With the April tax deadline fast approaching, Kirstein has been receiving a lot of phone calls and inquiries about how to find old stock prices. We have several sources, both print and electronically, that can help you find daily, weekly, or monthly stock averages.

Mergent Online  is one online resource available through the BPL that provides  in depth reports on over 30,000 public companies. Information that you can find about companies in Mergent Online includes financials from company SEC filings, annual reports (current and archived), institutional holdings,  executive biographies, company histories, equity reports, and news updates.

To find historical daily stock prices in Mergent (for the past 30 years) follow these steps:

1) From home or in the library, log into  Mergent Online from our list of electronic business resources.  You will need to have a library card with the Boston Public Library to use this resource from home.  If you don’t have a library card with the BPL, but are a resident of Massachusetts,  you can apply for an ecard to use our electronic resources remotely.

2) From the Mergent Homepage under Basic Search, type in the name of the company or the ticker symbol of the company you are researching in the Company Search box, and select the appropriate company from the list if there are several results.  Mergent includes prices for active and inactive stocks traded on the NYSE, NASDAQ, and OTC.

3)This will take you to a profile of the company, covering reports, news and recent transactions, executive profiles, company histories, etc, each of which is organized by a series of tabs on the top of the page. Click the Equity Pricing tab.

4) To find Open, High, Low and Closing prices, click on the Report link in the upper left hand corner of the Equity Pricing screen. Select time period if you are looking for all prices backward through a range of time, or enter a date range if you are looking for one price on a specific date.  Click the refresh button to see stock prices for the dates you entered, and the stocks open, high, low, close and volume prices will appear on the bottom of the screen.

After you have built your search, you have the option to download those results to Excel.

View a printable version

Facebook is in the news this morning for filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an Initial Public Offering, or IPO.  An IPO is a corporation’s first offering of stock or shares for sale for the public.  It is an oppportunity for an investor to buy shares in a growing company. What’s newsworthy about Facebooks’ IPO is the size of the offering, and the new information about Facebook’s business released to potential investors through their S-1 filing. Facebook is estimated to raise a record 5 billion dollars for the company, in what could be the biggest Internet IPO of all time.

 The S-1 registration form contains the basic business and financial information for the company, such as a company outlook and business plan, financial data and revenue, description of the initial stock offering, and potential investment risks investing with the company.  Facebooks’ filing includes their mission statement, as well as statistics about their world wide reach and growth, and  such as number of users,  frequency of users visitig the site, and user habits. View the Facebook filing here.  

The SEC has a search engine, Edgar, to search for filings. Go to  http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml and select Search for Company Filings.  For companies that are already being traded you could search by a ticker symbol or CUSIP number, which are unique to that company. In the case of Facebook, which is not yet being traded you can search by company name – Facebook- to see a list of recent Facebook filings with the SEC.  The S-1 form is at the top of the results list.

If you are interested in seeing other companies S-1 filings to see how they compare, our database Mergent Online has a Government Filings search feature where you can search for all S-1 filings posted in the last 30 days, 90 days or 12 months. Mergent Online is available to use from home with your library card.

Interested in learning more about  IPOs?

See a list of books in the Kirstein collection  to help you understand more about the IPO process and how to make the most of it if you are an investor.  

Or see a Bibliography covering books, websites and periodicals to help you learn more about initial public offerings.

The Boston Public library has recently acquired a new database focused on Careers, Career Transitions

Career Transitions has many great features to help you at any stage of your career, such as  resumes and cover letters wizards,  information about career paths and outlooks, and interview advice.  One truly unique feature of Career Transitions is the career advice blog, the Daily Leap. The Daily Leap offers tips and advice on organized and positive during a job search, overcoming nervousness during an interview, networking, etiquette advice at work, as well as weekly rounds up of career related articles on the web.  

Career Transitions is available remotely with your library card and pin number. If you don’t have a library card with us, but are a resident of Massachusetts, consider applying for an ecard or a library card.