How do I read a stock or ETF ticker and quote page before I buy?

A quote page packs useful information into a small space. The ticker is the fund or stock's short symbol you type to trade it. The 'last' or current price shows the most recent trade, while bid and ask show the best buy and sell prices right now, and the gap between them is the spread. Volume tells you how actively it's trading, a proxy for liquidity. For funds, check the expense ratio and, for ETFs, whether the price sits near net asset value. You'll also see the 52-week range, dividend yield, and for stocks the market cap and P/E ratio. Before buying, the numbers that matter most for an index investor are the expense ratio, the spread, and confirming you have the right ticker, since similar names can trade under different symbols.