Stock Market Conventions and Terms
2.) Searching for stock information
Previously we tackled what a stock is and other things that are fundamental in order that we might be better equipped to become stock market traders or investors. Always remember that we live in the information technology age and in this age, knowledge is power. That is why it is very important that we have a good grasp of stock market terms and conventions before we tackle the nuances of actual buying and selling.
The primary source of information of stocks that has been traded in the Philippine stock exchange is no other than the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) itself. So we will go to the website and try to make sense of the data that is presented there.
Point your browsers to the Philippine stock Exchange website (PSE)(www.pse.org.ph) You will then be presented with the front page of the PSE website. Don’t worry 
that you cannot understand the stuff in there, we will just tackle them later on. We will go to the heart of the stocks itself, the stock information sheet. There’s a little box at the top of the site which underneath it says “Symbol look up” At the white box the words “Get quotes” are printed and beside it is a yellow button which is labeled “Go.” This box allows you to search information on whatever company that is listed in the stock exchange.
The problem is you still do not know what to enter in the box. Stocks are represented by “Symbols” or letters. For example, the symbol of Jollibee Food corporation is JFC, CHIB for China Banking Corporation, ABS for ABS-CBN and so on. Don’t you worry as you become well versed in the stock market you will be familiar with the symbols.
If there is a particular company which stock information you want to look up, but you do not know what the symbol for the 
particular company is, click on “Symbol lookup” and a nice little window will popup. In this window you are given the option to “SEARCH BY” Security Symbol and Company name. The “Security Symbol” and “Starting with” option is checked by default. So if you remember that Jollibee Foods Corporations start with a letter “J” but can’t remember the next letters, just type “J” on the search box, click on search and you will be presented with all companies whose symbol starts with the letter “J”
If you can’t recall the company symbol or it’s starting letter, than you have to do a company search by selecting “company name” and typing the name of the company in the box and clicking on search. But if you only remember a part of the company’s name but can’t remember what the starting name of the company is then click on “company name” and the “Containing” option and then type the part of the name you know and then click search.
If you want to show all stocks click on symbol look up, do not enter anything in the search box just click on search. All of the companies listed under the Philippine stock exchange will be shown.
After you have typed the company symbol or searched the company name and clicked on it you will be brought to the main stock information page. In the main stock information sheet you have the company name at the top below it is the date and the time. This tells you when the data was last updated) The third row shows you a lot of data about the stock itself. Below that you can find a graph on how the stock has been doing for the past 12 months. Below that graph is information on how the stock is doing in terms of volume and value for the past 3 years. Now this may be a lot as of now, but don’t you worry we will tackle them one by one and I will be doing my best to explain this in the most simple lay man’s terms and concept.
Just above the company name you can find five other pages linked to the main stock information sheet. You have Corporate information, Dividends / Rights, Historical Prices, Chart and Disclosures. We will discuss them later one at a time we will focus first on the main stock information sheet. The details of the main stock information sheet will be discussed on the next installment of this series.
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I think I said before but apparently your blog failed to load properly and my comment is in purgatory right now… I would like to try trading for a change. I’d need some spare money, some spare time and lots of knowledge in order to do it properly and get any profit.
During this current recession, now is the best time to invest in funds