Stocks, funds and quotes
What you own, where it trades, and how to read a quote.
Start
- 4 lessons
- 24 min
About this section3 goals5 key words
What you own when you buy a share or a fund, where it trades, and how to read the five numbers of a quote.
What you will be able to do
- Explain a share, a fund, an ETF and an index, and why an index is a ruler you cannot buy.
- Name the main US exchanges, the trading sessions and what a ticker is.
- Read last price, bid, ask, spread and volume, and say how fresh the number is.
Five words to know
- share
- one slice of ownership in a company
- market cap
- price times the number of shares: the value of all the shares
- index
- a number computed from many prices by a rule
- ticker
- the short code for a security, like NVDA
- spread
- the gap between the best price to buy and the best price to sell
- 01What a stock isA share is a small slice of a company, so owning one means owning a tiny piece of everything the company has and earns.6 min
- 02Funds, ETFs and indicesA fund is a basket you can own, an index is a ruler that measures a basket, and an ETF is a fund that trades like a stock.6 min
- 03Exchanges, hours and tickersAn exchange is the marketplace where shares change hands during set hours, and every listed security has a short code called a ticker.6 min
- 04Reading a quoteA quote is not one price but five numbers (last trade, best bid, best ask, the spread between them, and volume) that together tell you what you would really pay to trade now.5 min
Educational material about reading market data, not investment advice.