The quote above is from Yahoo! Finance. It holds a wealth of information about American Express (at least as it was at 2:43 P.M.) — but that information does require a certain level of decoding. Being able to interpret stock quotes is crucial if you’re planning on investing in the market. Knowing the current price really isn’t nearly enough, especially if you’re trying to take the stock market’s current problems into consideration.
The top of the stock quote lists the company’s name, as well as the ticker symbol (AXP) is at the top. The market where the stock is traded (in this case, the NYSE) is also listed. Below this information is two columns of numbers.
Last Trade: This is effectively the current stock price — it’s the amount that a single share of stock last sold at. This price is determined by open market trading by buyers and sellers.
Trade Time: The last trade took place at the trade time listed. It is not uncommon to find that the trade time is at least a few minutes behind your current time, especially online. If the trade time is significantly out of date, get a new stock quote before making a decision.
Change: Change is simply the difference between the current last trade price and the price before that. While it can be an indicator of what the stock is currently doing, it isn’t a particularly good indicator of a stock’s performance — even through the current day.
Prev. Close: This number lists the price a share of the stock as of the end of the last day of trading.
Open: The open is the first price paid for a stock today.
Bid & Ask: Quite a bit of the time, you’ll see both these field blank or listed as ‘N/A’. The bid is the highest price that a principle brokerage firm has said that it is willing to pay for a a particular stock at a particular time. The ask is the reverse — the lowest price that a principle brokerage firm will sell a stock at.
1y Target Est: This number is the projected price for a single share of this stock one year from today. However, the one year target estimate isn’t a particularly good indicator of what a stock might do in the next year. It’s just the median projection of a number of different market analysts: Some analysts might be projecting much higher or much lower prices.
Wait! Isn’t there another column of stock data to look at? Yes — and we’ll be going over that side of a quote on Thursday. In the meanwhile, though, it’s worth mentioning that while all the information listed on the left hand side of our stock quote can contribute to the decision to buy or sell a particular stock, none of it is enough to really judge the value of a stock. The stats we’ve covered so far only really describe what a stock has done in the past two days. They’re still useful to keep an eye on, however — if only to time the purchase of a sale or purchase a little better.
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