Can anyone explain the Stock markets for me?

Question

Could anyone give a user friendly explanation of the stock markets etc and just the gist of it all,

e.g. Dow: 11,055.19 45.35 (0.41%)

Nasdaq : 2,212.87 0.00 (0.00%

Im baffled, Thanks for any help given, I hope you have a great day

Answer 1

nope a mystery to everyone "If your profits are up your shares are down" If you are doing well your shares are down" The best business to run is this,"employ no one, produce nothing, sell nothing, make it a Ltd company and issue two shares @ £1,000,000,00 each and you will be a million air

then make all you staff redundant and your shares will go up, It's that daft.

Answer 2

INDEX    (-)CHANGE  (-)%Change

Sometime you will find two additional numbers between the Index and the change. These are normally the high and low for the previous day.

A comprehensive report will sometimes give the following:

OPEN HIGH LOW YTD%Change Volume Previous_Close

The first three figures relate to the previous day.

Answer 3

Most shares are quoted on a stock exchange.  London has The London Stock Exchange (LSE) and New York has the New york Stock Exchange (NYSE).  The figures you have quoted are an index of stocks/shares quoted on the NYSE.  Dow Jones and Nasdaq compile a great deal of statistical information about the prices at which shares in different companies are being bought and sold.  The figures comprise the actual share values for many diffent companies and I believe are also a weighted average.  The are effectively a broad measure of how the companies that are in the index are performing.  The higher the number, then the prices of shares are increasing (or the price of a few are increasing greatly).  The lower the number then the shares of shares aredropping.  the individual share prices will refelct how the individual company is performing. i.e. if a company is generating large profits then the share price will go up (as will the index.)  If the company is not performing well and generating losses then no will want to buy its shares and so the price will drop to a level where it represents good value to someone.    The FTSE 100 (Financial Times Stock Exchange one hundred leading shares) is perhaps the easiest to understand.  It consists of the value of a share in each of the 100 top companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange.