How To Make Sense of Daily Stock Quote Data Table That We Commonly See

Beginner investors may feel intimidated when they first look at a stock quote data table with all the flashing numbers.

However, if you can understand what data point means, navigating the stock market will be much easier.

For instance, we can see the daily price movements of stocks from the Singapore Exchange (SGX) website for the Singapore market. SGX is the stock market operator in our country.

Below is a screenshot from SGX’s website from one of the trading days:

Let’s go step-by-step (from left to right of the table above) and understand what the various figures mean.

We will use the first stock, CapitaLand, as an example here.

• Trading Name – This is the name of the stock, and in this case, it’s CapitaLand.

• Trading Code – This is the next column, which is basically the stock’s ticker symbol for identification purposes. CapitaLand’s code is “C31”.

• Last – The last traded price of the stock, which is S$3.72. This also means that to buy 1 lot (or 100 shares) of the company, you have to fork out S$372, excluding any broker commission.

• Chng – This means “Change”. It’s the change in price from CapitaLand’s previous day’s closing price of S$3.70 (not reflected in the table).

• Chng % – This is the above figure expressed in percentage.

• Vol (000s) – This is the number of shares traded so far and is quoted in 1,000s. So, the total shares traded was 6,529,900 shares.

• Val ($M) – This figure presents the total value of shares traded (in millions of dollars) and is derived by multiplying the last traded price by the volume. So for the case of CapitaLand, the total value of traded shares so far is S$24.28 million.

• Bid Vol – The total number of shares traded at the bid price and is quoted in 1,000s.

• Bid – This is the maximum price that a buyer is willing to pay for a CapitaLand stock.

• Ask – This is the minimum price that a seller is willing to accept for the same stock.

• Ask Vol – The total number of shares traded at the ask price and is quoted in 1,000s.

• Open – This is the price the stock started trading for the day.

• High – This is the highest price the stock hit so far during the day.

• Low – This is the lowest price the stock hit so far during the day.

In terms of colour, green means that a stock is trading higher than the previous close, while red indicates the stock is trading lower than the previous close.

Other markets or trading platforms follow a similar table as above. So if you understand one form, you should be able to read all other stock quote tables.

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Disclaimer: The information provided by Seedly serves as an educational piece and is not intended to be personalised investment advice. ​Readers should always do their own due diligence and consider their financial goals before investing in any stock. Artwork image credit: Singapore Exchange