Investing 101

Lesson 1: Stocks and Their Value

Lesson 1 Exercise

Time Estimate 30 minutes

Exercise Summary: This week you'll practice looking up stocks. You'll learn about three well-known Internet stocks and see how they fared in the last market correction.

Yahoo! Finance is a great place to learn how to research stocks and read about investment news. In this exercise, you'll learn how to look up a stock symbol and then navigate the pages on Yahoo's site to learn more about that stock.

Instructions

1. To begin your search, go to: http://finance.yahoo.com
2. Start by looking up the symbol of:
   • Yahoo
   • America Online
   • iVillage
3. After looking up the symbol, click the appropriate company.
4. When you get to the first screen you should see information about the day's range, the 52-week range, previous close, change in share price, the current bid by folks who want to buy the stock, the current ask by folks who want to sell the stock, volume, earnings per share, and market cap. You will also see a chart showing the stock's performance.
5. From this page you can explore news about the company, its profile, insider information, and options using the live links at the top of the chart.
6. To compare how the companies did, write down their last trade and the 52-week price range.

Questions

1. Are they near the top or the bottom of that range?
2. Looking at the chart to the right, which month did they hit their high and approximately how high was that?
3. If you were going to buy one of the three, which one would you buy today and why?

  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9