During trading hours a list of prices belonging to various stocks and shares is known as stock quote. The feed of prices may vary place to place and exchange to exchange as it may be real time or at 5 or 15 minutes delay. Demand and supply are the 2 forces that are liable for stock prices.

The prices of stocks will fluctuate strictly depending on how much supply is there in the market and how many buyers are there at given point in time. As for the layman’s understanding when the prospective buyers outnumber the sellers of a particular stock the price of that stock rises and vice-versa. Market is sensitive to the buyers who are attracted to the higher selling prices of a stock and enters the market and to maintain the equilibrium seller exits the market at the same time.

Stock trading has come of age now and has turned electronic which helps buyers, traders and sellers do trading anytime anywhere since they cannot be available together in one stock exchange. The modern process of stock trading unlike conventional trading has become paperless. By creating enough demand and supply in stock market brokers use their websites on the internet by offering latest stock quote to their member buyers and sellers. The online price quotes are 99% real time feeds from the exchanges which make traders do the trading irrespective of their locations. Introduction of online trading has enabled many people list their stocks on more than one exchange and monitor their performance at the same time.

Conventionally, the prices of the stocks were quoted in fractions but now they are done in decimal. Generally, exchanges have identical formats of their price quotes that they offer to their buyers and suppliers but the standard one shows bid, asking price and last price.

To create adequate and clear decision making for their buyers/sellers exchanges/brokers also show past 52 week’s low and highs of a particular stock in their quote. Usually, the stock quote is 99% real time online but it is recommended that one must check the stamp of time against it while checking the price of a quote.