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Div. That's the abbreviation for dividend. A dividend is the portion of the profits that the company pays to its owners, who are called stockholders or shareholders. The dividend is listed in dollars and cents and refers to how much is paid out yearly on one share. If you see .1.50 that means the, company pays $ 1.50 per share, each year. If you see a plam .1, ihtfi TTfeirte
idend is $ 1 per year per .shard. The Associated Press doesn't bother to list it as 1.00.
Yield Pet. This figure indicates the return you receive from the dividend on your investment. It could be compared to the interest you receive on your savings at a bank. You don't have to figure out your yield, they do it for you. But let's say you own a stock called CAP Corp. that sells for $ 10 a share and the dividend1s $ 1 The yield.would be. listed as 10.0 meaning 10 percent. -
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t. The name of the in abbreviated form.
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Week?s High. The highest price the stock reached for the week. /
J'Week's Low. The lowest ? p'nee toe stock regfsferea
Safes 100s. That means the sales are listed in hundreds. ? To tell how many shares of a stock were sold, just add two zeros to the number listed. Let?s say the number listed 3067. Add two zeros and we have 306700 or 306,700 shares. The number 100 with 2 zeros added ? 10000 ? would be 10,000 shares traded, and so on.
The importance of volume is that it tells you how much interest there is in the stock. Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of shares in a company like General Motors Corp. trade every day.
But, when a takeover is starting to brew for a company, you will suddenly see the volume jump from maybe 50,000 shares to 3 million and 4 million a day. _ ,	-	-	-?
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Lest. This is the last or closing price of the stock for the week.
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-week High, Low. This nply lists the highest and vest price the stock has hit ring the last year.
P-E Ratio. This stands for price-to-earnmgs ratio. While most people have no trouble understanding what the yield number means, many are confused by this little goody. Not to worry, it?s really very simple.
Let's say your $ 10 stock earns $2 a share per year. Then the P-E number would be 5. This means that if you paid $ 10 for the stock you were paying 5 times as much'as the stock earns in
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Chg. This stands for change. In the weekly tables published on Sunday the change listed is the change from the previous week. In the daily paper, the change is that from the previous day's price.
Let's say your $ 10 stock closed at that price the previous week, shows a high of 11, low of 9 and a close of
10.	In that case the change column will be blank. A ? blank spot means the stock's price was unchanged from the previous close. If the same stock showed a high of let?s say
11,	a low of 9, a close of 10?/ and a change of +V*. it would mean that the stock closed a quarter point higher that week than it did the previous week. Remember, the stock closed at 10 the previous week.
There are a few other things to watch for. At different times you will notice a letter after a stock's name. When you do, look it up in the box on the first stocks page entitled Explanatory notes, ft will tell you what the letters mean.
one yaar. Again, this calculations provided for you. But it |s a handy figure for two riiasons.
First, just by looking at the P-: ratio for any stock you ci n roughly figure how much hat company earned in the >ast year. Let's say you di In't own your $ 10 stock ?ut wondered how much earned. You merely take tl ? P-E figure of 5 and divide : into the $10 stock' price a id you get the earnings fic j re. In other words.
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$ 10 divided by 5 equals $2.
Second, the P-E number can give you an indication as to whether a stock is richly or cheaply priced. Stocks in the same sectors tend to sell at similar P-Es. If you see a stock selling at a P-E that is much higher than similar companies in the same field it might indicate that the company?s prospects are better than average. If you see a stock selling at a P-E lower than that of similar companies, it may
mean the company's prospects are not as good as other firms in that field. However, it also may mean the company is undervalued and may present a bargain. The only way to find out is through further'invesigation. But information on relative values can prove to be a potent weapon in your investment arsenal. And that information is sitting there right in front of you every day in The Times-Picayune.
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Should the company be liquidated or dissolved, the oroceeds
STAFF CHART
What the fractions mean
Stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange are traded in