Dr. Sarah's Stock Market Statistics Lab Part 1 -
One Per Person
NAME_________________________________
Circle one as your class time 9:30 or 11:00
From INTERNET EXPLORER,
click on this lab from the main class web page. Recall that underlined
links can be accessed by clicking on them on the web, and that
"Back" will take you back to this web page.
Total "Purchase" Price
On a SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER, choose your favorite stock symbol
from the stock intro homework.
Then answer the following questions on that other piece of paper
What is your stock symbols name?
What does this symbol stand for?
Go to
finance.yahoo.com,
and enter your symbol in and then hit the
"Get Quotes" key. Then click on "Chart", which is found under More Info.
Tip - when on a stock page,
hit Reload to update the pages, which change every 20 minutes or so.
In the larger table of the stock below the picture, you may see Bid and Ask.
Bid is the selling price, and Ask is the asking price that you
must purchase at.
What is your Ask price?
Note that the Ask price is a price per share. We will "buy" 100 shares.
But this isn't the total cost, since we must also pay a commission
fee. The following is from e-trade.
Nasdaq (4 letter name): 19.95
Other: 1, 2 or 3 letter name: 14.95
You pay these fees each time you buy or sell.
They may seem high, but standard commission fees
were a couple of hundred dollars before the (relatively recent)
advent of internet trading sites.
What is the total cost of purchasing your stock (
Ask price x 100 + commission fee)? SHOW WORK!
Show me your correct work. First come-first served.
Ie - the first person who correctly does this and gets approved by
me gets to track that stock. Everyone in the class must have
a different stock to track.
Once Dr. Sarah has approved your choice and math,
transfer the information from your piece of paper to this sheet
and then continue.
Getting Historical Data from Yahoo and Converting it to an Excel Chart
Follow Carefully!
Finding the Data
Open up a new browser (under File release on New Window)in
Internet Explorer and type in
http://chart.yahoo.com/d?s=nite
BUT replace nite with your stock symbol (the 1,2 3, or 4 letters).
What is the Start Date?
What is the End Date?
Scroll down to the bottom and click on the link
Download Spreadsheet Format
Notice that commas separate the different data points. Excel only
recognizes tabs as separators, so we are going (see below)
to replace each comma
with a tab before we put it in Excel.
Under Edit, release on Select All, then under Edit release on Copy.
Changing the Data In Word so that Excel Can Read It
Open up Word, and under Edit, release on Paste.
In Word, under Edit, release on Replace
Next to Find what, type ,
(We type a comma since we want to replace that with tabs.)
Next to Replace with, type ^t
(^t is Word's symbol for a tab.)
Hit Replace All, then Ok.
Close the Replace box.
Under Edit, release on Select All. You will see that all of
the data is now highlighted.
Then go back under edit
and release on copy.
Under File, release on quit to quit Word (do not save the Word file).
Working With the Data in Excel to Create a Chart
Open up Excel and under Edit, release on paste.
Notice that the Date will be in the first column, Open price in the 2nd, High price in the 3rd, Low price in the fourth, Close price in the fifth, and Volume in the sixth.
If you see ##### or something like 7E+05
anywhere, that just means that Excel does not have enough
room to display the entry. Make the column wider by going to the
top right of the column, clicking when you see a small letter t with the
horizontal part of the t actually as arrowheads, and holding down as
you make the column bigger by pulling it to the right.
You will probably need to make columns B and F wider.
If row 1 is a blank row, and the words "date, volume,..."
don't begin until row 2, then click on the gray 1
at the left of the row and then under edit release on delete.
Whenever we are working with data,
we first want to put it in increasing order.
Notice that our data is in decreasing order, as the date goes from
the most recent to the least recent.
Click on A1. Click on the Sort Ascending icon in Word
Notice that now the date is in increasing order.
We want to change one more thing before we create an Excel graph.
Click on B1
Under Insert, release on Columns.
Now there is an empty column
between date and open.
Click on G (which is now where the Volume is located)
Under Edit release on Cut
Click on B (the empty column)
Under Edit release on Paste
Notice that now our columns look like
Date-Volume-Open - High -Low - Close
To create our Excel graph
Click on B
Click on the key on the keyboard
that has an apple with a bite taken out of it and
hold this key down.
Continue to hold the apple key down as you click on
C then D then E then F.
Then columns B thru F
will all be selected.
Under Insert, release on Chart
Scroll down to stock and click on it
Under Chart sub-type, the bottom right picture should be
highlighted (Volume-Open-high-low-close)
Press and hold to view a sample to ensure that you see something like
this NITE Excel graph link
Click on Next
Click on Next a second time
Under Chart title - type your stock symbol and your name.
For example NITE - Dr. Sarah
Then click on Finish.
Save your excel document into the public folder/save files here folder as
yourfirstnameyourstocksymbol.xls
for example drsarahnite.xls
Your excel document with the picture
should look something like this link,
although the dates, data and picture itself will be for your stock.
Have Dr. Sarah check that it is correct before you print and send
it to yourself on campus pipeline.
Make sure that you have clicked on the graph and then print a copy
for Dr. Sarah.
Then, on campus pipeline, send a copy to yourself. You will use this again
in a future lab.
2 Web Graphs that show that different representations of similar
data can be used to illustrate conflicting viewpoints.
Read through Dr. Sarah's NITE graphs
web page -
be sure to read the conclusion at the bottom of the second graph too!
Look for 2 graphs from finance.yahoo.com
which chart your stocks progress
that show that different representations of similar
data can be used to illustrate conflicting viewpoints.
Once you have chosen these two graphs with conflicting
viewpoints, discuss them below.
What is the time frame of your 1st graph and what does it show?
What is the time frame of your second graph and what conflicting
viewpoint does it show?