Aftermarket Report

There are two main industries where the term "aftermarket report" shows up a lot: cars and stocks.

For cars, an aftermarket report lets you know how well a car's value holds up after it has had at least one owner. For stocks, the meaning is somewhat similar. The aftermarket report details how shares of a newly-public company have done since being sold for the first time.

When a company goes public, meaning that its shares first start getting traded on exchanges like the NYSE or Nasdaq, the process is called an initial public offering, or IPO. In conducting the IPO, shares will be given an initial price...the price at which the first group of investors will get to buy shares.

The aftermarket report shows how the shares performed after moving into the public market, where the price can move around on a moment-to-moment basis while trading is going on.