An Introduction to Stock Quotes

Stock quotes provide important statistics about each stock traded in different stock markets, which is very important for technical analysis. Stock quotes can be obtained from many sources as decimals or as fractions. Stock quotes are important for all sorts of traders trading stocks and are the primary tools for executing their trades. Apart from stocks, quote information are also offered for forex currencies, options and future contracts. Getting stock quotes was difficult in olden days, but with the introduction of computers and electronic networks they became so much easier.

In respect to the timing of the quotes, stock quotes can be divided into historical, delayed and real-time stock quotes. Historical stock quotes provide the price details and trend patterns of a particular stock at some point in its trading history. These are provided by some dedicated financial institutions, which keep trading history details. Historical stock quotes are useful for finding stock market trades that occur in cyclical manner or in some special situations.

Delayed and real-time stock quotes are more important for traders. They provide updated stock market information. Delayed stocks quotes, as the name suggest, have a delay of 15 to 20 minutes. Most of these quotes are free and can be assessed from a lot of sources like newspapers, journals, financial portals, television & radio updates, search engines, company websites, daily newsletters, e-mail alerts, etc. They are useful for almost all types of traders and investors except day traders.

Real-Time or live or streaming stock quotes are stock information with a delay of less than a minute. But they are often not free, and are provided by special quote sites and by brokers through specialized platforms. Live stock quotes are most important for day traders, who trade stocks with very small price changes. Many brokers will provide you live stock quotes for free, but you may have to fulfill certain requirements like minimum trading volume, account minimum etc. It has been heard that google and CNBC, through their financial portals, are willing to offer real-time stock quotes for free and have filed a request for it to SEC.

Stock quotes can be simple or complex ranging from only yesterdays closing price to more details like the top and bottom most position of the day, traded volume, traded range, 52 week range, day trading price change, average trading volume, EPS, dividend yield, P/E ratio etc. Also their presentation may vary from single line phase having abbreviations and values to tables and graphs having visual enhancements. Some also have foot notes with useful remarks. Trading systems go beyond these limits and have alerts and triggers to better execute trades.

Live Streaming Stock Quotes
Get real-time streaming stock quotes using an advanced system