How do you read and interpret the information on the Stock Market

Question

I am interested in gaining more insight on how to read the stock market board for instance Nasdaq.

Any expert to guide me on how to read and interpret the information provided?

Thank you

Answer 1

Great question May, but your best answer lies in a book that can show you examples of what is what. Different papers list stocks in different ways, different quote systems have different meanings as well.

Understand that all companies that are public, have a symbol, that is the way to look that company up. 3 letters or less is a NYSE or ASX stock, that is a New York Stock Exchange or American Stock Exchange stock, a company with 4 or more letters is NASDAQ or bullentin board, or pink sheet stock. Some additonal letters have specific meaning as well. So for example PFE is the symbol of Pfizer, a pharmacetucial company that trades on the NYSE, in fact it is one of the 30 stocks in the DJII ( Dow Jones Industrial Index). MSFT is mmicrosoft and it trades on the NASDAQ also a Dow Jones stock ( one of the 30 on the DJII ). Then the ticker you are reading with include the price of the stock, the opeining price, the day's lowest price , the days highest price, yesterday's closing price, the PE ratio

(price to earnings), Dividents Paid, yield that the dividend is equal to, the bid, the ask, the last trade, the amount of shares on the bid, the amount of shares on the ask, last dividend date, volume, size of the last trade,EPS ( Earnings per share),highest price of the stock in the last 52 weeks, the lowest price of the stock in the last 52 weeks, news, and more depending on the quotron you use. So get a book that will explain it all and show you where the different things show up, or buy Barrons on Saturday, they explain thier stock quote page very well.

Good luck, May!

Answer 2

Unless you're a working stock trader, the Big Board doesn't actually tell you much.  It's the current ask/sell prices of major securities.  The folks who deal securities every day care about that stuff because they're the ones looking for deals.

As a serious individual investor, what you're more interested in is a company's performance over time, and analysis information that you turn up through research.  You want to look at price trends in an investment's value.  You want to study what the company is doing to respond to market pressure, what the firm's leadership is up to, profitability, new marketing programs, ...  This is the kind of thing you can learn on your living room sofa.  I don't know about you, but watching a stock ticker just makes me cross-eyed.