Learning how to read the financial page in a newspaper is easy if you know the meaning of each column. Once you know how to read the financial page of a newspaper, doing research and following the value of stocks, bonds and mutual funds is much easier.

The tables for stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are very different. Each type of table has specific information related to that investment vehicle.

Stock Market Tables

Stock market tables are arranged alphabetically by the name or symbol of the company issuing stock. Most stocks are traded on either the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange (ASE) or the NASDAQ Exchange. If you don't find the company you are looking for on one exchange table, look for it on the other two. Remember that not all companies are publicly traded. Some companies have privately held stock. Only publicly traded stock appears on the stock exchange tables.

The far left-hand column usually has the heading "52 Weeks." Underneath it are two columns of numbers with the headings "Hi" and "Lo." These two columns refer to the highest and lowest price that this stock has traded for in the past year (52 weeks) plus the current week. The price of a share is expressed as dollars and fractions of a dollar. In the near future, the fraction will disappear and decimals will appear instead. For example, here is a partial item from a stock table:

The 74 5/8 indicates that for the previous 52 weeks the highest price paid for a share was $74.625. The lowest price paid for a share in the previous 52 weeks was $44.125.

The next column gives the name of the company. The heading for this column is labeled "Stock." In the above example the name of the company is "General Electric." The "Stock" column is followed by a column labeled "Sym." This column contains the symbol that is used to trade this stock on the stock exchange. In the above example, the symbol is "GE."

Occasionally, the shortened title for the company and symbol may be hard to locate. In that case, you may have to consult another resource to determine the company and symbol used by the stock exchange. Often a company stock is traded under a parent company and not under the name by which you know it.

All of the information is followed by several columns of numbers. The column following the company symbol provides information on the annual dividend (in dollars) for a share of stock for this company. Companies pay dividends at different times. They may be paid monthly, quarterly or annually. Other disbursements are usually marked by a footnote.

The column following the dividend information is marked by "Yld%." The number in this column represents the total annual dividends paid by the company, but expressed as a percentage of the price of the stock.

In the past year, General Electric has disbursed dividends of $1.04 per share. This represents a yield of 1.6 percent of the price of the stock. The current price of this stock was $66.875. The yield was obtained by dividing the dividends ($1.04) by the current price ($66.875).

The next column is another important column in evaluating a stock. It is the "P/E" column. "P/E" is the price-to-earnings ratio of the stock. The number in this column is obtained by dividing the last closing price per share by the company's per share earnings for the previous four quarters. The earnings numbers are obtained from company quarterly financial statements.

The P/E provides a measure of how much you would have to pay for a $1.00 share of the company's profit. The P/E number is one that is useful to compare one stock with another and to compare the value of one stock over time.

The last four columns of numbers refer to the previous daily activity of each stock. At times, the stock table in your paper may be for another designated day. If so, it will state the date of the information. These columns give (in order) the number of shares traded, the highest price per share, the lowest price per share, the last price per share (closing) and the net change from the previous day. Here is the rest of our example for General Electric:

The volume is expressed in 100s, so the number of shares of General Electric stock traded on the day in the above example was 4,345,000 shares. The highest price paid per share was $69.00 and the lowest price paid was $66.75. The last or closing price paid per share was $66.875. The closing price was lower than the previous day's closing price by $1.75.

Sometimes there are symbols to the left of a company's entry on the stock market table. An explanation of these symbols is usually included with the stock market table. For example, in the General Electric example that has been used here, there was this entry:

The "s" indicates that there was a stock split or cash equivalent in the previous 52 weeks. There may be other small letters or symbols listed by a company. Each table has a table of footnotes that explain what each of these symbols represents.

Bond Market Tables

Tables for corporate bonds have the following columns: company name or symbol, the current yield as a percent interest paid on the bond, volume of bonds traded, the closing price and the net change.

Mutual Funds

Like the stock market tables, mutual fund tables are arranged alphabetically by the name of the company selling the mutual fund. Each company has several mutual funds. Following the company name will be another alphabetical list of the mutual funds for that company. Some companies are listed more than once. To find your mutual fund, you will need to know the company and the name of the fund for that company.

For example, Aetna has two listings -- Aetna Advisor Funds and Aetna Select Funds. Here is how they appear on a list of mutual funds:

Aetna Advisor:

Aetna

Bond

Grow

GrInc

IntlGr

SmCo

Aetna Select:

Aetna

Ascent

Bond

Crossrds

Govt

Grwth

GrwIncm

IntlGr

Legacy

SmCoGr

Some companies have as many as eight to ten groups of mutual funds. Within one group, some companies have more than 50 different mutual funds listed.

Mutual fund tables usually have four columns. The name is the first column. This is followed by three columns labled NAV, Net Chg and YTD/%ret. Here is an example of one of the Aetna Mutual Funds as it appears on the list:

The NAVcolumn stands for Net Asset Value. This number represents the value of one share of this fund. The number is calculated by taking the total value of the fund's assets and dividing it by the number of shares in the fund. In this example, one share of the Aetna Advisor Growth and Income Mutual Fund was worth $17.79 on that day. The value is calculated by the fund.

The third column shows the net change in the value of one share from the previous day. In the above example, the value of one share increased seven cents from the previous day.

The fourth column is YTD. This is an abbreviation for Year To Date. The percentage shown here is the percent return on the investment for each share. The figure shows the change in value of one share over the year to date. This number assumes reinvestment of any dividends.

In the above example, the value of one share of this fund has increased in value over 26.0% during the current year. This figure is also calculated by the fund.

Occasionally, the financial table for mutual funds will include additional columns. The additional columns provide percent return information for other time periods such as the previous four weeks, the last twelve months, the last three years, and the last five years. These figures help the reader understand more about how the value of this fund changes.

Mutual funds have expenses associated with them. Some days this information is printed in the financial table along with the sales commission costs for each fund. Both of these figures are presented as percentages.

Prepared by Dr. Suzanne Badenhop. University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension

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