
- Observe the Price and Time Axes. Every stock chart has two axes - the price axis and the time axis. ...
- Look for the Trend Line. This should be pretty obvious, but a good bit of the information you can glean from a stock chart can be found in the ...
- Identify Trading Volume. In addition to just the trend of the stock's prices, the stock's trading volume is another key factor to look at when reading a stock chart.
- Identify Lines of Support and Resistance. Still, another important aspect to examine on a stock chart are lines of support and resistance. ...
How to understand stocks beginners?
Understand the debt-to-equity ratio All companies have ... This platform makes it very easy for beginners to play in the market, with a low minimum balance and access to a wide range of stocks to choose from.
How do you read a stock market?
This information has considerable significance to stock traders and is referred to with specific terminology as follows:
- Ticker: The ticker shows the published flow of transactions in any given stock issue. ...
- Dividend: The stock’s dividend consists of the amount of money per share that a company pays out on the ex-dividend date to shareholders of record on a specific date. ...
- Yield: A stock’s yield is the percentage of its price that is paid out as a dividend. ...
How to read the stock market?
Read:High inflation has jacked up the cost of food ... Rattled markets Treasury yields have risen sharply since the start of the year, sparking a stock-market selloff led by tech and other growth stocks that are more sensitive to rates.
How do you read the stock market chart?
The Stock Market’s lucky elements are fire and wood, so wood’s abundance in the Water Tiger’s destiny chart bodes well for the Stock Market ... acceptance of our user agreement. Please read our privacy policy and legal disclaimer.

How do you read the stock market?
How to read stock market charts patternsIdentify the chart: Identify the charts and look at the top where you will find a ticker designation or symbol which is a short alphabetic identifier of a company. ... Choose a time window: ... Note the summary key: ... Track the prices: ... Note the volume traded: ... Look at the moving averages:
How do you analyze stock for beginners?
Stock research: 4 key steps to evaluate any stockGather your stock research materials. Start by reviewing the company's financials. ... Narrow your focus. These financial reports contain a ton of numbers and it's easy to get bogged down. ... Turn to qualitative research. ... Put your research into context.
How do you predict if a stock will go up or down?
We want to know if, from the current price levels, a stock will go up or down. The best indicator of this is stock's fair price. When fair price of a stock is below its current price, the stock has good possibility to go up in times to come.
How do you know if a stock is worth buying?
Here are nine things to consider.Price. The first and most obvious thing to look at with a stock is the price. ... Revenue Growth. Share prices generally only go up if a company is growing. ... Earnings Per Share. ... Dividend and Dividend Yield. ... Market Capitalization. ... Historical Prices. ... Analyst Reports. ... The Industry.More items...
How to learn stock charts?
One of the most convenient ways to learn about stock charts is through Google Finance. Just search a company’s ticker, and you’ll see a simple chart that’s the equivalent of the shallow end of the pool during a swim lesson. (Don’t know the company’s ticker symbol? You can search online for that.)
What is the closing price of a stock?
to 4 p.m. Eastern Time. During regular trading hours, the price will likely fluctuate. The “after hours” price is $125.15, reflecting the price the stock was currently being traded for outside of regular hours.
What is the y axis on a stock chart?
The y-axis (vertical axis) shows prices in dollars, while the x-axis (horizontal axis) shows how much time has passed in the chosen period. In this chart, the gray line shows how the stock is performing during after-hours trading.
What is the difference between the open and the previous close?
The open is the first price at which a stock trades during regular market hours, while high and low reflect the highest and lowest prices the stock reaches during those hours, respectively. Previous close is the closing price of the previous trading day.
Why are bid ask spreads wider?
And when spreads are wider, it may be more difficult for an investor’s trade to be executed, or for the trade to go through at the price they wanted.
What does PE ratio mean?
PE ratio. This stands for price-to-earnings ratio, which some investors may use to decide if a stock is undervalued, overvalued or fairly valued. (Get the details on PE ratio.)
What is the market cap of Apple?
In Apple’s case, your eyes do not deceive you: That’s a market cap of $2.1 trillion — one of the largest in the world. (Learn more about market capitalization.)
Why are stocks only shown in the stock market?
Generally, due to the limited space and time available , only selected stocks (the most heavily traded stocks) will be shown.
What type of chart is used for stock trading?
The most common chart type used for stock trading is the Candlestick chart.
Why is reading stock charts important?
Reading stock charts is very important if you want to trade stocks for profits in the short term or use chart analysis to pick stocks for long-term investment.
What are the best stocks to buy right now?
Here are just some of their best-performing stock picks: 1 Amazon: it’s up 20,255% 2 Netflix: it’s up 21,471% 3 Walt Disney: it’s up 9,625% 4 NVIDIA: it’s up 7,855% 5 Shopify: it is up 3,173% 6 United Health Group: it is up 2,637% 7 Activision Blizzard, it’s up 2,584%
What time do you trade in the pre market?
The exact pre-market hours depend on your stock brokers. Generally, most brokers allow you to trade from 8 am to 9:30 am in the pre-market hours and from 4 pm to 8 pm in the after-market hours while some might offer even longer extended trading hours.
What is bid in stock market?
The bid is the price at which you can sell the shares in the market (i.e. the price at which other stock traders are willing to buy the shares from you)
What is the ticker symbol for Apple?
The ticker symbol (or stock symbol) is just an abbreviation used to uniquely identify the shares of a particular company’s stock on the stock exchange. For example, the ticker symbol for Apple Inc. is AAPL.
How does a stock tend to trade?
How does a stock tend to trade? Some stocks move in relatively slow, well-defined trends. Other stocks tend to experience more volatility on a regular basis, with price making sharp moves up or down even in the midst of a general long-term trend. If you are trading a stock that typically evidences high volatility, then you know not to place too much importance on the trading action in any single day.
How to tell if a stock is going to reverse?
Are there signs of a possible trend reversal? Careful analysis of stock price movement often reveals signs of potential trend reversals. Momentum indicators often indicate a trend running out of steam before the price of a stock actually peaks, giving alert traders the opportunity to get out of a stock at a good price before it reverses to the downside. Various candlestick or other chart patterns are also often used to identify major market reversals.
Why do investors use technical indicators?
In analyzing stock charts for stock market investing, investors use a variety of technical indicators to help them more precisely probable price movement, to identify trends, and to anticipate market reversals from bullish trends to bearish trends and vice-versa.
What is a yoy chart?
YoY (Year over Year) YoY stands for Year over Year and is a type of financial analysis used for comparing time series data. It is useful for measuring growth and detecting trends.
How do investors determine their buying and selling decisions?
In fact, many individual investors determine their buying and selling decisions almost solely based on following the identified actions of major institutional traders. They buy stocks when volume and price movement indicate that major institutions are buying, and sell or avoid buying stocks when there are indications of major institutional selling.
What is technical analysis?
Technical Analysis - A Beginner's Guide Technical analysis is a form of investment valuation that analyses past prices to predict future price action.
Why is volume important in stock?
Volume appears on nearly every stock chart that you’ll find. That’s because trading volume is considered a critical technical indicator by nearly every stock investor. On the chart above, in addition to showing the total level of trading volume for each day, days with greater buying volume are indicated with blue bars and days with greater selling volume are indicated with red bars.
What is the ticker symbol on a stock?
The ticker symbol is the symbol that is used on the stock exchange to delineate a given stock. For example, Apple's ticker is ( AAPL) - Get Report on Nasdaq, while Snapchat's ticker is ( SNAP) - Get Report on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The ticker is usually found under a column titled "ticker," or, in some cases, right next to the name of the stock in parentheses.
What is the importance of reading stock quotes?
Reading stock charts, or stock quotes, is a crucial skill in being able to understand how a stock is performing, what is happening in the broader market and how that stock is projected to perform. Knowing the basics can help investors make better decisions and are a vital first step in getting into and understanding investing.
How to calculate dividend yield?
The dividend yield, then, is the percentage return on that dividend, and is calculated by dividing the annual dividend by the current stock price.
What does it mean when a stock closes?
The close price is perhaps more significant than the open price for most stocks. The close is the price at which the stock stopped trading during normal trading hours (after-hours trading can impact the stock price as well). If a stock closes above the previous close, it is considered an upward movement for the stock (and will impact things like candlestick charts, which we'll get to later). Vice versa, if a stock's close price is below the previous day's close, the stock is showing a downward movement.
How to tell if a stock has a high volume?
The volume is generally indicated on the bottom of the stock chart in green and red bars (or sometimes blue or purple bars). The key thing to look out for when examining trading volume is spikes in trading volume, which can indicate the strength of a trend - whether it is high trading volume down or up. If a stock's price drops and the trading volume is high, it might mean that there is strength to the downward trend on the stock as opposed to a momentary blip (and vice versa if the price moves up).
What is stock chart?
A stock chart or table is a set of information on a particular company's stock that generally shows information about price changes, current trading price, historical highs and lows, dividends, trading volume and other company financial information.
What are the two axes on a stock chart?
Every stock chart has two axes - the price axis and the time axis. The horizontal (or bottom) axis shows the time period selected for the stock chart. This can generally be customized to show anything from a year time period (or even multiple years) to a day.
What is the stock market?
The stock market is made up of exchanges, like the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Stocks are listed on a specific exchange, which brings buyers and sellers together and acts as a market for the shares of those stocks. The exchange tracks the supply and demand — and directly related, the price — of each stock.
What is stock trading?
But investors who like a little more action engage in stock trading. Stock trading involves buying and selling stocks frequently in an attempt to time the market. The goal of stock traders is to capitalize on short-term market events to sell stocks for a profit, or buy stocks at a low.
Why do investors use indexes?
Investors use indexes to benchmark the performance of their own portfolios and, in some cases, to inform their stock trading decisions. You can also invest in an entire index through index funds and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which track a specific index or sector of the market. Read more about ETFs here.
How to smooth out contaminated beef?
To smooth out that company-specific risk, investors diversify by pooling multiple types of stocks together, balancing out the inevitable losers and eliminating the risk that one company’s contaminated beef will wipe out your entire portfolio.
How many people invested in stock market in 2018?
That’s according to a NerdWallet-commissioned survey, which was conducted online by The Harris Poll of more than 2,000 U.S. adults, among whom over 700 were invested in the stock market during at least one of the past five financial downturns, in June 2018.
What time does the NYSE open?
The NYSE and the Nasdaq are open from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern, with premarket and after-hours trading sessions also available, depending on your broker.
When people refer to the stock market being up or down, they’re generally referring to one of the major market?
When people refer to the stock market being up or down , they’re generally referring to one of the major market indexes .

Stock Chart Construction – Lines, Bars, Candlesticks
Looking at A Stock Chart
- Below is a year-to-date daily chart of Apple Inc. (AAPL), courtesy of stockcharts.com. This chart is a candlestick chart, with white candles showing up days for the stock and red candles showing down days. In addition, this chart has several technical indicators added: a 50-period moving average and a 200-period moving average, appearing as blue and red lines on the chart; the relat…
The Importance of Volume
- Volume appears on nearly every stock chart that you’ll find. That’s because trading volume is considered a critical technical indicator by nearly every stock investor. On the chart above, in addition to showing the total level of trading volume for each day, days with greater buying volume are indicated with blue bars and days with greater selling volume are indicated with red …
Basic Volume Patterns
- There are four basic volume patterns that traders typically watch as indicators. High volume trading on Up Days – This is a bullishindication that a stock’s price will continue to rise Low volume trading on Down Days– This is also a bullish indication since it indicates that on days when the stock’s price falls back a bit, not many investors are in...
Using Technical Indicators
- In analyzing stock charts for stock market investing, investors use a variety of technical indicators to help them more precisely probable price movement, to identify trends, and to anticipate market reversals from bullish trends to bearish trends and vice-versa. One of the most commonly used technical indicators is a moving average. The moving averages that are most frequently applied …
The Importance of The 200-Day Moving Average
- The 200-day moving average is considered by most analysts as a critical indicator on a stock chart. Traders who are bullish on a stock want to see the stock’s price remain above the 200-day moving average. Bearish traders who are selling short a stock want to see the stock price stay below the 200-day moving average. If a stock’s price crosses from below the 200-day moving av…
Trend and Momentum Indicators
- There is virtually an endless list of technical indicators for traders to choose from in analyzing a chart. Experiment with various indicators to discover the ones that work best for your particular style of trading, and as applied to the specific stocks that you trade. You’ll likely find that some indicators work very well for you in forecasting price movement for some stocks but not for othe…
Analyzing Trends
- When reviewing a stock chart, in addition to determining the stock’s overall trend, up or down, it’s also helpful to look to identify aspects of a trend such as the following: 1. How long has a trend been in place?Stocks do not stay in uptrends or downtrends indefinitely. Eventually, there are always trend changes. If a trend has continued for a long period of time without any significant c…
Identifying Support and Resistance Levels
- Stock charts can be particularly helpful in identifying support and resistance levels for stocks. Support levels are price levels where you usually seeing fresh buying coming in to support a stock’s price and turn it back to the upside. Conversely, resistance levels represent prices at which a stock has shown a tendency to fail in attempting to move higher, turning back to the downside…
Conclusion – Using Stock Chart Analysis
- Stock chart analysis is not infallible, not even in the hands of the most expert technical analyst. If it were, every stock investor would be a multi-millionaire. However, learning to read a stock chart will definitely help turn the odds of being a successful stock market investor in your favor. Stock chart analysis is a skill, and like any other skill, one only becomes an expert at it through practice…