| Just a quick refresher from last week, Part I, and then we're going to tackle the rest of the categories that make-up a Stock Table.
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52 Week High/Low
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Stock
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Ticker Symbol
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Div
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Yield
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P/E
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Vol
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Last
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Day
Change
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Day
High/Low
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27 / 49
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HumptyDumpty
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EGGY
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.32
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0.67%
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?
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1323
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48
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+1/2
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48 / 47
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Let's review. The "52 week High/Low" is lowest and highest price of one share over the past year. The "Stock" is the name of the company. The "Ticker Symbol" is how the company is listed on its exchange. The "Div" or "yield per dividend share" is what the company pays us for being a shareholder. The "Yield" or the "dividend yield, is the dividend payment (.32) divided by the what the stock traded at under the "Last Price" column (48) which gives us the 0.67%.
Last week I looked up what the "Yield" means in my Motley Fool book. They define it, in their You have More Than You Think, as "Well, so you'll know what percentage growth you'd get from the stock if it did not rise or fall all year."
And after much additional time and research, I'm finding that I cannot figure this out because I do not have enough information. As I'm trying to define "Yield" I invariably run into P/E and how to avoid stocks with P/E's higher than their growth rate because too high of a P/E means that the share price is overvalued. So…in the interest of sanity, I am going to finish defining our stock table and I believe "Yield" AND "P/E" will be better discussed when I look at growth vs. value stock.
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Let's try rephrasing the Motley Fools' definition like this: If the price of a specific security does not rise or fall, the value of that security stays the same and you would not achieve any growth or increase in value. However, here comes your dividend to the rescue! In your example, the value of HumptyDumpty increased 0.67%. Thank you, dividend. |
I did learn that "P/E" from our table above stands for Price divided by Earnings. And that's enough for me to know right now.
The next column in our Stock Table is "Vol (000s)", which is the total number of shares that traded hands from the previous day. Our 1323 shares of EGGY are read as 1,323,000 shares. HumptyDumpty obviously has a very large base of shareholders. From what I've read, most large companies and corporations trade in this large amount of shares daily. I can probably get a good idea of how many people invest in this company just by looking at this column.
Next is the "Last Price" column, which means that EGGY ended the day with a closing price of $48. Next is the "Day Change" column which at (+ ½ ) indicates that our share went up by ½ or .50 cents per share for that day. A plus sign (+) indicates that the share went up; a negative sign (-) means the share went down. And, if there is neither a (+) or a (-) then it means that the closing price was the same as the day before.
And finally, the "Day High/Low" column. This reflects the high and low of this share from the previous days trading. Thus, EGGY ended the trading day yesterday with a high of 48 and also went down at some time during the six and a half hours of the market trading day to a low of 47.
That's it. We've defined most of the Stock Page. I'll discuss "Yield" and "P/E" at a later time. I have enough information, though, to begin looking at stock tables and seeing where my portfolio stock picks are listed on these tables.
The following Web sites were used for references in these past 2 articles and all are very good at explaining these concepts in greater detail.
WomensFinance.com -The Basics of Stocks
MoneyCentral Investor web site The Basics-How To Evaluate a Stock
Next week I'll learn about growth stocks and value stocks and maybe begin to explain these in reference to "Yield" and "P/E".
Thank you for joining me,
Joyce |
