1. KNOW WHAT STOCKS YOU'RE LOOKING AT
Before you start pulling up stock quotes on your computer or in the newspaper you will want to know what you're looking for and what you're looking at once you have the stock quote sitting in front of you.
Have the company name and ticker symbol for the stocks you're searching for. Stocks are listed by the company name or the ticker symbol. The company name is listed in the third column of the stock quotes under the heading Stock. When checking a site like Yahoo Finance the ticker symbol is the alphabetical symbol that a stock is known by. When you search for a stock online or while watching television you will need to know the ticker symbol for the stock you're searching for. On a stock quote the ticker symbol is the fourth column under the heading Ticker. You can find the ticker symbols for stocks at marketwatch.com.
See if the stock pays dividends. Column five on the stock quote shows if the company pays annual dividends on the shares. If the space is blank the company doesn't pay dividends. Column six tells the dividend yield, or the percentage of return on the dividend the company paid out.
Column seven shows the Price/Earnings Ratio. The Price/Earnings ratio is how well the current stock price fares against the previous four quarters.
Learn the day's high and low. Column eight shows the previous day's high, or the highest price the stock traded at for the day. Column nine lists the previous days low.
Column eleven shows what the stock closed at for the previous day. The close is the last recorded traded value of the stock. If the stock changed more than 5 percent the stock will be listed in bold print.
Net change. Column twelve shows the percent change in the stock's closing price from the previous day.
