Dr. Sarah's Stock Market Intro - 1 Per Person

NAME________________________________________________ Circle one as your class time 9:30 or 11
Purpose: To learn about the stock market, learn about advance searches on the web, and transition from Financial Mathematics to Statistics, our next segment.
Open up a web browser and go to the main class web page
http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/class/1010
and then this stock market intro.

Finding Stocks with Appalachian in the Name

There is a lot of information available on the web, and we will learn effective web searching techniques in order to satisfy part of the computer designator on the course. These web searching techniques are very useful.

Type in or click on http://finance.yahoo.com/l (that last letter is the letter "l" not the number 1) Type Appalachian and then hit Search so that yahoo can return stocks which have Appalachian in the name. Click on AJA (Appalachian Power Company). While there is some information listed, there is no profile which describes the company.
To find out more info, type in or click on http://www.yahoo.com. Under Search for: Type in the following exactly as you see it:
Appalachian
  • How many web pages of links does yahoo find? (Look above categories to find this - look for "blah sites" for Appalachian.)

    This is too many pages, many not relevant, and so scroll down to the bottom to the Next Search.
    Now search with:
    +"Appalachian Power Company" +AJA
    Quotes tell the search engine to find pages with that phrase in it, while + is used to tell it to find that word in it. Hit the Search Button.
  • How many documents did we find matching our query?

    Notice that changing the words made a big difference in our searches. This is too few pages, which contain very little actual info in them.
    Next search with:
    +"Appalachian Power" +AJA
    (notice that I took off the word "company"
  • How many web pages does this search bring up now?

  • Click on the link that says
    Gateway to Investor Info Online - Quantum Investment Service
  • Click on the AJA link
  • Click on the Company's Online Profile link (at the top).
  • Write down the description of "about AEP". Notice that this abreviation is different than the stock market abbreviation. This happens sometimes, which makes searching more challenging.







    The point of this exercise is to show that a small difference in wording can make a big difference in searching, to show that sometimes creative searching is needed to find reasonable info on the web, and to give you the tools needed to do advanced searches on your own. You are responsible for learning the advanced searching techniques.

    Finding a Stock to "Buy" and Track

    Search for 5 stocks that you are interested in "buying" and tracking. You must pick stocks that are actively traded day-to-day, something other than NITE (which I will track) and it must be a stock with a name containing 1,2, 3 or 4 letters only (ie A, AB, ABC, or ABCD). Something.blah is NOT ALLOWED, and neither are longer names nor names containing symbols other than letters. Here are a couple of other places to look for stocks
    finance.yahoo.com/l to search for stocks with certain names (note that the search features are not very user friendly)    (that last letter is the letter "l" not the number 1)
    www.yahoo.com You could search for +"stock symbol" +"COMPANY NAME", where COMPANY NAME is the name of the company that you are interested in.
    www.stockmaster.com
    finance.yahoo.com
  • What are your 5 stock symbols names - the 4 or less letters - AND the names of the companies?









  • Skim pages 121 - 128 in the textbook in order to gain some familiarity with stock information.