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 Download Stock Data (6 Steps)

Go to your favorite investment research site. Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance are top-rated sites that provide free price quotes. You may also be able to download stock data directly into a spreadsheet from a company's website.
Input the name of the company or the ticker symbol in the Quote Box for a quote. For example, the ticker symbol for General Electric is GE, and you would input GE to get the data.
Click on 'Historical' or 'Historical Prices' in the left-hand pane.
Input the date range you want to study.
Click on the time increment for sorting the data. Options include daily, weekly and monthly price charts.
Click on 'Get Prices' for a list of historical stock prices. In Yahoo! Finance, to download the data to a spreadsheet, scroll to the bottom and click on 'Download to Spreadsheet.' In Google Finance, this is located in the right-hand pane.

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 Determine Stock Value

Choose a stock to analyze. Most online and newspaper stock quotes list both earnings per share (EPS) and P/E. Earnings are the latest quarter's net profit figures. Net profit is calculated by subtracting expenses from revenues. Earnings per share is figured by dividing total net earnings by the number of shares of that stock that are issued and outstanding.
Calculate the price/earnings ratio by dividing a company's earnings per share into the price you would pay to buy one share of its stock. If your stock quote contains P/E, use that price/earnings ratio rather than figure your own. Find industry average P/Es on Yahoo! Finance by getting a quote on a stock in your target industry and then clicking on the 'competitors' link in the left navigation bar. The link will take you to statistics of major competitors of the company you quoted and to statistics for the industry as a whole.
Compare the price/earnings ratio to those of other companies in that industry. When the marketplace is excited about a new industry, as it was by computers in 2000, the P/Es will be high. Computer industry P/Es at that time were averaging 49 times earnings (49x), while railroads traded at 16x, banking at 13x and airlines at 10x. Yahoo! Finance lists average P/Es as of November 2009 for the computer industry at 32x, railroads at 16x, banking at 18x, and airlines at 38x. Within each industry sector, prominent companies will trade higher or lower than their industry average, depending on their outlook.
Try other methods of determining the real value of a stock relative to its price. These involve analyzing that company's financial reports. You can determine whether a company is selling below its cash value by adding its cash and equivalents plus its short-term investments and then dividing by the number of shares outstanding. This will give you cash per share, which occasionally exceeds the price of the stock. Such stocks are considered bargains by value investors, who will buy them in the expectation that they will trade up in price as other investors discover them.
Use the ratio of stock price to book value to determine the value of a stock using the company's financial reports. Take shareholders' equity and divide that by the number of shares outstanding and you will have book value per share. Find the price-to-book-ratio by then dividing the offered price of the stock by the book value per share. The lower this number, the greater the value of the stock at that price. Use this in comparing companies within an industry to determine which is selling at a better price relative to value.
Calculate the return on equity (ROI) by taking total shareholders' equity and dividing it by the company's annual earnings. The larger the number, the better the ROI.

How to Buy a Share of Apple Stock

Call your brokerage firm or log into your online brokerage account. Keep in mind that investing with a broker can be more expensive than performing the stock purchase on your own via an online account.
Search for the Apple, Inc. ticker (APPL) to see the most recent quote.
Calculate the number of shares you can afford to purchase and include the transactions fees that your brokerage firm will assess to complete the transaction.
Determine your brokerage account balance that can be applied to a stock purchase. If you do have the funds to cover the purchase price of the shares you want to buy, transfer the funds into your account. Follow your account's instructions for completing a fund transfer. Remember that funds may not always be available immediately.
Execute a stock purchase. To purchase using an online brokerage account, enter the ticker symbol of Apple, Inc. (APPL) and the number of shares you want to purchase.
Print out the stock purchase receipt for online accounts or have your broker send you confirmation of the purchase. Keep purchase confirmations with your financial records.

How to Get Real Time Stock Data

Launch an Internet browser and navigate to Yahoo! Finance or Money Central.
Enter the selected website and look for the 'get quote' field.
Enter the name or stock symbol of the desired company and press the 'Get Quote' button.
Look for the real-time quote. This is found directly below the name of the company on both of the above Websites.
Take note of the data for later use.