Stock Quotes And News

Stock quotes and news can be obtained from a variety of sources nowadays. The most common is undoubtedly the Internet, but business publications, television news, and the financial pages of daily newspapers all have their place in presenting stock quotes and news to the public. Speaking of public, did you know many public libraries are good places to access all the above-listed ways of obtaining stock market news and quotes?

Most of us tend to think of the stock market as the source of only one type of news that's vital - the stock quote. But stock market news, in and of itself, can be just as vital as quotes when it concerns a company that suddenly starts hemorrhaging, when earnings tank and key employees abruptly depart, when the shareholders call a special meeting and axe the CEO, when the annual report reveals unrealized quarterly goals and unanticipated expenses. Naturally, the opposites of all these situations would be news worth having, also.

Of course, news has become somewhat elastic in its perceived definition of late. As Officer Friday on the old television show "Dragnet," Jack Webb used to tell witnesses (and viewers) that all he wanted to hear was "Just the facts," and that's what we should all demand when we're ostensibly reading or viewing the news. In addition to that ideal presentation of raw material, there's slanted news, which is what's being presented when everything seems to lean in one direction only. And then there are opinion pieces, written by persons who may be fiscal conservatives, derring-do day-traders, traditionalists, techies, or even total ignoramuses. As long as you can tell where the writer is coming from, you should be able to correctly interpret what you're being told.

Stock market news and stock market quotes not surprisingly tend to be related. In other words, if the news is good, the stock prices will probably rise higher than before the news broke. When Exxon finally concluded its merger with Mobil (that being bigger news than the news that for the first time since being broken up in 1911, two pieces of the old Standard Oil Co. were being reunited), the new company's stocks rose considerably higher than those of either of the previously separate entities.