CIBC Investor’s Edge: How to read a stock quote - YouTube

Hello and welcome to Investor's Edge.

Today, we're going to take a look at stock quotes.

What are they and how do we read them?

A stock quote provides a quick snapshot

of a company's trading activity on an exchange at that particular moment.

Now we will review the components of a stock quote,

using CIBC as an example from our watch list,

which can be found under Quotes and Research.

We start with Last,

which is simply the price at which the last trade took place

during market hours.

Change shows the difference between the last trade

and the previous day's closing price on both a dollar and percentage basis.

So, here we can see that CIBC last traded at $144.32,

down forty-four cents from the previous day's close

or down 0.3 percent.

Now we move on to the bid and the ask.

The bid reflects the maximum price

that an investor is willing to pay for shares of CIBC,

while the ask is the minimum price

that an investor is willing to sell her shares of CIBC.

In this case, the bid is $144.31,

and the ask is $144.32 with a spread of one cent.

This is commonly referred to as the bid-ask spread.

Now, there will always be a bid-ask spread during market trading,

because if they are the same, then the trade will have taken place,

reflecting in the last price.

Then, there would be a reset of the bid-ask prices.

You may be wondering at this time what these lots represent underneath.

Well, in order for your order to be posted to the exchange,

it must be in the proper format, known as a board lot.

A board lot is a standard number of shares that's determined based on two things:

the exchange where the security trades and the stock price.

Generally, a board lot for stocks priced at a dollar or more

is equal to 100 shares.

So here we can see there are 12 board lots or 1,200 shares on the bid,

and one board lot or 100 shares on the ask.

Now, if you're looking to put in a bid

to purchase 150 shares of CIBC at, for example, $144.31,

only 100 shares would be posted to the exchange

as it meets the board lot criteria.

So what happens to the remaining 50 shares in your order?

Well, the additional 50 shares represents what we call an odd lot

and is sent to a separate order book dedicated to odd lot orders,

which is not visible to retail investors and is managed by a market maker.

Next, we have the Volume,

which represents a number of shares traded on that day.

Generally speaking,

higher volumes indicate more liquidity in the stock

and may serve as a technical buy or sell signal for an investor.

The Open is the price at which the security first trades

when the market opens at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time.

The Day High and Low is the highest and lowest intraday prices

the stock is trading at during the current session.

The 52-Week High and Low

represents the highest and lowest daily closing prices

at which the security traded during the last year.

So, to summarize things,

CIBC last traded at $144.32, down forty-four cents on the day;

it's currently bidding at $144.31, asking $144.32.

I see that there's 1,200 shares on the bid, 100 shares on the ask,

with a volume of 630,000 shares traded on the day.

The high for the day is $144.49, with a low of $143.44.

CIBC opened and first started trading at $144.48,

with the 52-week high of $146.05 and a low of $89.42.

So there you have it; you now know how to read a stock quote.

Happy trading.