Stock Market · Introduction to Stock Markets

Reading a stock quote

Every stock has a live quote. Learn to read it and no trading screen will confuse you again.

OHLC. Four prices that define a trading day

• Open, first traded price at 9:15 AM. Set by the pre-open session.
• High, highest price the stock touched all day.
• Low, lowest price all day.
• Close, last traded price at 3:30 PM. This is what goes into charts.

One candlestick on a chart encodes all four OHLC values visually. The body shows open vs close; the wicks show high and low.

Volume

Number of shares traded in a session. High volume = strong conviction behind a move. Low volume = weak signal. The move may reverse.

> A stock rallying 5% on 10× average volume is a strong signal. The same 5% rally on 0.2× volume is suspicious, not enough participants confirmed the move.

Bid-ask spread

At any moment, two prices exist: the bid (highest price a buyer will pay) and the ask (lowest price a seller will accept). The gap between them is the spread.

For liquid large-caps, spread is ₹0.05 or less. For illiquid small-caps, spreads can be ₹2–5. Wide spread = expensive to enter and exit. Always check before trading unfamiliar stocks.

52-week high / low

Stocks near 52-week highs are often in momentum. Stocks near 52-week lows may be distressed, or deeply undervalued. The reason matters more than the level.

₹0.05Typical bid-ask spread for Reliance on NSE

15–30 crShares a Nifty 50 stock typically trades daily

Takeaway. OHLC tells you where price was. Volume tells you how many people agreed. Spread tells you the cost of getting in or out.