When I receive my monthly stock statement, I often feel like I’m looking at a foreign language. But actually, it’s a mathematical language, and is often comprised of fractions and decimals. Stock quotes are dollar amounts for a single share, but they are not always whole numbers. When stock quotes are fractions of a dollar, fractions must be multiplied by the number of shares to find the total amount. Rounding becomes important here. For example, imagine if a share is $0.0625. Multiply by 100,000 shares and your total is $6,250. But if the share is round to the tenths place ($0.06), the total is $6,000. Where’s my $250?!
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