Stock quotes refer to the price of anything that sells on a particular stock exchange.
The quote can be for a mutual fund, a stock, an option, or an ETF.
It is important to remember that the quote is simply the price that you can buy or sell a particular instrument on the stock exchanges.
All stock market quotes have a bid and ask, the bid is what you can sell your stock or option, or ETF for.
The ask is what you have to buy any of the above mentioned Financial Instruments for.
The same thing is true of almost all Financial Instruments.
So if the bid of a particular stock is 15 and ask of the particular stock is 16, this means that if you own the stock you could probably get it sold for $15.
00 per share.
If you wanted to buy the stock that means you have to pay $16.
00 per share There are two main types of quotes, there are real time quotes, which reflect the price of the underlying stock or ETF instantly.
There are also delayed quotes, that are delayed by roughly 15 minutes or so.
Which means that quote shows the actual price of a stock on the stock market exchange 15 minutes ago.
Most people prefer to deal with real time s, as they are more accurate.
There are several sources online way you can get real time quotes, for free.
The stock broker generally provides real time information for you as long as you maintain an account with them.
There are also some free online stock market services that give free real-time or just slightly delayed quotes.