Understanding Stocks

50 UNDERSTANDING STOCKS
Symbol Last Trade Change Volume
CSCO 9:49am 15.04 +0.21+1.42% 6,007,203
Chart, Financials, Historical Prices, Industry, Insider, Messages,
News Options, Profile, Reports, Research, SEC Filings, more . . .
Figure 5-1
For years, some stock exchanges were unwilling to give out realtime
stock quotes and news unless they were paid exorbitant fees for
the information. Individual investors who didn’t pay the fees received
free stock quotes, but with a 20-minute delay.
Today, however, it’s very easy to get free real-time stock quotes any
time of the day or night. You can look on financial television programs
like CNBC, Bloomberg, or CNNfn. If that is inconvenient, you can
pick up the phone and call your stockbroker (if you have one). If you
are patient, you can always wait for tomorrow’s newspaper. The easiest
way of checking stock quotes is by logging on to the Internet. There are
hundreds of financial sites that provide real-time quotes.
As you can see in Figure 5-1, each stock has it own ticker symbol.
(In addition to stocks, mutual funds, index funds, bonds, and options
have ticker symbols.) Some are easy; for example, the stock symbol for
IBM is IBM. The symbol for Microsoft is MSFT, that for AT&T is T,
that for General Electric is GE, and that for Cisco Systems is CSCO. If
you aren’t sure of the exact ticker symbol, type in the name of the company,
and the computer will give you the ticker symbol in seconds.
Most people refer to a stock by its symbol rather than its full name.
Every experienced investor has memorized the ticker symbols for the
most popular stocks. You can tell what exchange the stock is listed on
by counting the number of letters in the symbol. If the stock is on the
Nasdaq, the symbol will have 4 or 5 letters. If the stock is on the NYSE,
it will have 1, 2, or 3 letters.
Detailed Stock Quote
Let’s take a look at a detailed stock quote for Cisco Systems (CSCO),
shown in Figure 5-2.