Learn the stock market › Read a stock chart › Lesson 1 of 6
How to read a stock chart
Microsoft, the last year
Price
The axes
The horizontal axis is time. The oldest day sits on the left and the latest trading day, Nov 6, 2026, on the right. Weekends and market holidays are left out, because nothing trades then. So a month is about 21 points and a year about 250.
The vertical axis is the price, in dollars per share. It usually does not start at zero. It runs from a little under the period's lowest price to a little over its highest, so the moves are easy to see. That can make a fall of a few percent look steep. Read the numbers on the axis before you read the shape.
What a point means
A point is one day's closing price, the price when the market closed. Whatever happened during the day is not in a line. The day's open, high and low are shown by bars and candlesticks.
The prices in the chart are adjusted for dividends. Older points therefore sit lower than the price that actually traded back then. The reason is in Splits and dividends in the chart.
The period tells the story
The same stock can seem to rise or fall depending on how far back you look. This is Microsoft up to Nov 6, 2026:
| Period | From | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 1 month | Oct 6, 2026 | +0.2% |
| 1 year | Nov 6, 2025 | +7.6% |
| 5 years | Nov 5, 2021 | +64.5% |
| 10 years | Nov 4, 2016 | +917.8% |
Over a year the price moved +7.6%, and over the last month +0.2%. Another period can paint a very different picture, so look at several.
The year's highest close was $555.80 on Nov 4, 2026 and the lowest $352.16 on Jun 25, 2026. Over ten years the stock moved +918%. None of this says where the price goes next. Looking for patterns in the chart to try to say that is called technical analysis.
Test yourself
A chart shows a stock climbing steeply over the last week. What should you check first?
More numbers are on the Microsoft page.