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For beginners who are just about to enter the world of stock market and the stock exchange, trying to read the stock quote might seem like a foreign language. However, it can be quite simple if you can understand the basics of it.
When you are trying to locate the company that you are interested to invest, look for the abbreviated name of the company. The company’s abbreviation will usually appear under the third column also known as Stock.
The first column is where you will find the highest price of the stock that anyone has paid for in the past year. You will find this at the 52 week high. Then there is the 52 week low where it is the exact opposite of the 52 week high, this is where you will find the lowest price anyone has paid for a stock in the past year. You can see this in the second column.
At the fourth column you will find the ticker symbol where the symbol is used by the stock exchange to identify companies. Also you should check the dividend which is located at the fifth column and the yield figures which can be found as the sixth column. ‘Yld’ or yield is the amount of cash dividend that is divided by the closing price of the stock. And as for ‘Div’ or dividend, this is the amount of cash that would be paid to shareholders annually based on the most recent quarterly payment.
Next you should look at the ‘PE’ figure that can be found at the sixth column, where you are able to compare the stock values. This is also where the price earnings of the ration are calculated by dividing the closing price by earnings of all the past four quarters all together.
The ‘Vol.’ that can be found at the seventh column indicates the amount of shares of the stock that have changed on the previous business day. The highest as shown as ‘Hi’ lowest and the lowest as shown as ‘Lo’ of the price paid for the stocks on that particular day is found at the eighth and ninth column respectively.
Finally you should read the last two columns if you want to find out the price the stock closed on that day, ‘Close’ and ‘Net chg’ or also known as net change from the day before.
Other things to look into are that sometimes newspapers highlight or underline certain listings which may indicate that the company is locally based or has some significance to the local area. In newspapers most of the quotes listed usually show the closing price of the stock of the most recent trading day, which means that they are at least a day old. The Internet can provide better services, as the online quotes are more up to date. However, you should take note that although they are much faster they are approximately 15 minutes behind the actual trading.
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