here are some of the things that you get in a stock quote.

Highs and Lows over the Last Year

One piece of extremely useful information that you get is the highest price and the lowest price that the stock you are interested in achieved over the last fifty-two weeks. This type of information is useful because it can give you a window into understanding the potential of the stock for increase and decrease from its present point. In a newspaper, this figure is usually two numbers symbolized by “HI % LO”

Percentage Change in the Stock

Another useful number to have is the percentage change in the stock. For example, if a stock started off selling at 1.00 and one year later it was trading at 1.50 then the percent change in the stock would be +50%. This information is useful for you to get a general idea of how the stock has been doing over the last year and it is usually symbolized by “YTD % CHG” in the stock quotes in newspapers.

Dividend

The dividend amounts that people receive through companies can either be pre-determined amounts or they can be amounts that change every time the company chooses to distribute a dividend to its investors. If the company chooses the latter route to go through then it is very difficult to predict dividends, but understanding what those dividends were before is one way to do that. The DIV column in a stock quote gives you information about the rates of dividends in previous distributions.

Price and Earnings Comparisons

When it comes right down to it, the two things you are interested in as an investor is the price of a particular stock and how much you can earn from that particular stock. Well, this information also happens to be included in a typical stock quote as the price to earnings ratio (the PE column in a stock quote) and it shows the historical data regarding price and earnings of the shares in question.

Closing Price

Otherwise known as the most overrated piece of information about a stock, the closing price is equivalent to the price of the stock at the end of the last trading session. The reason that many investors value this piece of information greatly is because it offers them a snapshot about a particular stock. The reason it is overrated is because stocks can actually change their value between the closing and opening of a particular trading session and therefore examining the closing price is really not that useful; it is just like examining any other instantaneous price value.

Change

The NET CHANGE column lists the change in the price from a closing position one day to an opening position the next day. This is extremely useful if you are interested in finding out exactly how a particular stock performed overnight.