If you don't understand them, stock quotes are remarkably disorienting, full of mysterious numbers, symbols and acronyms. The truth is, you don't have to be financial genius to make sense of them, or any kind of genius at all. All that is required is a commitment to learning the basics and practicing for a period of time prior to investing with real cash. This page offers a guide to understanding how to read the stock market for the new investor.

Don't be ashamed if you can't understand stock quotes, you have plenty of company outside the investment community. Those inscrutable little figures and abbreviations are based on a system that conveyed stock market changes via telegraph, printed out on a thin strip of paper called ticker tape. Modern stock quotes appear in somewhat expanded form in newspapers and online, while the basic ticker-tape format still lives on on your TV (running across the bottom of the screen on financial channels like Bloomberg Television), and on the giant displays posted outside financial institutions.

Do you have a particular company in mind to invest in? If not, try reading the Wall Street Journal, browsing The Motley Fool or simply noting the manufacturer of some savvy new product that has caught your eye. Once you know the name of the company, you're ready to get to work.

1. Go to Yahoo! Finance
2. Enter the name of the company in the field labeled "Get Quotes."
   • Through the magic of the internet, a stock quote should appear on your computer screen, much like the one below.
3. Keep in mind that while the stock quotes on Yahoo! Finance are not identical to the ones you'll find on other websites or in financial newspapers, they do contain the same basic information.

The ticker symbol is an abbreviation of the company name, originally meant to fit on actual ticker tape. It remains a useful shorthand system for conveying changes in stock prices. It's important to note the symbol, as it will be the primary reference point for your stock's value. If you enter a ticker symbol on Google, the latest quote will automatically appear above the search results. In most financial newspapers, stocks are identified only by their ticker symbol, by alphabetized listings. The symbol is also the only identifier on modern digital tickers, such as the one in the photo at right. Stocks traded on the major US exchanges—the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange and NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations)—are abbreviated with one to four letters. Some symbols contain an extra letter or two, usually preceded by a period, in order to note something about the particular stock. For example, BRK.B refers to lower-value "Class B" stock from the company Berkshire Hathaway (BRK). For guides to the abbreviations used on ticker symbols, see the respective markets' lists.http://finance.yahoo.com/

• Last Trade refers, for all intents and purposes, to the current value of the stock. Technically, last trade is the last reported price at which a share of the stock was sold, usually delayed around 15 minutes from the actual floor of the stock exchange. Newspapers list this figure under the heading "Close," because by the time they go to press, the stock market has already closed
• Trade time is the [[]tim]e at which the latest price was reported.
• Change refers to the difference between the current value and the closing price of the previous day. A downward arrow indicates that a stock has dropped. An upward arrow indicates a gain instead. Some quotes use the heading "Net Change" for this figure.
• Previous close is the final value of the stock on the previous day.
• Open refers to the starting value of the stock on the current day.
• Volume refers to the total number of shares traded throughout the day. In order to save print space, stock quotes in newspapers often round to the nearest hundred and omit the zeros on the end.
• Average volume identifies the average daily total number of shares traded in the past three months.
• Dividends are regular payments made to shareholders based on a company's profits. The dividend can be a useful gauge of a company's financial health. If it's too high a percentage of the earnings per share (over 75%), it may indicate that the company is not reinvesting enough of its profits to sustain itself.
• Yield measures the dividend as a percentage of each share. A company with a very high yield in comparison to that of its competitors may be in trouble. According to the New York Times an extremely high stock yield could offer one of the easiest ways to spot a company on the verge of financial distress.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704103904575337050051504896.html

• The bid and ask prices reflects the actual wheeling and dealing happening on the floor of the stock market. Bid identifies the highest price per share that stock traders are currently offering to buy a particular stock. The ask price identifies the lowest price per share that stock traders are currently offering to sell a particular stock. Only when the buyer and seller reach a compromise does a trade take place, setting the value of the stock.
• The 1 year target estimate is the projected price of one share for a year into the future. The figure is based on the median projection of a number of market analysts.
• The day's range specifies the lowest and highest price at which the stock has traded throughout the day. Quotes in newspapers usually list the range under two separate headings: "Low" and "High".
• The 52 week range specifies the lowest and highest price at which the stock has traded in the past year. Quotes in newspapers usually list the range under two separate headings: "52wk Low" and "52wk High". If this range is extremely wide, it warrants further research. It could either mean a huge loss or a huge gain—and either way, an unpredictable, volatile stock.
• Market capitalization is the total dollar value of the company.http://moneywatch.bnet.com/retirement-planning/blog/retirement-beat/starved-for-yield-stock-up/285/
• The Price/Earnings ratio is a figure used to project the earning potential of a stock. The ratio is calculated by dividing the current price of a share by its overall earnings (price increase) in the past year. Stock with a higher P/E ratio (over 25) is considered to have high expectatios, while stock with a lower ratio (under 20) is not expected to do anything spectacular.
• EPS is the stock's earnings per share for the last quarter.