What should I look for when looking for stocks that are 'on-sale'?
It might seem like the PE ratio is very useful, but it's actually pretty useless as a measure used to make buy or sell decisions, and taken largely on its own, pretty useless becomes utterly and completely useless. Stocks trade at prices based on future expectations and speculation, so that means if traders expect a company to double its profits next year, the share price could easily double (there are reasons it might not increase so much, and there are reasons it could increase even more than that, but that's not the point). The Price is now double, but the Earnings is still the same, so the PE ratio is double, and this doubling is based on something some traders know, or think they know, but other traders might not know or not believe! Once you understand that, what use is a PE ratio really? The PE ratio of a company might be low because it is in a death spiral, with many traders believing it will report lower and lower profits in years to come, and the lower the PE ratio of a given company gets probably, relatively, the more likely it is to go bust! If you buy a stock with a low PE ratio you must do so because you feel you understand the company, understand why the market is viewing it negatively, believe that the negativity is wrong or over done, and believe that it will turn around. Equally a PE ratio might be high, but be an excellent buy still because it has excellent growth prospects and potential even beyond what is priced in already! Lets face it, SOMEONE has been buying at the price that's put that PE ratio where is is, right? They might be wrong of course, or not! Or they might be justified now but circumstances might change before earnings ever reach the current priced in expectation. You'll know next year probably! To answer your actual question... first you should now understand there is no such thing as a stock that is on sale, just stocks that are priced broadly according to the markets consensus on its value in years to come, the closest thing being a stock that is 'over sold' (but one man's 'over sold' is another man's train crash remember)... so what to actually look for? The only way to (on average) make good buy and sell decisions is to know about investing and trading (buy some books, I have 12), understand the businesses you propose to invest in and understand their market(s) (which may also mean understanding national and international economics somewhat). Don't invest. Keep cash. And wait till you see a crash in the price of some of your favorite blue chip stocks. But wait till the true bottom is in...you will know when is the right time as it will be obvious.
I found the answer. It was the Stock Ticker that I was looking for. So, if I understand correctly the price at certain moment is the price of the latest sale and can be used to get a global picture of what certain stock is worth at that certain instant. Well I'm not going to advise whether it's a good idea to invest in this company (though often OTC is pretty scary), but it DOES have a product (vivio, an ad blocker), it did post financials and it's trading on the OTC-QB (which is better than the pink sheets), so you need to look these over and study up on the product to decide if it is overpriced or not.  What might have occurred (viz the Patriot Berry Farm becoming Cyberfort) is that the latter bought up the stock of the former (this is, I believe, called using a shell, which is not necessarily a bad thing) and is using this as a way to be registered, i.e. sell to non-accredited investors via the OTC market.  So I'm really just answering your third question:  yes, you have to do a lot of due diligence to see if buying this stock is a good deal or not.  It might be the next big thing.  Or it might not. It certainly is the case that low trading volume allows a relatively small trade to really change the stock price, so the penny stocks do tend to be easier to 'inflate'. Side comment:  the bid/ask spreads are pretty big, with a best bid of 0.35 and best ask of 0.44. Try Google Finance Screener ; you will be able to filter for NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges. Buying stocks is like an auction. Put in the price you want to pay and see if someone is willing to sell at that price.  Thing to remember about after hours trading; There is a lot less supply so there's always a larger bid/ask price spread. That's the price brokers charge to handle the stocks they broker over and above the fee.  That means you will always pay more after the market closes. Unless it is bad news, but I don't think you want to buy when that happens. I think a lot of the after market trading is to manipulate the market. Traders drive up the price overnight with small purchases then sell their large holdings when the market opens. I think that's a bad way to look at it. What if the price of that asset never fails below that value again? Do you just never buy?  I think a better way to operate is to do your due diligence, and if the asset you're looking at holds value for you at its current price, then jump in. Otherwise - look somewhere else. I think following the professional money managers is a strategy worth considering. The buys from your favorite investors can be taken as strong signals. But you should never buy any stock blindly just because someone else bought it. Be sure do your due diligence before the purchase. The most important question is not what they bought, but why they bought it and how much. To add/comment on Freiheit's points: "The penny/pink sheet stocks you tend to see promoted are the ones a) with small public floats or, b) they are thinly traded.  This means that any appreciable change in buy/sell volume will have an outsized effect on the stock's share price, even when the underlying fundamentals are not so great.  Promoters are frequently paid based on how much they can move a stock's price, but such moves are not long-lasting.  They peter out when the trading volumes return to more normal ranges for the stock because all of the hype has died out. There are some small-cap NASDAQ stocks which can be susceptible to promotion for the same reason -- they have small floats and/or are thinly traded.  Once someone figures out the best targets, they'll accumulate a position and then start posting all kinds of ""news"" on the web in an effort to drum up interest so they can sell off their position into the buying that follows.   The biggest problem with penny/pink sheet stocks is that they frequently fail to publish reliable financial statements, and their ownership is of a dubious nature.  In the past, these types of stocks have been targeted by organized crime syndicates, which ran their own ""pump and dump"" operations as a way to make relatively easy money.  This may still be true to some extent today.   Be wary of investing in any publicly-traded firm that has to use promoters to drum up investor interest, because it can be a serious red flag.  Even if it means missing out on a short-term opportunity, research the company before investing.  Read its financials, understand how it has behaved through its trading history, learn about the products/services it is selling.  Do your homework.  Otherwise you are doing the investing equivalent of taking your money and lighting it on fire. Remember, there's a good reason these companies are trading as penny/pink sheet stocks, and it generally has nothing to do with the notion (the promoters will tell you) that somehow the ""market has missed out on this amazing opportunity.""  Pump and dump schemes, which lie at the heart of almost all stock promotion, rely on convincing you, the investor, that you're smart enough to see what others haven't.  I hope this helps. Good luck!" Some personal finance packages can track basis cost of individual purchase lots or fractions thereof. I believe Quicken does, for example. And the mutual funds I'm invested in tell me this when I redeem shares. I can't vouch for who/what would make this visible at times other than sale; I've never had that need. For that matter I'm not sure what value the info would have unless you're going to try to explicitly sell specific lots rather than doing FIFO or Average accounting. "Investors are ""forever"" comparing the prices of stocks to other stocks. As others have pointed out, this is done faster and more frequently nowadays with high-speed computer programs. There may be no ""fresh"" news on stock A, but if there is fresh news on stock B (as there usually is), the news on B affects the COMPARISON with stock A. That could be what causes trading in stock A that has ""no news.""" Thanks for the advice. I will look into index funds.   The only reason I was interested in this stock in particular is that I used to work for the company, and always kept an eye on the stock price. I saw that their stock prices recently went down by quite a bit but I feel like I've seen this happen to them a few times over the past few years and I think they have a strong catalogue of products coming out soon that will cause their stock to rise over the next few years.   After not being able to really understand the steps needed to purchase it though, I think I've learned that I really don't know enough about the stock system in general to make any kind of informed decisions about it and should probably stick to something lower-risk or at least do some research before making any ill-informed decisions. "In my experience when a salesperson says a particular deal is only good if you purchase right now, 100% of the time it is not true. Of course I can't guarantee that is universally the case, but if you leave and come back 5 minutes later, or tomorrow, or next week, it's extremely likely that they'll still take your money for the original price. (In fact, sometimes after you leave you get a call with even a lower price than the ""excellent offer""...) Most of the time when you are presented with high pressure sales accompanied by a ""this price is only good right now"" pitch, it ends up being because they don't want you to go search the competition and read reviews. In this case you have already done that and deemed the item to be worthwhile. Perhaps a better tactic for the salesperson would have been to try to convince you that others are interested in the item and if you wait it might be sold to someone else at that excellent price. Sales is an art, and it requires the salesperson to size you up and try to figure out your vulnerability and exploit it. This particular salesperson obviously misjudged you and/or you don't have an easily exploitable vulnerability. I wouldn't let the shortcomings of the salesperson get in the way of your purchase. If you are worried about the scenario of someone else snatching up the item, consider offering a deposit to hold the item for a certain amount of time while you ""reflect"" and/or ""arrange for the funds""." Sure. No-one promises that all the outstanding stocks are ever for sale, but if you get them all - you get them all, what marketplace you used for that doesn't really matter. The usual lazy recommendation: See what similar objects, in similar condition, of similar age, have sold for recently on eBay. That establishes a fair market value by directly polling the market. "They are not selling stocks. They are selling OJ futures contracts. Selling a futures contract at 142 gives the buyer the right to buy a fixed number of pounds of orange juice concentrate (""OJ"") on a future date at 142 cents per pound. The seller has an obligation to suppy that fixed number of pounds of OJ to the buyer on the future date for 142 cents per pound. When the seller turns around and buys future contracts at 29, the seller gets the right to buy OJ on a future date at 29. This ""zeros his position"" -- meaning he's guaranteed himself the ability to deliver the pounds of OJ he was obligated to supply when he sold futures contracts at 142. And since he'll only have to pay 29 cents per pound, and he'll be selling the OJ for 142 per pound, he'll walk away with 113 cents of profit for every pound sold. You can read a blow-by-blow account of what Winthorpe and Valentine did at the end of ""Trading Places"" here and here. Note that what they did would not be legal today under the ""Eddie Murphy rule"", which prohibits trades based on illicitly obtained government information." "Most markets around the world have been downtrending for the last 6 to 10 months. The definition of a downtrend is lower lows and lower highs, and until you get a higher low and confirmation with a higher high the downtrend will continue. If you look at the weekly charts of most indexes you can determine the longer term trend. If you are more concerned with the medium term trend then you could look at the daily charts. So if your objective is to try and buy individual stocks and try to make some medium to short term profits from them I would start by first looking at the daily charts of the index your stock belongs to. Only buy when the intermediate trend of the market is moving up (higher highs and higher lows).  You can do some brief analysis on the stocks your interested in buying, and two things I would add to the short list in your question would be to check if earnings are increasing year after year. The second thing to look at would be to check if the earnings yield is greater than the dividend yield, that way you know that dividends are being paid out from current earnings and not from previous earning or from borrowings. You could then check the daily charts of these individual stocks and make sure they are uptrending also. Buy uptrending stocks in an uptrending market. Before you buy anything write up a trading plan and develop your trading rules. For example if price breaks through the resistance line of a previous high you will buy at the open of the next day. Have your money management and risk management rules in place and stick to your plan. You can also do some backtesting or paper trading to check the validity of your strategy. A good book to read on money and risk management is - ""Trade your way to Financial Freedom"" by Van Tharp. Your aim should not be to get a winner on every trade but to let your winners run and keep your losses small."