How to Read a Streaming Stock Quote (5 Steps)

Find the stock symbols of the company or companies you want to follow through any of the following websites: MSN money central, investors.com, finance.yahoo.com or market watch. Look for the 'Symbol Lookup' field and type in the company you are looking for. The symbol will be one to four capital letters long. It is the first piece of information given for each company in its streaming quote.
Read the stock numbers. The stock numbers will follow the stock symbols. The number is abbreviated with the letter 'K' standing for 1,000, 'M' standing for 1,000,000 and 'B' standing for 1,000,000,000. If you see 30K, this means that 30,000 shares of stock have been traded for that company.
Read the prices traded. This is the second piece of information behind your stock symbol, it shows the bid price, or what each share is going for at the current time. This number is given as a whole number and decimal. 186.50 means $186.50
Note the change of direction. The third thing to look at after your symbol is the direction change. This will tell you whether the stock has gone up or down since the previous day's trading. This symbol is an arrow head that is either pointing up or down. There are some tickers in the media that will use a plus or minus sign instead of an arrow head. You will also be able to tell this information by the color code given. A green color means up, and red means down. So a green arrow or plus sign means the stock's price has increased.
Read the amount that the stock price has changed. This is a number that indicates the specific change in price and is the final piece of information to read. Often, it will be green if it is an increase and red if it is a decrease. The color code system helps you to instantly visualize whether your stock has gone up or down. This number will be given as a percentage, 2.64%, of the previous trading price.

How to Learn to Read Stock Market Quotes (4 Steps)

Find a good financial site online such as Yahoo! Finance to assist in learning to read stock market quotes. Review glossary terms that can assist in helping you understand things like volume indicators, bid price, daily high, daily low, as well as all other stock quote numbers. Before you invest, you must understand what these numbers mean and where they are coming from. Until you grasp the concept of these terms, you won't be a successful trader.
Use technical charts in order to learn to read stock market quotes. There are several technical indicators that can signal a bullish or bearish event for short, medium, and long term periods. You should only use technical indicators in combination with other factors including fundamental analysis.
Research overall market trends that can help you learn to read stock market quotes. No matter how bullish or bearish an individual stock may appear, it is virtually impossible to move against the overall trend of the market. Understanding the moves in the entire economic landscape can help assist in your analysis.
Pay attention to annual shareholder meetings, quarterly financial reports, dividend announcements and other key news as part of your analysis. While this information may not immediately impact the movement of a stock price, overtime it will normally be reflected. Learning to read stock market quotes takes time and patience to be a successful trader and investor.

How to Chart Stock Movements with Candlestick Charts

Choose a stock to chart. For this exercise, we're just going to make one candlestick, so you only need the closing information for one day's trading for one stock. The chart shows the historical price data for Satyam Computers for May 18, 2009. You'll need the opening price, closing price, high and low for the day.
On a piece of graph paper, label the vertical axis with numbers from the lowest price of the day to the highest price of the day.Ex. The stock we're charting hit a high of 2.20 and a low of 2.00, so the vertical is labeled along the vertical from 2.00 to 2.20.
Determine whether the stock closed higher or lower than it opened. If the opening price is higher than the closing price, you'll use a red marker. If the opening price is lower than the closing price, you'll use a blue marker. If the stock opened and closed at the same price, you'll use a black marker. Using the right color marker, place a dot at the low price for the day.
Place a second blue dot at the high price for the day. Connect the two dots with a thin line. This is the 'wick' of the candle.
Find the opening price for the day and mark a horizontal line across the wick at that point. Do the same with the closing price.
Draw a thick blue line between the two horizontal marks to create the candle body. That's the complete candlestick.
Take some time to get familiar with the anatomy of the candlestick you just drew. There's a lot more information in that little symbol than you think. The color tells you whether the stock traded up or down over the course of the day. The length of the entire candle from wick top to wick bottom tells you the entire range of trading for the day. The length of the body tells you how much the stock moved from the starting bell to the closing bell. The length of the wick on either end can suggest the tenor of the market trading. For instance, a long top wick on a short candle body suggests a bullish push that was rejected by traders, while a long top wick on a long candle body suggests that the market pushed back against a bullish rise but couldn't force prices back down to the opening price.