please can you help me with how to read share prices??

qwert10

Chesnara(CSN) says 275.00p

Does this mean they are 2.75p?

Thanks in advance I did google it but not much help.

lozzy1965

Yes.£2.75p.  Do you want to buy or sell, or just interested in the price?

Will_Do

It means they are £2.75 (275 pence). However, at any given point, you will pay more to buy the shares than you would sell them for. That's how the market makers make their money. So if a share is currently showing as 275p you might pay 277p to buy it or receive 273p for selling it, plus any broker commissions etc. The spread between the buy and sell price varies depending on the shares. Frequently traded shares tend to have a smaller spread whereas less "popular" shares will often have quite a wide spread between the buy and sell prices. 

lozzy1965

As stated above.  Here is an example of where you can actually see the current buy/sell price:
https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/c/chesnara-plc-ordinary-5p
Showing (at TIME of posting as):

CHESNARA PLC (CSN) ORDINARY 5P

Sell:274.00p Buy:275.00p

MaxiRobriguez

The actual price of the share is completely, 100% irrelevant.

All else equal, a company with 10 shares in circulation each costing £100,000 is the same as a company with 100,000 shares costing £10 each.

Neither company is more expensive than the other, and without further information you can't tell if the price you're paying, whether it's £100,000 or £10, is expensive or not.

The only time you might care about the price paid is if you cannot afford to buy a single unit.

Arguably though if you're in that boat, you should be investing in funds anyway, because you don't have anywhere near the capital required to do otherwise yet.

lozzy1965

MaxiRobriguez said:

The actual price of the share is completely, 100% irrelevant.

Unless you are selling and you want to know how much what you have is worth!

moneysavinghero

MaxiRobriguez said:

The actual price of the share is completely, 100% irrelevant.

All else equal, a company with 10 shares in circulation each costing £100,000 is the same as a company with 100,000 shares costing £10 each.

Neither company is more expensive than the other, and without further information you can't tell if the price you're paying, whether it's £100,000 or £10, is expensive or not.

The only time you might care about the price paid is if you cannot afford to buy a single unit.

Arguably though if you're in that boat, you should be investing in funds anyway, because you don't have anywhere near the capital required to do otherwise yet.

You say the price is 100% irrelevant and then go on to provide an example where you use the price in the example. So it is relevant. If the 10 share company shares were priced £50,000 then they two companies would be valued differently. Without the price you would not know this.

Yes you can't compare the value of two companies based upon the share price alone. But the OP did not ask about this.

Eco_Miser

MaxiRobriguez said:

The actual price of the share is completely, 100% irrelevant.



The only time you might care about the price paid is if you cannot afford to buy a single unit.

If, say, I have a little less than £20k to invest (by the time I've paid all the taxes and fees) I'd rather be buying shares at £10 than £10k, there would be a lot less 'change' left in cash.

Steve182

MaxiRobriguez said:

The actual price of the share is completely, 100% irrelevant.

I understand your point that the actual share price is irrelevant in the investment decision making process.  You should be looking at the company's metrics (Market cap, total revenue, operating profit, net profit, P/E, PEG, EPS, EPS growth, dividend yield, price to book, operating margin, net debt etc etc etc) and share price history, and comparing that with their peers.  It matters not whether the shares are Berkshire Hathaway A shares @ $433,000.00 or CSN at 2.75p, except few investors have the means to buy a  Berkshire Hathaway A share