What do open, close, high, and low mean?

The topic of this article is the answer to the following question: what do open, close, high, and low mean?

This is a great question for anyone who is interested in investing in the stock market.The nature of investing in the stock market has changed radically over the last even just ten or fifteen years.It used to be that if you were just a regular, average citizen, you did most of your investments through a stock broker.While you followed your stocks by perhaps looking at them in the newspaper at the end of the day, or maybe once a week, you weren't particularly involved in following them every day.Your broker was in charge of doing that.Well, investment times have changed.Today, more and more people are getting involved in investing in the stock market.They are taking charge of their own investments-deciding when to invest, what to invest in, how to invest, a particular investment style, and more.Learning how to invest is even more important today because Social Security and the majority of retirement plans are based heavily on investment as a way to ensure that you will have enough money to live on after you stop working.

A lot of people also use stock market investment to supplement their current income, or even base a lot of their current income on playing the stock market (though I don't know quite how wise this approach to earning an income is, since the stock market is a fickle beast).If you are going to use the stock market, however, you have to respect it.It has a lot of power, and it can be incredibly complicated.Tons of highly trained mathematicians, economist, and analysts have spent their entire lives working on complicated mathematical models in an attempt to crack the stock market and display its secrets so that you can scientifically direct your investments.As an investor, you don't need to be that involved in the stock market-besides, it's up to debate how well those mathematical models work.However, in order to invest successfully in the stock market, you need to be well prepared.You need various tools-stock charts, stock tickers, stock analysis.You also need to have a hold on the stock market vocabulary.What's the use of using all of that stock market information and analysis if you have no idea what any of it means?This article is going to give you a brief overview of four of the most important and basic terms used in the stock market exchange: open, close, high, and low.

Let's start with the term open.The term open is actually referring to a particular exchange rate.The open exchange rate is the official rate at which the stock market exchange opens on a trading day.This rate is not going to stay for particularly long, however.

Next, we move to the term close.The trading term close refers to two different things.First, it is the official exchange rate of the particular trading day.This is the rate of exchange which is in effect when the market closes for the day.The close also refers to the exact time of day when the exchange actually closes.This means that if a transaction is said to be set `on close', the close time is when the transaction is finalized.

Third, we have the term high.The high is the maximum rate of exchange for either the entire market, for a particular sector of the market, for a particular index, or for a particular stock.Make sure that you know what exactly the high is referring to.Make sure that you also know what period of time is being described: a day, a week, a month, a year, the history of the stock or index, whatever.

Finally, we have the low.The low is, obviously, the opposite of the high.The low is the lowest price of the market, the stock, the sector, the index, etc.It can be for any length of time.