Watchlist

  

Categories: Regulations, Trading

A list of securities that someone—us as investors, a brokerage firm, the SEC, etc.—wants to keep an extra-close eye on.

Maybe there’s been some unusual trading activity of late. Maybe the SEC suspects that some firms are engaged in shady shenanigans. Maybe a company is seen as a potential takeover target. Or maybe we just like those securities’ style and want to check them out as potential investment opportunities.

Whatever the reason, when a list of securities is put together and then watched, we in the financial community call that a watch list.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What does Most Active mean?1 Views

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finance a la shmoop what does most active mean all right people there's a

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race every day all the stocks in all the markets line up at the starting line [stock lining up for track race]

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then at 9:30 a.m. New York time blam gun goes off and well the stocks are off [gun fires]

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running one trade between a buyer and a seller is a laugh and all the stocks run

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those laps as best as they can at the end of the day italia is made and the [stock running laps]

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winner with the most laps gets put into that day's pantheon of most active [stock tally]

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stocks the list looks something like this yes there are winners and there are [stock list document]

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losers sorry there Polka masters calm just keeping it real so what usually [Tesla wins race, Polkamaster.com loses]

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makes a stock most active well a bunch of things a quarterly earnings

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announcement that surprises on the upside or the down or an announcement of

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a secondary offering of stock or a hostile takeover bid by a competitor or

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goog or a mention on Oprah yeah that usually helps or steroids yeah they help

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too but they're not legal unless you know you're on the russian biathlon team [pills, Russian skier]

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yeah so yeah the most active stocks are these guys like Charlie Sheen and Trump

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they're all about the winning yeah winning

Up Next

Finance: What is Trading Volume?
29 Views

Trading volume is the number of shares trading back and forth at a given time.

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)