How to self-join table in a way that every record is joined with the “previous” record?

Question

I have a MS SQL table that contains stock data with the following columns: Id, Symbol, Date, Open, High, Low, Close.

I would like to self-join the table

Answer 1

One option is to use a recursive cte (if I'm understanding your requirements correctly):

WITH RNCTE AS (
  SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY symbol ORDER BY date) rn
        FROM quotes
  ),
CTE AS (
  SELECT symbol, date, rn, cast(0 as decimal(10,2)) perc, closed
  FROM RNCTE
  WHERE rn = 1
  UNION ALL
  SELECT r.symbol, r.date, r.rn, cast(c.closed/r.closed as decimal(10,2)) perc, r.closed
  FROM CTE c 
    JOIN RNCTE r on c.symbol = r.symbol AND c.rn+1 = r.rn
  )
SELECT * FROM CTE
ORDER BY symbol, date

SQL Fiddle Demo

If you need a running total for each symbol to use as the percentage change, then easy enough to add an additional column for that amount -- wasn't completely sure what your intentions were, so the above just divides the current closed amount by the previous closed amount.