How to read a stock quote

Just Stock Quotes, 28 September 2026

A stock quote looks like the simplest thing in finance. A ticker, a price, a number in green or red. It is simple, but each part of it means something specific, and knowing what makes the difference between glancing at a number and understanding it. This guide takes a quote apart piece by piece, in the order it appears on your screen.

The ticker

The ticker is the short code the exchange uses for a stock: AAPL for Apple, MSFT for Microsoft, SPY for the biggest S&P 500 fund. Most are one to five letters. Some carry a suffix with a dot or a dash for a share class, like BRK.B. The app's search finds a stock by ticker or by company name, so you never have to guess one.

The last price

The big number is the last price: what the stock most recently traded at. During the regular session, 9:30 to 4:00 Eastern on trading days, that number updates every few seconds while you watch. It is not the price you would get if you traded right now, because there is always a small gap between what buyers are offering and what sellers are asking, but for a liquid stock the gap is a cent or two and the last price is close enough for anyone who is not a market maker.

The change

Next to the price is the change in dollars and in percent, measured from the previous close, the last price of the previous regular session. Up is green, down is red, in the shades of whichever flavour you picked.

The percent is the number worth reading. A two dollar move is a rounding error in a stock at eight hundred dollars and a quarter of the company in a stock at eight. Percent puts every stock on the same scale, which is why the pulse line above your watchlist counts movers by percent and why price alerts can be set as a percent move.

The previous close

The previous close is the anchor for everything. It is where yesterday's regular session ended, and today's change is measured from it. It is also why a stock can show a big move at 9:31 in the morning on almost no trading: the price gapped from yesterday's close to today's open on overnight news, and the change reflects the gap, not the morning.

Pre market and after hours

Stocks trade before the bell and after the close, more thinly and more jumpily. When they do, the app shows the extended hours price beside the regular close with a PM or AH badge and its own change measured from the close. The two are never blended. If you see two prices for a stock, that is why, and the guide on pre market and after hours quotes explains how to read them.

Volume

Volume is the number of shares traded so far today. It appears on the stock page rather than on the watchlist row. On its own it is just a big number; compared with the stock's usual volume it tells you whether today's move is happening on real interest or on a quiet tape. A five percent jump on triple the normal volume is a different event from a five percent jump on a fifth of it.

Green is not good and red is not bad

The colours describe the day's change and nothing else. A stock that has doubled this year and is red today is still a stock that doubled this year. A stock that has halved and is green today is still a stock that halved. The one day chart on the stock page shows the session; the one year chart shows the story. Read the colour, then read the chart.

What a quote does not tell you

A quote is a price, and a price is what the last two people to trade agreed on. It does not say whether the company is doing well, whether the stock is cheap, or what happens next. The stock page has the pieces that speak to those questions: the valuation ratios, the analyst ratings, the moving averages and the news. Each has its own guide here.

A thirty second habit

Ticker, price, percent. Then glance at the pulse line for the shape of your whole list. Then, for anything that moved more than you expected, tap through to the stock page and look at the chart and the news. That is all a quote asks of you, and it is enough.