Many market participants often wonder about the factors that will move stock prices - what will make the stock price go up. If one is able to analyze the factors that influence stock prices, buying stocks will be easy. There is no mathematical equations or formula which can help to determine whether a stock price will go up or down. However a number of factors play a key role in the price of a stock.
This article will look to explore some of these factors and help to understand on how to buy stock based on these factors:
1. Fundamental Outlook: One of the most important factors that influence stock prices is the fundamental outlook of the underlying company. The earnings per share (EPS) and the Price to Earnings ratio (P/E) is an important
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Technical & Charts: Stock pricing patterns on the charts too have a major role. In fact, it is often said that, charts tend to price in all the factors that influence stock prices. The patterns or indicators in stock prices, volumes, moving averages and many others over a time frame can give good indications as to how the stock will get priced in futures. For example, crossover of stock prices over the 50-day and 200-day Moving Averages generally led to a sharp increase in stock prices.
9. Demographics: Macroeconomic factors play a major role in the stock markets as a whole. Amongst the various macroeconomic factors, demographics are an important factor. Generally middle-aged people tend to invest more in stock markets than old aged people. So stock markets of countries that have more of middle-aged people tend to perform well than the stock markets of countries that have aged demographics.
10. Interest Rates: Interest rates are also a major macroeconomic factor that has an overall influence on the stock markets. Higher interest rates mean that money becomes more expensive to borrow. As a result the economic activity tends to slow down and the earning tends to see depreciation. This leads to drop in stock prices. Similarly, when the interest rates are low there stocks see
The Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation stock has an EPS of 1.42 and a P/E ratio of 10.52. Upon running a regression, a coefficient of 0.139 was calculated. This means that if the SWHC stock increases by 1%, the S&P 500 stock will increase by 0.139%.When compared against the S&P 500 index, the SWHC stock has a correlation of 16.3%. This is relatively low. The SWHC stock can explain approximately 16.3% of the variation in the S&P 500. In other words, the stock does not behave the same as the S&P 500 and should not be used to predict the S&P 500. There is about 83.7% of the...
The first financial ratio of the analysis is the Price to Earnings ratio (“P/E ratio”). The ratio is computed by dividing the price of one share of common stock, by the earnings per share of common stock. This analysis uses diluted earnings per share which assumes the issuance of new stock for all existing stock options. Also, the price of the stock was computed as an average of the fourth quarter high and low stock prices published in the 10K report of each company, because the year end stock prices were not listed for all the companies. Because the P/E ratio measures the relative costliness of different stocks, in relation to their income, it provides a useful place to begin the analysis.
Nowadays, with competition between companies higher than ever, stock prices of individual companies fluctuate more than ever. You really have to know the company you are investing in and know their history. My team in “The Stock Market Game” made investments in two promising companies. Apple stock has slowly, but steadily rose over the past 10 years and we choose this stock simply because we needed a stock that was stable and reliable. The other company we picked was Dollar Tree Inc, this stock was slightly less reliable and had a bigger risk but it shows to be a promising investment in the near future. If I were to find two companies to make long term investments in, It would be these.
The first statistic that will be discussed is stock price. According to the Capsim Student Guide, stock price is determined by book value, the last two years’ earnings per share (EPS),
We cannot deny that APT is effectively applicable when explaining performance of investment portfolios, this has been researched and tested by a number of scholars. Most recently Ramadan (2012) carried out a test of validity of APT in the Jordian Stock Market, his findings were that macroeconomic variables as well as market indicators explained 84% of the variation in returns on his chosen market portfolio. Another finding was that the effect of certain variables converse when comparing industries within the market. (Ramadan,
Interest rates can directly affect businesses as the increase of interest will discourage spending and more saving, whereas the decrease of interest will encourage more spending and less saving as money is cheaper to borrow.
The trends in unemployment affect three important macroeconomics variables: 1) gross domestic product (GDP), 2) unemployment rate, and 3) the inflation rate.
Stock investment means you are purchasing a share of the company, therefore the company’s success determines the value of your investment. Buying stocks is not a difficult process; clarification of some important terminology and differentiation helps gives you the foundation to start investing.
Important factors of a company’s outlook are its financial strength and weaknesses. These factors can be evaluated by reviewing the firm’s financial statements and using ratios to help measure a company’s liquidity, leverage, activity, profitability, and growth. Financial ratios are computed by using the information found in a company’s financial statements: primarily income statement and balance sheet. The calculations from the current year, previous years, and other companies in the industry are used as a basis to identify and ev...
Interest rates and the effects of interest rates on the economy concern not only macroeconomists but consumers, savers, borrowers, and lenders. A country may react and change their interest rates, according to the prosperity of their economy. Interest rates, is the percentage usually on an annual basis that is paid by the borrower to the lender for a loan of money (Merriam-Webster). If banks decided not to use interest rates, it would be impossible for others to be able to take out loans and therefore, there would be far less spending money in the economy. With interest rates, this allows banks to take a percentage of the consumer’s money and loan it out to others, thus allowing economic growth to be possible. Interest rates also allow lenders to have a “safety net” which is necessary because there is a possibility that the borrower would be unable to pay back a loan to the bank. A nation’s interest rates can be raised or lowered and these shifts in interest rates correlate directly to aggregate demand. Aggregate demand, is the total demand for final goods and services in an economy at a given time (Business Dictionary). A nation uses interest rates for economic growth or to help prevent inflation. When economic growth is needed a nation would lower their interest rates. However, if a country is concerned about inflation, they may choose to raise their interest rates. When interest rates, raised or lowered, will have a negative or positive impact on consumers, and have a positive or negative impact on investors.
There is a sense of complexity today that has led many to believe the individual investor has little chance of competing with professional brokers and investment firms. However, Malkiel states this is a major misconception as he explains in his book “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”. What does a random walk mean? The random walk means in terms of the stock market that, “short term changes in stock prices cannot be predicted”. So how does a rational investor determine which stocks to purchase to maximize returns? Chapter 1 begins by defining and determining the difference in investing and speculating. Investing defined by Malkiel is the method of “purchasing assets to gain profit in the form of reasonably predictable income or appreciation over the long term”. Speculating in a sense is predicting, but without sufficient data to support any kind of conclusion. What is investing? Investing in its simplest form is the expectation to receive greater value in the future than you have today by saving income rather than spending. For example a savings account will earn a particular interest rate as will a corporate bond. Investment returns therefore depend on the allocation of funds and future events. Traditionally there have been two approaches used by the investment community to determine asset valuation: “the firm-foundation theory” and the “castle in the air theory”. The firm foundation theory argues that each investment instrument has something called intrinsic value, which can be determined analyzing securities present conditions and future growth. The basis of this theory is to buy securities when they are temporarily undervalued and sell them when they are temporarily overvalued in comparison to there intrinsic value One of the main variables used in this theory is dividend income. A stocks intrinsic value is said to be “equal to the present value of all its future dividends”. This is done using a method called discounting. Another variable to consider is the growth rate of the dividends. The greater the growth rate the more valuable the stock. However it is difficult to determine how long growth rates will last. Other factors are risk and interest rates, which will be discussed later. Warren Buffet, the great investor of our time, used this technique in making his fortune.
Primarily, financial managers look at the market price in maximizing the value of the firm. The market value is the present value of the net cash flow divided buy the risk. Investors consider the firm’s future and present earnings, disadvantages or risks and other factors that will influence a firm prior to deciding to create an investment decision and the market price of the stock that will reflect all the information considering these factors (Arain, 2011).
The efficient market hypothesis has been one of the main topics of academic finance research. The efficient market hypotheses also know as the joint hypothesis problem, asserts that financial markets lack solid hard information in making decisions. Efficient market hypothesis claims it is impossible to beat the market because stock market efficiency causes existing share prices to always incorporate and reflect all relevant information . According to efficient market hypothesis stocks always trade at their fair value on stock exchanges, making it impossible for investors to either purchase undervalued stocks or sell stocks for inflated prices. As such, it should be impossible to outperform the overall market through expert stock selection or market timing, and that the only way an investor can possibly obtain higher returns is by purchasing riskier investments . In reality once cannot always achieve returns in excess of average market return on a risk-adjusted basis. They have been numerous arguments against the efficient market hypothesis. Some researches point out the fact financial theories are subjective, in other words they are ideas that try to explain how markets work and behave.
Choosing two profitable stocks amongst a myriad of potential alternatives is a daunting task to say the least. In order to narrow my choices from thousands to two, I examined several aspects of companies I was interested in. Among these were, company overview, alpha and beta ratings, price ratios, price charts, and company headlines. After evaluating this information, I chose Intuit INC (INTU) listed on the NASDAQ and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) listed on the NYSE.
The cost of changes is divided into several groups, which include various elements associated with the stages of investment in the project.