The stock market ticker is a record of stock trades as they happen trade by trade. It illustrates the price paid for the share of stock and the volume associated with the trades. The first stock market ticker was created in 1867 and consisted of ticker tape that received its information transmitted over the telegraph wires. The original stock tickers were one of the first electronic printers in the world. A "ticker symbol" is an abbreviation which designates and identifies a particular company's stock. A "tick" is the measurement of stock price movement, either up or down.
Stock Market Quotes can be obtained online, or streamed to you directly with a download. You can get various stock market tickers online. Online trading houses like Ameritrade and eTrade generally provide stock market tickers and other tools to help the trader keep track of information on a single stock or a whole portfolio of stocks. Tickers can deliver 'real-time' stock quotes or they may deliver 'delayed' stock quotes. Serious stock traders tend to prefer the real-time quotes because just a few seconds of time can make the difference between a profitable trade and an unprofitable trade.
Free Stock Market Tickers
In order to keep track of your stock portfolio while you are doing other work or tasks on your computer, you may want to find one of the various free stock market tickers that are available online and download to your desktop. You can find a ticker for download to your desktop from various sources such as the NASDAQ exchange website at www.nasdaq.com and also from different third party vendors. One thing to look out for is a vendor that offers a free trial or a free download version that has limited capabilities. Often they will later try to upsell a premium version of the ticker that has more bells and whistles. However, if you are willing to spend a little time experimenting with free stock market tickers and downloads from different vendors you will have a better chance of finding the desktop application that fits your preferences best.
Understanding the Stock Market Ticker
In today's financial world the ticker tape of years past has faded away but we still have the same principles and the same transactions being recorded. The tickers we see today are scrolling past on the TV screen as we watch the financial news or visit financial and investment websites. To read and understand the ticker it comes down to knowing and understanding the symbols and elements of the ticker. You need to know what company the ticker symbol represents and understand the information being communicated through the elements of the price and volume trades being recorded.
Each transaction quote on the stock market ticker will have these five components: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/01/070401.asp
- Ticker Symbol - are the letters used to identify the business.
- Shares Traded - shows the volume for the trade that is quoted and the abbreviations are as follows: K = 1,000 shares, M = 1 million shares and B = 1 billion shares.
- Price Traded - shows the last bid price for the trade being quoted.
- Direction Change - shows if the stock traded lower or higher than the closing price of the previous day.
- Amount of Change - shows the price difference from the closing price on the previous day.
References
Fast Facts
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Fact:
The first stock ticker was invented by Edward A. Calahan in 1867.
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Thomas Edison improved upon the original ticker and it was his first innovation that was profitable.
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Fact:
The original tickers were one of the first electronic printers in the world.
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Fact:
A "ticker symbol" is an abbreviation which designates and identifies a particular company's stock and are also the symbols that were printed on the ticker tape.
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Fact:
Today's tickers can stream real-time stock quotes.
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Fact:
Today the ticker symbols are the stock abbreviations that scroll across an electronic stock market ticker that you may see on a financial news TV network.
