Stocks » stock prices

Why are all the high street banks stock prices falling at the same time?

admin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:25:48 +0000

Why are all the high street banks stock prices falling all at the same time (RBS, BARC, HSBA)? To be accurate over the last 5 trading days.

The simple answer is beacause they are all banks!
Basically they are being told by the authorities to have more capital to cover possible bad debts, toxic assets etc. Alternatively the banks are saying, ‘OK, we will do less business rather than raising capital’. Less business, less profit. Hence share price fall. Furthermore the UK banks are exposed/linked to the UK economy. The UK economy is not going anywhere at best and slowing down into rexcession at worst. Again less business for the banks. There is also some contagion from the eurozone banks and their exposure to sovereign debt (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland etc.)

How does declining stock prices affect a company?

admin — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 06:01:18 +0000

When the stocks of one company falls, how does it hurt that company? Companies make money by selling whatever goods or services they produce, i don’t understand how the stock prices of a company will affect the companies ability to produce goods and services. When the stock prices fall, the stock holders lose money, but why does the company really care weather or not its stock holders loses money or not? The reason i ask this question is because I heard about how short sellers betting against a company and then destroying the values of a company’s stock, thus destroying a company.

Companies can raise capital three different ways. They can retain a portion of the money they earn and re-invest it, they can borrow money by taking out loans or issuing bonds, and they can sell shares of stock in the company.

If the stock price of a company is high, they can get a lot of money by issuing a smaller amount of stock. This allows the people who already own stock to risk less of their equity in the venture that requires more money. Conversely, if the stock price is down, existing shareholders must risk more of their equity in the new venture, as a percentage of the total cost.

When the number of shares outstanding goes up, the value of each share goes down, all other things remaining unchanged. This is because the share value is the expected value of the company divided by outstanding shares. Look at the concept of dilution for more information.

Also, if the stock price falls and current shareholders balk at issuing more stock, the company must pay interest to borrow money, or withhold dividends to retain more of its earnings. Both of these are harmful to the company’s existing shareholders to some degree

How do I check stock prices from exactly last week, 2 weeks ago, and 3 weeks ago?

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:02:25 +0000

I have a stock market project in my Economics class and I was out of school for a while and I just recently got this project and I need to check the stock prices for Apple, Sprint, and Verizon from exactly a week from today, 2 weeks, and 3 weeks? How would I go about doing so? Thanks for the help!

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=S+Historical+Prices

use that. Just type in the date that your looking for.

How can other countries’ economic woes affect our own markets and cause stock prices to go down?

admin — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:22:46 +0000

How is it that the US being downgraded from AAA to AA+ created market mayhem and lowering of stock prices in Australia and Asia?
How did the debt crisis in Greece cause US stock prices like the Dow Jones to fall down?

Markets do not like uncertainty. The more uncertainty there is — whether it is in Europe, Asia, or the US — the less inclined investors will be toward "riskier" investments such as equities.

How does naked short selling affect stock prices?

admin — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:44:52 +0000

With naked short selling aren’t you basically selling promises of stocks and not actual stocks? So why would they be registered in the stock exchange and thus how do they affect prices of the actual stocks of a company?

Short selling, whether it be "naked" or "collateralized" does not directly affect stock prices However, when there is a large amount of short sales the market at times will try to "squeeze" the shorts by driving the price of those stocks that have a large short interest higher with the intent to force the short sellers to cover.

Mechanically there is no difference between "naked" shorts and "collateralized" shorts, both are the sale of a security with the intent to cover a position at a future date
"Naked" short selling should be banned and those that sell "Naked" should be severally penalized.
"Naked" short seller does not effect or affect the market but it does disrupt the clearing process and does jeopardize legitimate purchasers.

Also, not all short sales mean that the seller must buy back the stock. Short selling is selling a stock that you will have to either buy back or deliver at at future date, Many sell short with the intentions of delivering the stock later, (Technically this is called shorting against the box). A person can own stock but elect not to deliver the stock at the time of the sale so they "sell short" then decide later to buy it in the open market or delivery the stock they own to cover the short.

Why won’t stock prices update themselves in yahoo finance?

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 01:51:25 +0000

I have a WiFi connection and Yahoo Finance will not update stock prices. Do I need a subscription or registration that I am not aware of to activate price updates?
Do I need to have the premium subscription just to get 15 minute delayed quotes?
I neglected to mention that this is a Yahoo Finance app on my Ipod Touch.

If your computer has java installed and you build a portfolio of stocks in Yahoo Finance and then click on the name of the portfolio you built it will open in a new window and your stock prices will update automatically.

In my experience it will only do this for about 30 minutes and then you have to refresh it.

What happens to stock prices in a takeover?

admin — Thu, 12 May 2011 04:58:18 +0000

The is company x which is very large and the competitor y. Company x decides to takeover y.

In a hostile takeover-
what happens to the stock prices of company x and y during, and after?
If company x wants to fire management and "kill" the company, how can y prevent this?

In a acquisition takeover-
what happens to the stock prices of company x and y during and after?

If x tries to acquire y then this typically results in the shares of y going up and the shares of x going down (it is not guaranteed of course). Risk arbitraguers exploit this by buying y and shorting x.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_arbitrage

y can try to prevent the acquisition by instituting a poison pill (Yahoo’s poison pill thwarted Microsoft’s takeover attempt which resulted in a huge decline in Yahoo’s stock price). For example, a company might give shareholders the right to buy new shares at a discount which is triggered when another shareholder controls a certain percentage of the company..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill

Why did many technology companies have a surge in their stock prices right around Y2K?

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:16:38 +0000

I’m looking at the stock histories of various tech companies, including Qualcomm, Cisco, Apple, Sony, Yahoo, and Dell, all of whom seemed to have their stock prices surge right around New Year 2000, only to have them sharply drop by the end of the year. What happened in the tech sector then? I thought people were fearful of investing in technology due to the Y2K bug, but the stocks don’t seem to have reflected that at all.

Many people believed in the late 90’s that the internet and IT would totally change the economy, something like what the industrial revolution did in the past – they called it "new economy". So they bought all technology stocks at ridiculous prices (like 500x annual profit). It was crowd psychology. People liked technology stocks, there was demand, so the financial analysts and companies recommended tech stocks, because that was where the money (and potential client commissions) was. The media covered it, people talked about it, it was like a spiral. There was a guy somewhere in a garage programming something on his computer and the investors were already throwing millions at him before he even showed any viable product or business plan. Technology was "in". You looked like a fool if you didn’t own tech stocks and your get-rich-quick friends were laughing at you.

Year 2K (the change 1999-2000) was not a big issue.

But the Fed raised interest rates in 1999-2000 and then there was economic slowdown and Bush came and Sept 11 and people saw the tech companies were no better at withstanding the economic slowdown than the "traditional" companies – except that they were priced 10x or 20x higher, so they fell sharply. Of course some companies survived and changed our lives (MSFT, DELL, AAPL, YHOO), but most just crashed and burned.

You see analogy of this from time to time, but people never learn – and another thing is that you never know if it’s a "bubble" or if it’s solid, until it happens. For example crude oil went to 150 in 2008. There were some solid fundamental reasons for the rise (oil gets scarce, no doubt about that). But there was also a big portion of psychology involved – people bought oil stocks and oil ETFs and oil everything. And then it went to 35. Same for other commodities in 2007-2008.

You see it with gold now. Everyone is talking about how gold will go to 1,500 or 2,000 dollars. It’s the popular thing now. But is it for real or will it drop again? No one knows, until it happens.

Why do public companies being bought out have increasing stock prices?

admin — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 09:24:35 +0000

Why is it that when a company is being bought out, the company usually sees an increase in its stock prices? What happens to the stocks of a company that gets bought out? Do they convert into the stocks of the company who bought them?

The buyer has to offer a higher price than what the company is trading at usually, to get investors to sell and compensate them for what they may have gained in the future if they held onto the stock. It depends on what the offer is as to what happens to the stock in the company being bought. The buyer could offer stock in their company ,or cash, or a combination of both.

How can i get the stock prices from yahoo finance?

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 04:43:36 +0000

I want to get the stock prices form yahoo finance with php or ajax, but i dont see anything interseting in the API. How can i do this?

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