Today's High: What It Is, How It Works, Example

By
James Chen
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James Chen, CMT is an expert trader, investment adviser, and global market strategist.

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Updated May 12, 2022
Reviewed by
Thomas J. Catalano
Reviewed by Thomas J. Catalano
Full Bio

Thomas J Catalano is a CFP and Registered Investment Adviser with the state of South Carolina, where he launched his own financial advisory firm in 2018. Thomas' experience gives him expertise in a variety of areas including investments, retirement, insurance, and financial planning.

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What Is Today's High?

Today's high refers to a security's intraday highest trading price. It is represented by the highest point on a day's stock chart. This can be contrasted with today's low, which is the trading day's intraday low price. Today's high provides information to traders and investors on a stock's price, what news is driving the price that day, what might be a good entry and exit point into and out of the stock, and what the future outlook of the stock's price might be.

Key Takeaways

  • Today's high is the highest intraday price for a security on a given trading day.
  • The intraday high is often listed as a basic price quote alongside the current price and intraday low.
  • Day traders are particularly attuned to today's high and low prices in order to find signals to put on or take off trades.
  • Today's high provides insight into a stock's price, such as what news drove the price high and what other factors it is sensitive to.
  • Today's high is also used in calculating moving averages, which is a component of technical analysis.

Understanding Today's High

Today's high is the highest price at which a stock traded during the course of the trading day and is typically higher than the closing or equal to the opening price. It may be used when calculating a moving average.

One way that day traders and technical analysts use today's high, along with today's low, is to help them identify gaps or sudden jumps up or down in a stock's price with no trading in between those two prices.

For example, if today's low is $25 and the previous day's high is $20, there would be a gap. The identification of a gap, along with other market signals such as changes in trading volume and overall bullish or bearish sentiment, helps market analysts generate buy and sell signals for particular stocks.

Special Considerations

Short-term traders, such as day traders, use intraday price movements and charts to determine the correct time to enter or exit a trade. Based upon this analysis, they implement trading strategies and capitalize on short-term price fluctuations.

Today's high is an important component of a candlestick chart that traders use in making trading decisions, particularly when evaluating the short-term direction of a stock's price.

Intraday strategies are also used to trade options. Option prices don’t change as quickly as underlying stock prices, so traders use intraday prices to identify periods when the option is mispriced relative to the stock.

Intraday High and Day Trading

Intraday price movement is closely linked with day trading, the practice of buying and selling financial instruments within the same trading day. Many day traders are bankers or investment firm employees. However, since the advent of electronic trading, day trading has become increasingly popular with at-home traders.

There are numerous intraday strategies, which include scalping, where traders attempt to profit from incremental changes in price; range trading, which essentially uses support and resistance levels to determine buy and sell decisions; and news-based trading, which typically uses heightened volatility around news events that may create trading opportunities.

Though it is impossible to time a stock's high or low value, it is generally considered best to avoid buying a stock at its daily high. Though if the long-term prospect of a stock is positive, this does not matter if an investor's strategy is to buy and hold.

The biggest advantage of intraday trading is that positions are not affected by the possibility of negative overnight news that has the potential to materially impact the price of a security. Examples of potentially negative overnight news are key economic and earnings reports as well as broker upgrades and downgrades that occur, either before the market opens or after the market closes.

Trading on an intraday basis offers several other key advantages that include the ability to use tight stop-loss orders and access to increased leverage. Disadvantages of intraday trading include insufficient time for a position to increase in profit and increased commission costs due to trades being taken more frequently.

Real-World Example

The price movements of any stock are posted throughout the trading day and summarized at the end of the trading day. For example, on Nov. 1, 2021, shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) opened at $148.89 and closed at $148.96. During the day, as indicated in the "day's range," shares dropped as low as $148.00—the intraday low—and hit a peak of $149.22—the intraday high (today's high).

Day traders and technical analysts who follow Apple would study the shares' moves to see if they could discern any pattern or uncover any significant gap; that is, a sudden jump in the price with no trading in-between.

How Do You Find Today’s High on a Stock Chart?

On a stock chart that represents the price of a stock as a line graph, today's high will be the highest point on the line graph for the given day. This point will represent the highest value that the stock price reached that day.

How Do You Find Today’s Low on a Stock Chart?

On a stock chart that represents the price of a stock as a line graph, today's low will be the lowest point on the line graph for the given day. This point will represent the lowest value that the stock price reached that day.

What Is the Importance of Today’s High?

The importance of today's high is that it serves as an indicator of where the stock's price has been trading, which provides traders and investors with insight into the stock, such as what news impacts the stock's price, what are possible entry and exit points into or out of the stock, and what the future trading range of the stock might look like.

What Is the 52-Week High/Low?

The 52-week high/low is the highest value and the lowest value that a stock's price has traded in the past 52 weeks, or one year. It provides traders and investors with insight into how the stock has traded over the course of the last year.

What Is the 52-Week Range?

The 52-week range is a data set that shows the different values of a stock's price in the previous 52 weeks, or one year. The 52-week range includes the 52-week high/low values and is useful information for traders and investors in determining the value of a stock.

The Bottom Line

Today's high is a data point on a stock chart that shows the highest value that a stock reached during a trading day. Along with today's low, today's high provides valuable information to traders and investors and helps them in making a variety of trading decisions.

Article Sources
Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work. These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate. You can learn more about the standards we follow in producing accurate, unbiased content in our editorial policy.

  1. Google Finance. "Apple Inc." Accessed Nov. 2, 2021.

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