When you’re first learning about the stock market, the stock tables in the paper can be quite confusing. Learning how to read stocks won’t take much time, though, and it’s very important.
Let’s look closer at the table. You’ll notice that there are twelve columns in the table; each stock has a line of its own. Let’s examine the first two columns, which are usually named something like “52W High” and 52W Low.” These tell you about the stock’s performance over the last year. The names are pretty suggestive; “52W High” reveals the highest value the stock has reach in the past 52 weeks. Its lowest value shows up in the “52W Low.”
In the following column you’ll see the actual name of the stock. This will be followed by another column that shows the stock’s ticker symbol. There’s a unique combination of letters for each stock. In fact, you might be able to recognize some of them. Maybe you’ve seen the tickers running across the bottom of the screen when you watch the news.
Speaking of TV, you might want to watch the financial shows. They can give you a lot of help and information that will show you how to read stocks and understand the stock market even better.
There’s another column next to the ticker column, and it’s labeled “Div.” This column shows you the annual dividend the stock pays out for each share. If you see a blank space in this column, that means the stock doesn’t pay dividends right now. The same rule also applies to the very next column, “Yield %”, the percentage return on the dividend.
P/E is the price to earnings ratio, which is calculated by taking the stock prices and dividing it by the the earnings per share over the last four quarters.
After that you will discover the columns of “High” and “Low.” These are the highest and lowest points that the stock reached in the day’s trading. “Net Change” refers to how much the stock price has changed from the previous day, and “Close” lets you know what the final price was when the stock market closed for the day.
Once you’re armed with a good working knowledge of how to read stocks, you can begin to delve into other aspects of the market.