Can you educate me on how to learn the key statistics and ratio information of stocks?

Question

What does this mean? Some examples would be bid, volume, market capitalization, shares outstanding. What would tell me if it's a good stock to invest in? Do you know of any free educational stock sites. Thanks!!

Answer 1

Bid = current offer for the stock (ie. highest current offer for stock)

Ask = Lowest current selling price of stock or asking price

Volume = Numbers of stock trading. Volume lets you know if the market or a specific stock is trading heavily, or lightly. Some technical traders will base their buy/sell decisions on volume.

Market Capitalization = Price of each stock times the total number of stocks. Essentially the cost to buy the company if the stock value remains constant. Bear in mind that if you want to buy a company wholly, you pay a lot more than the market cap.

Shares Outstanding = Think of it as the total number of shares (or stock) that are traded for the company.

Learn more about stocks?

http://www.fool.com

Books

Investopedia

Etc

Answer 2

What you are asking is for someone to teach you market speculation. it is very difficult, and can take years to understand. the definitions are pretty simple, and could be looked up on wikipedia.

There is a great new site:

www.brienprivatefinance.com

They allow you to ask questions for free if you click on the link that says private sector. They are just getting started i believe, so they will answer your question pretty quickly.

also, you should register for the financial forum. that way you can post on there when you want to get an answer from other members.

Answer 3

the absolute best way to learn this is to speak to someone you know who is an investor but if this is not possible then read read read!!! I recommend sites like www.fool.com (for real) or books like a random walk down wall street, or the little book that beets the market. The most valuable thing you have to invest is your time in learning new information. if you save and invest and make it a habit i guarantee you will become very rich.

Answer 4

Go to the book store and buy a "Stock Investing for Dummies" type of book - they're easy to understand and inexpensive