What are the factors that influence the price of a stock ?

Factors that influence the price of a stock can be stock specific or market specific. The stock-specific factor is related to people’s expectations about the company, its future earnings capacity, financial health and management, level of technology and marketing skills. The market specific factor is influenced by the investor’s sentiment towards the stock market as a whole. This factor depends on the environment rather than the performance of any particular company. Events favourable to an economy, political or regulatory environment like high economic growth, friendly budget, stable government etc. can fuel euphoria in the investors, resulting in a boom in the market. On the other hand, unfavourable events like war, economic crisis, communal riots, minority government etc. depress the market irrespective of certain companies performing well. However, the effect of market-specific factor is generally short-term. Despite ups and downs, price of a stock in the long run gets stabilized based on the stock specific factors. Therefore, a prudent advice to all investors is to analyse and invest and not speculate in shares.