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Reading the stock tables in the newspaper can be very confusing when you're just learning about the stock market. It's important to learn how to read stocks, though, and it won't take a lot of time.

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."

The next column is the name of the stock itself, followed by another column showing the stock's ticker symbol. There's a unique combination of letters for each stock. You will probably recognize some of these from the tickers that run across the bottom of the screen sometimes on the cable news networks.

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.

"Div" is the column that comes after the ticker column. From this column, you see how much in annual dividends the stock pays out for every share. You'll know the stock doesn't pay out dividends if this particular column is blank. The same rule also applies to the very next column, "Yield %", the percentage return on the dividend.

The earnings ratio is indicated by P/E. Dividing the current stock price by earnings per share for the last four quarters gives you this number.

The next two columns are "High" and "Low." These are the highest and lowest points that the stock reached in the day's trading. "Net Change" shows the change from the day before; "Close" tells you the point when the stock closed for the day.

With a basic understanding of how to read stocks, you can now move on and start learning more about the market itself.