Читать книгу Essential Option Strategies - J. J. Kinahan - Страница 12

It wasn't that long ago when, outside the trading desks and the professional investment community, most investors relied on printed newspapers to see price changes to their stock positions. Periodicals like The Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily provided tables of stocks listed alphabetically, and the prices represented the closing prices from the day before.

Five Components of a Stock Quote

• Open: The first price of the trading day.

• Last: The most recent price.

• High: The highest price of the trading day.

• Low: The lowest price of the day.

• Close: The final price of the trading day. It will be the same as the last price at the end of the trading day.

Wow, a lot has changed since that time! Many websites readily offer free delayed intraday prices. Brokerage firms typically offer free real-time quotes to their customers as well. Offerings might include a symbol quote box where you can type in a ticker symbol or tables that include lists of multiple symbols along with relevant information, including last, high, and low prices.

Figure 1.1 is a snapshot of what I watch on the thinkorswim platform each day. It includes indexes like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ Composite, as well as some widely held names like Apple (AAPL), Netflix (NFLX), and General Electric (GE). I also watch some of the action in the futures markets, especially the S&P 500 Futures (/ES), and the US 30 year Treasury Bond Futures (ZB), as well as the Euro/US dollar (EUR/USD) currency pair.

Figure 1.1 My Watch List

I can also see the price quote for any stock by using the Quick Quote tool. First, identify the ticker symbol of the company you're researching. It's simply an abbreviation to uniquely identify a publicly traded instrument like a stock, index, or fund. For example, the ticker for General Electric is straightforward. It's GE. However, sometimes the ticker is less intuitive and requires a symbol lookup. This is easy to do using most brokerage platforms.

After the ticker symbol is identified, enter it into the Quick Quote box (Figure 1.2) to see the latest stock prices and the change for the day. In this case, the stock is Microsoft, and the ticker is MSFT. The stock is up $0.55 for the day and last traded at $54.48 per share.

Figure 1.2 Quick Quotes

The default setting for Quick Quotes on the thinkorswim platform also includes two other important pieces of information – the bid price and the ask price. The bid price is currently the best bid price by a buyer. If an investor wants to sell in the current market, he can expect to receive $54.47 per share. On the other hand, a buyer pays the asking price or $54.48 per share.

Bid versus Ask

Bid and ask reflects the current quotes to buy or sell a stock, option, or futures contract. The bid reflects a willingness to buy, and therefore a seller can expect to receive the bid price at the time of sale. The ask, or offering price, is a level that a seller or sellers are willing to receive for the security. A buyer typically pays the asking price.

Bids and asks are constantly changing, and there is no guarantee that you can buy or sell at the quoted prices. In addition, less actively traded names can see fairly large differences between bids and asks, which is also called the bid-ask spread. In later chapters we explore the mechanics of order entry and explore bids, asks, and bid-ask spreads in more detail. For now, the point to take away is that the last price is not necessarily an indication of the current market price to buy or sell. Bids and asks provide the latest market prices available to sellers and buyers.