A stock quote looks like a cockpit dashboard, but most of it is five numbers wearing costumes. Here is the plain version. Price is simply the cost of one share right now — more precisely, the price of the most recent trade between a buyer and a seller. Change is how far the price has…
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When a company earns a profit, it has choices. It can put the money back into the business — new equipment, new products, new stores. Or it can hand part of the profit to the people who own the company. That hand-out is a dividend. Dividends are usually paid in cash, most often every three…
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A stock is a small piece of ownership in a real company. When a company sells shares of stock, it is dividing itself into millions of equal pieces and letting the public buy them. Own one share of a company and you own one small slice of everything it has and everything it earns —…
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