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Can anyone tell me where to find the market price, book value, and other such info that pertains to a company for years past? For example, I am looking for the market price of a company's stock for 2005. The only info I find is the price for the last trading day of 2005. I need to find the average price for a whole year (1/1/05-12/31/05). Also I need the market value as compared to market price and book value. It is next to impossible to find. It is for a project in finance class, and this is not on the income statement or balance sheet.
Are there any good sites or books that have that and industry averages for certain whole years?
Day trading


There are very few, if any sites that will provide you with average annual price. However, Yahoo finance has the information you need to calculate that price. Go to Yahoo finance and enter the symbol for the stock in question. When the data for that stock displays on the screen, on the left hand side of the page near the top you will find "historical prices". Click on that. Enter the start date and the end date i e 1/1/2005 and 12/31/2005 and press enter. That will bring up the daily stock prices for the stock in question. Next down load them to a spread sheet. At the bottom of the page you will see "Download to spreadsheet". Click on that. Once you have the prices in the spread sheet, you can calculate the average price for the year. Sum the closing prices x the volume figure for each day and put that figure in a new column. Then sum the that column down the page and sum the volumn figure down the page. Then divide the sum of price x volume by sum of volumns. That will give you the average price for the year or rather close enough. Also Yahoo finance has the has the current market value, and book value and current price. You can get the year end figures by going to the SEC filings. On the left side of the page again but further down, and when you get there displaying the 10k for the company. It will have the book value. Divide the tangible assets by the number of shares outstanding. The market value is the price of the stock x the number of shares outstanding.
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You can contact the company's investor relations rep and request a prospectus. Or, simply go to Yahoo Finance or Hoovers.com.
I am not in the US or Canada. I am offshore with no residential ties except a bank account
Day trading


If you want to daytrade in the United States of America the answer is yes.

I do not know the laws in Canadian Stocks. You should consult a lawyer before you daytrade in Canada.

If you daytrade in the United States of America by Law you will get a Credit Line of at least $100,000.00 (This is called a margin account)

However, if you don't have assets of at least $75,000.00 (For example, a $25,000 car and a $50,000 property) that you can sell in case things go wrong I strongly suggest you NOT TO DAYTRADE ON MARGIN WITHOUT LIMITING YOUR LOSSES TO A MAXIMUM OF 25% (This means you will only lose your original $25,000)

If you want I can email the Daytrading Laws.

Do not listen to cgimwei.
You need at least $500 to open a brokerage account in Scottrade.com

Example 1:
You cannot invest all your money in just one company. Therefore we are going to invest $225 in each company.
You buy 10 shares for $225 in Wal-Mart
You buy 10 shares for $225 in Target

Let's say you got lucky and both stocks actually went up 5% that day.

Your stocks are now worth $236.25 ($11.25 Profit)

However, you already paid $7 when you bought them and you need to pay another $7 when you sell them

Therefore in this example you actualy lose money.

You also need to consider you have to pay taxes on your capital gains. (Consult your Accountant before you start daytrading)

If you need more detailed advice about daytrading drop me a line.

Hi

I am new to all these markets and looking to start with it.

I wanted to go for an Online Trading Company like India Bulls, Sharekhan etc.

I aim for being both a Long Term Investor in 2-3 Shares, and do regular Intra-Day Trading

I have seen India Bulls Charting system and found them to be good but don't know what are their Broker Charges, Account Opening Charges?

Day trading


I am a long term investor and not into daily trading. So this answer below, is probably not teh best answer for what you have asked.

But there will be important pointers to what should also be considered while deciding on the trading platform. So here goes.

I have personal experience with ICICIDirect, HDFC Securities and Motilal Oswal. I don't trade on a daily basis and am a long term investor. So for me brokerage rates don't matter much.

For me what matters are the following:
1. Reliability of the platform -I can transact when I want
2. Correctness in transaction records, account debits, demat credits, shortfall management
3. User-friendliness of interface - you can find what you want quickly
4. Promptness of customer helpdesk in replying to emails
5. Ability to do everything from one single place - like demat account, trading account, and bank account are all managed by the same entity, so there is single place of accountability

Given all these in my experience ICICIDirect still scores the best. It has the highest no of subscribers. It used to have some transaction problems earlier, but over the past year, I cannot recollect instances where I couldn't execute a buy/sell when I wanted it. (HDFC Securities & Motilal OSwal both have miles to go on this front, systems cant keep up with the load on exceptionally high traffic days -jan 22/23). Their User interface is the best, you can locate what to do and where very fast, almost intuitively. Their transaction records are impeccable, you have peace of mind. Couldn't say the same for Motilal Oswal (I had to track and remind them to make good the shortfall when I bought and paid for 20 shares of Wyeth Pharma but demat was only for 16 after a week). And single place of accountability makes sure i deal with the same party and can get things resolved faster.

No matter what arguments you hear against, perhaps the biggest argument in favour of ICICIDirect is that they have been operating these services from 1999. That's close to a decade of experience in handling extremes of load, variety of software and technical issues, customer complaints , and have matured over the years.

The others may give you cheaper brokerage rates (and that matters if you are a day trader) but have much more to cover before they can reach similar levels of maturity as a service provider.

My 2 cents. Hope they were useful & happy investing!

I have a friend interested in companies that train and hire daytraders to trade company funds. Please coment fom personal experience. She has many years of daytrading experience but is looking for a stable reliable company with a good track record. No churn and burn group.
Day trading


I'm confused. She wants a company that trains, yet "she has many years of daytrading experience"? Which is it?

Companies hiring trainees, in my experience, generally want people straight out of school, preferable with athletic credentials. They feel this means that the trainee has physical stamina and is competitive.

Experience means working on the proprietary trading desk of a firm, not sitting at home with a personal account. That's a way to develop bad habits. It's a different word when you're dealing with size.

Besides, if she's making money in her own account, why would she want to work for somebody else? So, I'm assuming she's not making money. So, why would a firm want to hire her.

By the way, "churn and burn" is a term that applies to retail stock sales people, not traders.

I have a lot of my investments in a money market fund earning about 5.5% a year. I just got approval from the company I work for to invest with another B/D, so I was thinking of taking the money out and putting it into a trading account with mostly ETFs.

It seems like the market has been rallying lately so I'm afraid of coming in at the top. Am I better off waiting for a down day? I know that if you lose a large % when you first invest it can be devastating for a portfolio.

Day trading


If you are worried about timing then dollar cost average in. This means you buy over time instead of all at once, something like 8% of your money each month for the next year.

The thing about the market now is that it is making record new highs. It is either going to go up or down from here. Don't wait and then buy two months from now when it has gone another 20% up. Either buy now or wait for a low. Don't wait for it to go up more, feel the intense pain that you missed it, and then get in. The sooner you get in on a move the more likely you get to participate in it.

Such information? I have watched one company buy another and an offer announced on a given day and before the market openned, the price of that stock had already moved to the buy price or the worth of that buy. Somewhere along the lines, some body(s) had to buy shares to raise that price level. I am assuming this happenned in pre market trading although Yahoo charts would show it all happenned at the beginning of regular trading. Scottrade shows it happenned before market trading and I would assume it happenned from the time the news was made aware of on that platform. I would just like to be able to look at a chart and see what time the offer was made to raise the price of that stock and that it corresponded with the "non insider" information made available to the general public.
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You may need Level II access to get that info. If you don't know what that is, then you won't be able to get it.
I've been unable to find such a thing by searching. I'm not going to day trade per se, but I do think I should form an LLC for my market investments, and I would like to know the pros and cons (tax advantages, how I would pull money out, what the tax rate is, expenses, etc.) I am in the US… would prefer a site, as I'd like ot read alot about this in detail if possible! Thanks!
I found the answers I was looking for at this site - http://www.traderstatus.com/whyanentity.htm
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This is just stupid (no offense).

Depending on what you invested in, you could have to register with the SEC. Additionally, you would be signing up for double taxation! You would have to pay additional legal and accounting fees, and could have your quarterlies audited by the IRS.

There are absolutely no advantages to this scheme. Never mind that if you tried to become a trader for a living, you would become homeless, as more than 90% of "day traders" lose more than 2/3 of their capital in the first year.

Not to mention that this would look a hell of a lot like money laundering to an outsider (someone who creates a shell holding corporation to avoid having his name attached to the movement of significant amounts of cash moving across state lines is a pretty good way to meet some kind agents from the FBI).

It's never a good idea to try to outsmart the federal government - sure, they might not be the smartest bunch in the room, but they sure know how to hold a grudge.

There are also times when the value of using charts is questionable. For example, if the underlying drops 20% in a day, say from $25 per share to $20 per share, and there is only one trade for a particular option on the underlying that day, it could make a big difference in the price if the option was trading $25 or $20.
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Market value is market value. The value of the option would change as the underlying stock price has changed. Otherwise the forces of arbitrage would correct the situation quickly.

What you're really trying to surmise is how extreme the price change in the option would be. Typically if there's a big drop in one day of that magnitude the company is either going to have a news release or impending news. I would still expect a good sized change in the option price.

This may seem like an incomplete question (since I don't know much about the importance of volume). Please, don't simply "define" what volume is. Give it context and explain the significance of this to an investor (or in my case - student).

What does it mean that some stocks trade at a volume of a couple thousand, while others trade at a couple billion. Further, the same stock can be trading in the millions on one day, and in the billions the next. What does THAT mean?

No need to be "comprehensive", just elaborate on some KEY points and let your answers flow logically. I want enough info to give me an idea on where to start my research (sources would be appreciated), but there is no need to write a textbook here (although if your answer's good enough and explains it well, you'll get my vote = 10 points!).
To seafood10:

- What about when volume is low, but price is rising?

Day trading


Ok stock price is what it costs right now to by one share of a stock. That number is multiplied by the volume (number of shares) to get the value of the company.

the volume is how many shares are owned at the stocks current price.

Usually large jumps in volume will occur when a stock "splits" basically say I own 1 share of google valued at 500 dollars a share. Sometimes companies decide to split the stock to make it look more affordable. So if google were to split it's stock I would then have 2 shares worth 250 it would in effect double the volume of the stock where the overall value of the company would remain the same.