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Stock Quotes
If a stock trader were to make a list of his favorite things, stock quotes would most likely rank high on it. Stock quotes are what stock players watch for each trading day. And for day traders, it's a minute-by-minute anticipation. A stock quote is a list of prices for a stock at a certain time during a trading day. The prices include the bid and the ask. The bid price is the amount that a buyer is willing to pay for a particular stock while the ask is the price that a seller is willing to accept for a stock he or she is selling.
In the days before the Internet and online trading, stock quotes were printed on the newspaper. The daily paper was one of the main resources of traders and investors for monitoring the movement of their stocks.
As broadcast media gained ground and the technology caught on, real-time stock quotes became available via live streaming on business news programs and TV channels. Nowadays, real-time stock quotes are provided online by a lot of websites and online trading platforms.
For short-term and day traders, keeping a close watch on stock quotes is crucial in making their profits. Day traders buy and sell a certain stock within the same day and make money on the minute changes of the stock price. A slight movement of the price plays a big role in their decision on whether to buy or sell the stock. For long-term traders, constant monitoring of stock quotes is not much of a concern. These type of stock investors check the quotes once a week or a few times in a month but they are more concerned with the general direction of their stock rather than the point-by-point fluctuation of its price.