Big Charts Historical Quotes is an online service of Market Watch, a prominent supplier of investment data and commentary. Market watch has a free feature that lets you put in a stock symbol and date and their server will return a price chart and quote telling you the closing price for that date.

There are many reasons why an investor would want to use Big Charts Historical Quotes or some other market price database. If you are an active investor or trader who tries to time your market entries and exits to catch up-trends and avoid down-trends (or short the market), then creating a rigorous trading system based on technical analysis would be to your advantage.

You can buy trading systems “off the shelf” from many online suppliers, but then you have to trade according to somebody else’s rules using a system that you probably don’t understand. Doing so makes it very hard to stick with the system, because you don’t have enough confidence in the person who created it. However, if you create your own technical trading system, you will be much more likely to be able to stick with it in a disciplined manner. In order to create a system, you need historical price data, along with other data such as trading volume, dividend information, etc. After you acquire historical data and charting software, you can create your own trading system. There are many online vendors that can provide detailed historical data along with incredibly powerful charting software that you can use in creating your system and in making real-time trading decisions. Just remember that trading in any market is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose!