How to Find Historical Prices for Stocks

You've all heard by now the expression, "Past performance is not indicative of future results." While that's true, looking at a company's historical stock performance is useful in understanding investors' perception of the company and the outlook for its future prospects. Both technical analysts and fundamental analysts evaluate a company's historical stock price, albeit for different reasons.

Technical analysts look at historical prices to find support and resistance levels, while fundamental analysts look at historical prices as one factor in determining a company's valuation and potential for growth. Whatever the reason, our markets page and stock ticker pages on Investopedia are a great place to find this information.

You can find our Markets page in the Investing menu on the header of our website. Simply click it to be redirected to that page, which contains charts for the major U.S. stock indices, news on popular stocks and the Markets, Gainers and Losers, ETFs, and other securities including commodities. You can also add stocks or ETFs to your 'Watchlist', which will enable you to track those securities every day. You can also sign up to receive e-mail alerts about the securities on your watchlist so you won't miss any news or developments that could impact its price. 

By typing in the ticker of the stock or ETF into our search box or on the markets page, you will be directed to a quote page for that security with great information, including key financial metrics, news, historical options data, and historical charts. Simply plug in the timeline you are interested in, and a chart with performance metrics will load right up. It's easy, and it's free.

There are many other places to find historical stock quotes, to be sure. There are thousands of websites and mobile apps that will provide both real-time and historical quotes as well as financial metrics across all categories. Sites like Bloomberg and MarketWatch are among the most popular, as well as Yahoo Finance. The key is knowing what to look for and what you want to do with that information.