🔢 Reading a stock quote on NSE and BSE: every number explained

🎯 In 30 seconds: A quote page on NSE, BSE or your broker's app is a snapshot of one share at one moment. The top line is the last traded price (LTP) and how far it has moved from the previous close. Around it sit three groups of numbers: how today has gone (open, high, low, average price, volume), how much room the price has (the daily price band and the 52-week range), and what the company is (series, face value, market cap, P/E, ISIN). India adds two numbers you rarely see elsewhere: the price band, which caps how far many shares can move in a day, and the delivery percentage, which tells you how much of the day's trading ended with shares actually changing owners. Every number is either a fact about trades already done or a simple calculation. None of them tells you what happens next.

A quote is a scoreboard, not a forecast

Think of the scoreboard at a cricket ground. It tells you the runs, the wickets, the run rate and the overs left. It does not tell you who will win. A share quote works the same way. It records what has already happened in today's trading, and gives you enough context to judge whether today is normal or unusual.

You find a quote by the company's symbol. On NSE the symbol is a short word code (for example a made-up company, Sharma Foods Ltd, might be SHARMAFOOD). BSE uses a six-digit scrip code as well as a short name. Your broker's app usually lets you type either the company name or the symbol and then pick the exchange.

Here is a quote panel for Sharma Foods, a hypothetical company. The numbers fit together the way real ones do, and the rest of this chapter takes them one at a time.

Before reading any number, check the time on the quote. Free public pages can lag, and many apps show a delayed price until you log in. During the normal session (9:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. IST on NSE) a quote from fifteen minutes ago can be well away from where you could trade now. Market hours and settlement covers the sessions.

LTP, previous close and change

The big number is the LTP, last traded price: the price of the most recent trade on that exchange. It is not an offer anyone is making to you right now. It is the latest piece of history.

Change compares the LTP with the previous close, the official closing price of the last trading day. Percent change divides that difference by the previous close.

One detail surprises beginners. In India the official close is usually not the last trade of the day. For most shares NSE takes the volume-weighted average price of trades in the last 30 minutes of the normal session. Since 3 August 2026, shares that have futures and options contracts get their official close from a separate closing auction session instead, where orders are pooled and matched at one price. In October 2026 SEBI revised that auction's timing, with the changes starting on 7 December 2026 (as of October 2026). So the "close" on your app and the last trade you saw at 3:29 p.m. can differ, and the close is what tomorrow's change is measured from.

Open, high, low and the average price

The open is the first price of the day. On NSE it is set in the pre-open session: orders are collected from 9:00 to 9:08 a.m., the exchange works out the single price at which the most shares can trade, and normal trading starts at 9:15 a.m. That is why a share can "open" well above or below yesterday's close after overnight news. The chapter on chart basics shows how these gaps look on a chart.

High and low are the extremes traded so far today. The range between them is a rough measure of how restless the day has been: ₹489.90 minus ₹476.50 is ₹13.40, about 2.8% of the previous close.

The average price, often labelled VWAP (volume-weighted average price), is the total value of all trades divided by the total number of shares traded. It is the price an average share changed hands at today. NSE's daily price files carry it as a separate column next to open, high, low and close.

The LTP of ₹486.40 is above the average price of ₹484.15, so anyone who bought after the first hour has, on average, paid less than the price now. Some traders watch whether the price holds above or below VWAP during the day. Volume and delivery percentage works through the calculation.

The price band: India's daily speed limit

Most Indian shares have a price band, also called a circuit filter. It is the furthest the price is allowed to move in one day from the previous close. SEBI allows bands of up to 20% either way, and NSE uses bands of 2%, 5%, 10% and 20%, depending on the share. Orders priced outside the band are rejected.

When a share hits its upper band and there are only buyers left, people say it is "in the upper circuit". The quote then shows a large total buy quantity and almost no sellers. The opposite, a lower circuit, can leave holders unable to sell at any price that day. That is a real risk in small companies, and it is the reason a stop-loss order cannot protect you in every case. See Stop losses.

Shares that have futures and options contracts work differently. They have no fixed band. Instead the exchange applies a wider dynamic band, starting at 10% from the previous close, which it can widen in steps during the day if the move continues. The exact rules sit in SEBI's master circular. The rules every Indian trader runs into covers bands, surveillance lists and market-wide halts.

The series code: EQ, BE and the rest

Next to the symbol, NSE shows a two-letter series. It tells you how trades in that share are settled. The ones you will meet most:

NSE's "legend of series" page lists every code, including those for bonds, government securities and rights entitlements. A share can move between series after a surveillance review, so check it each time, not once.

Volume, value and delivery percentage

Volume is the number of shares traded so far today on that exchange. Value (or turnover) is the rupee amount: roughly volume multiplied by the average price. Sharma Foods has traded 6,25,400 shares worth about ₹30.28 crore. If its normal day is 4 lakh shares, today is about 1.6 times busier than usual.

The number almost unique to India is delivery quantity, and the delivery percentage that comes with it. It is the part of the day's traded quantity that was actually settled by shares moving from seller to buyer's demat account, rather than being bought and sold again within the day.

The other 55% was intraday trading that netted out. For comparison, SEBI's annual report for 2025-26 says delivered quantity was 29.3% of traded quantity across the two main clearing corporations that year, up from 23.6% the year before. A share with 45% delivery is seeing more ownership change than the market average. A share that rises on 10% delivery is mostly being churned by day traders. The final delivery figure is published after the day ends, so an intraday number on a quote page may be from the previous session. Check the date. The volume chapter covers how to use it, and its limits.

Many quote pages also show total buy quantity and total sell quantity: the shares waiting in pending orders on each side. They change every second and orders can be cancelled at any time, so treat them as a mood reading, not a promise. The top five bids and offers, called market depth, are explained in Bid, ask, market depth and liquidity.

The 52-week range

The 52-week high and low are the highest and lowest prices over the past year. Together with today's price, they tell you where the share sits in its recent history.

A share near its 52-week high has had buyers in charge for a while. One near its low has had sellers in charge. Both can stay that way much longer than seems reasonable. NSE publishes daily lists of shares touching new 52-week highs and lows, which some traders use as a starting point, as you will see in Momentum trading.

One trap: after a bonus issue or a split, the old prices are adjusted so that the range stays comparable. If one website shows a 52-week high of ₹1,080 and another shows ₹540 for the same share, check whether a 1:1 bonus happened during the year. Dividends, bonus issues, splits and buybacks explains the adjustment.

Face value, market cap and free float

Face value (or par value) is the nominal value printed on each share, often ₹1, ₹2, ₹5 or ₹10. It has almost nothing to do with the market price. Its main uses are accounting and dividends: Indian companies often announce dividends as a percentage of face value, so "a 60% dividend" on a ₹10 face value share is ₹6 per share, not 60% of the market price.

Market capitalisation is the market value of all the company's shares: the share price multiplied by the number of shares issued.

The free float is the part of the shares that is realistically available to trade. In India the biggest locked-up block is usually the promoter holding: the founding family or parent company that controls the business. Index providers such as NSE Indices weight their indices by free-float market cap, which is why a company with a large promoter stake can carry less weight in the Nifty than its full size suggests. See Market indexes.

Market cap is how you compare company size. A ₹40 share can belong to a far bigger company than a ₹4,000 share, if it has many more shares. SEBI and AMFI sort listed companies into large, mid and small cap by full market cap rank, and AMFI publishes the list twice a year. Growth vs value, and company size covers the cut-offs.

EPS, P/E and dividend yield

Earnings per share (EPS) is profit after tax divided by the number of shares. Quote pages usually use trailing twelve months (TTM): the last four reported quarters added up. The price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) divides the price by EPS. It tells you how many rupees the market is paying for each rupee of yearly profit.

NSE's quote page shows the company's own P/E and, separately, the P/E of its sector index, which helps with a first comparison. Two sites can still show different P/Es for the same share. One may use standalone profit and another consolidated profit (which includes subsidiaries), or one may not yet have the latest quarter. If a company made a loss, the P/E is blank. That is not an error: a P/E has no meaning without earnings. Whether 20 is high or low depends on the business, which is the subject of Valuation ratios.

Dividend yield divides the dividend paid over the last year by the price. Sharma Foods paid ₹6 per share: ₹6 / ₹486.40 = 1.23%. Yield rises when the price falls, so a very high yield can mean the market expects the dividend to be cut.

The ISIN: the share's identity card

The ISIN (International Securities Identification Number) is a 12-character code that identifies one specific security. Indian ISINs start with "IN". The symbol is what you type on an exchange. The ISIN is what your depository uses to hold the shares in your demat account. If you open your NSDL or CDSL statement, your holdings are listed by ISIN.

The ISIN matters when names are confusing. Two companies can have similar names, and one company can have several securities (equity shares, partly paid shares, bonds). Checking that the ISIN on your contract note matches the ISIN in your demat statement is the surest way to know you hold what you meant to buy.

A worked example: two quotes side by side

Two hypothetical companies. Use only the quote to describe them.

What the numbers say:

• Size. Iyer Pharma is the bigger company, ₹4,300 crore against ₹3,360 crore, even though Verma's share price is about one fiftieth of Iyer's. Share price alone says nothing about size.
• Price for profits. The market pays ₹14 for each rupee of Verma's yearly profit and ₹35 for each rupee of Iyer's. It is either expecting much faster growth at Iyer or seeing more risk at Verma.
• Trading conditions. Iyer is in the BE series with a 5% band. Every trade must be settled by delivery, so its delivery percentage is close to 100% by design and tells you nothing about conviction. The exchange has put it under closer watch, and you should want to know why before buying.
• Liquidity. Verma trades ₹16.8 crore a day; Iyer ₹3.87 crore. A ₹2 lakh order is a rounding error in Verma and noticeable in Iyer, especially near a band limit.

None of this tells you which share will do better. It tells you what you are looking at, which comes first.

Try it

Pick two listed companies you know, one large and one small. Open each on the NSE website (search the company, then open its quote page) and on BSE. For each, write down in a notebook: the series, the price band, the LTP on both exchanges, previous close, average price, volume, delivery percentage, face value, market cap and P/E. Then calculate by hand the percent change, the band limits from the previous close and where the price sits in its 52-week range. Finally, look up the ISIN and find the same ISIN in your demat statement or on your broker's app. If any of your numbers differ from the website, work out why before moving on.

Sources

• NSE: Legend of series
• NSE: Price bands
• SEBI: Master circular for stock exchanges and clearing corporations, Chapter 1 Trading (scrip-wise price bands, dynamic price bands)
• NSE: Market timings (pre-open and normal market)
• NSE circular 73362 (18 March 2026): Operational guidelines for the Closing Auction Session in the equity cash segment
• SEBI Annual Report 2025-26, Chapter 4: Secondary markets (closing auction, delivery statistics)
• All India Radio News (16 October 2026): SEBI revises timings and operational framework of Closing Auction Session
• AMFI: Association of Mutual Funds in India (half-yearly market capitalisation lists)