Stock Quotations and their meaning

When you wish to invest in stocks, it is very important to select the right stock after thorough research both on technical and fundamental front. Technical analysis helps in understanding the price movement of the stock on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis and fundamental analysis on the other hand helps to know the financial health of the company through various ratios such as Net Profit Margin, ROA, ROE, EPS, PE, etc. Due to advanced online trading platforms, it is easy to buy and sell shares using mobile app these days and one should know about stock market quotes in the first place before investing. One can easily learn about the meanings of share market quotes or can get guidance from research experts to know in detail about the financial status of a company. Let us know how to read a stock quote in this article.

What is a stock quote?

Stock market quotes provide all important details of stock and any trader or investor should know the terms and symbols that are used in the stock market. Analyzing a stock is a very interesting thing. One can see various terms like scrip, price, market cap, open, high, low, close, traded quantity, key ratios, etc. under share market quotes.

Open price is the first price at which the stock trades on a particular day. Close price denotes the final price at which the stock trades on a particular day. This is very important as it is used as a measure to assess the performance of a stock. One can also find the highest and lowest prices which the stock reached in a day.

Through market capitalization, you can know the total value of the company which is the product of total number of outstanding shares of the company and its current market price. By knowing the market cap, one can understand the size of the company. 52 week high and low is also provided; Investing in companies with a huge market cap is less risky than investing in companies that have low market map which are usually start ups. Key ratios like PE, EPS can be analyzed and compared with other companies to know the return potential of the stock. Information about dividend is given which are the company’s earnings that are distributed to the shareholders.

Detailed description of stock market quotes:

Source: NSE

The above is the example of stock quotes. Every stock has a particular symbol with which it trades. Stock details such as previous trading day’s closing price, the price at which the stock opened, the highest and lowest prices reached by the stock can be known by looking at the stock quotes.

Other major information of the stock such as VWAP (volume weighted average price) is provided under stock quotes. It is the average price at which the stock traded in a day. This helps traders to know the price movement of the stock. Face value is the randomly assigned amount that is used to calculate the stock’s value. Trading volume indicates the number of shares that are traded in a day. Order book gives complete details of buy price and sell price of the stock, the total quantity of shares sold. Below is the detailed description of other information that can be learnt by reading the stock quotes.

Peer comparison:

This gives a complete picture of the stock in terms of the company’s fundamentals, corporate action details, VaR margin, security margin, extreme loss rate, percentage of delivery quantity to traded quantity, etc. A particular stock can be compared with any other stock of the same sector on the basis of above factors. This is very useful to the investors as one can compare various stocks and choose a better one.

Historical Data:

Using this, the price of stock on a daily, weekly and monthly basis can be known. Past performance of the stock should be known to understand the consistency in performance of the stock.

Company Information:

All important updates about the company regarding board meetings, financial results, details about promoter shareholding, etc. can be known.

Stock market quotes are very much essential to select the right stock for investing. Constant monitoring of price of stock is important to take the correct decisions regarding investment. There are many technical charts that assist in understanding the stocks’ past stock price that can help in predicting the future price of the stock. Stock market quotes are very easy to understand and does not require any expertise to decipher the values.

Stock market quotes provide complete information regarding the stock which helps in cherry picking of stocks. One can easily get to know stock market quotes on various stock brokers’ sites.