Frustrated by all the symbols in a stock quote? Here’s a basic overview to reading a stock quote on Yahoo Finance.

If you’re like many new stock market investors you are learning all sorts of new things, one of the many things you need to know is how to read a stock quote.

Yahoo Finance has a nice stock quote page, please follow along and go to this web page http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft and find out what everything means.

Near the top of the page it will tell you that you are looking up Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) this tells us what company we are looking at. You will then see the last price (which is delayed 20 minutes) and you will see how much the stock has gone up or down for the day.

If you scroll down the page you will find a table with a bunch of data.

Last Trade: This is the last trade that happened on this stock (delayed 20 minutes)
Trade Time: This is the date or the time of the trade
Change: Amount the stock traded up or down in dollars and percentage
Prev. Close: The amount the stock closed at the last day it traded. Generally the day before, unless holiday or weekend
Open: Price the stock opened at today or if weekend or holiday last day it traded
Bid: What various investors are looking to buy the stock for at the current moment
Ask: What various investors are willing to sell the stock for at the current moment
1 yr Est: Estimate for the stock’s price in one year’s time
Day’s Range: The range in price the stock has traded that day
52wk Range: Stock price from low to high over the past year of trading
Volume: Number of shares of stock traded so far today
Avg. Vol (3m): Average number of shares traded each day for the past 3 months
Market Cap: This is the market price for the company take the number of shares outstanding and multiple by the price of the stock
P/E: Price to earnings ratio
EPS: Earnings per share
Div & Yield: The dividend (if any) that you could receive from the company for owning stock

Those are the basic items on that Yahoo finance page; you can also find charts, headlines and some more background information on the company.

Reed Floren runs a stock market forum where you can find answers to all your stock market questions register for your free membership at this stock market forum http://www.reedfloren.com/forums/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00

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