Ownership of a company is divided into shares or stocks. The shares of publicly traded companies can be bought or sold in stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange. On each day of trading, data such as the following are recorded for each stock:
Data Item
Description
Open
The opening price of the stock.
Close
The closing price of the stock.
High
The highest price of the stock.
Low
The lowest price of the stock.
Volume
The amount of shares bought and sold.
When the shares of a company are traded, the company is given a short name or ticker symbol. For example, Apple Inc. trades as AAPL and Amazon.com Inc. trades as AMZN.