Have you ever seen the section in the newspaper with a ton of little writing and decimals that tell you the closing price of stock, amount of shares and plenty of other useful information?

Were you completely lost?

Here’s a breakdown of the columns you might come across in the investing section:

Hi: This is the stock price at it’s highest point, usually over the course of the past 52 weeks.

Lo: This is the stock price at it’s lowest point, usually over the course of the past 52 weeks.

Check out the difference between these two stock prices. If the difference in these amounts is fairly large relative to the total stock price, then it might be a volatile (risky) stock. You be the judge.

Div: This is the amount of cash dividends that is paid during the year. Usually, dividends are paid quarterly, but that’s not always the case. You’d have to research each stock to find out how often you would get paid.

Yld %: This is the amount of the dividend that is paid divided by the price of the stock. Because stock price changes minute to minute, so does the dividend yield.

Try not to invest in stock unless the divided yield pays at least 2%. For more about the yield, click here.

PE: This number you see here, known as the Price to Earnings Ratio, is the current price per share divided by earnings per share (earnings per share is net earnings divided by total number of shares being traded in the stock market). The PE is usually used to compare companies within the same industry, like Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

Vol 100s: Volume refers to the number of shares that are being traded. Multiply the number you see here by 100 to get the actual amount of shares that were traded. A “Z” before this number means that the number listed is the actual amount traded (e.g., do not multiply by 100).

The next columns you’ll see, Hi, Lo and Net Chg. represent the high and low for the day, and the next change from the opening stock price.

If you’re shopping around for stock, don’t use a newspaper. A stock price can change significantly over the course of half a day, so your best bet is to find some real time stock prices (usually within 15 minutes of actual price).

Back to investing.

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