Okay. That was a nice chart. But you still might need some help before you can be a fluent speaker of this shortcut stock language. Let's break it down a bit further:

52-Week HI/LO

These numbers represent the highest and lowest prices paid for the stock in the past 52 weeks (otherwise known as a year!). In our example, the high was $34.00 and the low was $28.34. If there is a new high, or a new low, you will see an arrow pointing up or down. Some papers also report the previous day's highest and lowest prices.

The price's range within a year can be a good indicator of the stock's volatility. If a price rises or falls sharply, it is said to be volatile. Investors can earn--or lose--a great deal of money based on a stock's volatility.

Stock (Sym)

In this column you'll find the company's abbreviated name, followed by its ticker symbol (sometimes referred to as the call letters). If we were looking at an actual table, with more than one company, you'd see that the companies are listed alphabetically.

Sometimes the tickers, which are usually one to four letters, make sense. TR, for example, is the symbol for Tootsie Roll. Other times, as you can see in our example, the ticker is quite different from the name. (You might argue, however, that FUN as a ticker symbol for an amusement park company makes perfect sense.)

Dividend

Some companies pay a portion of their profits, known as dividends, to their investors. Many investors receive these dividend payouts four times a year. Usually, the companies that pay dividends are well-established. Other companies, especially those that are still growing, put their profits back into their business.

Let's say you owned 100 shares of Cedar Fair. At an estimated $1.84 dividend per share, you'd receive a payment of $184.00--or, more likely, four payments of $46.00.

Yield

The yield percentage (also known as dividend yield or rate of return) is determined by dividing the dividend by the actual closing price. In our example it would look like this:

Two things to know about yield percentages: (a) a stock with a high dividend yield is typically less volatile than one with a low yield; and (b) yield percentages can be used to compare two similar companies with different stock prices.

Price-Earnings Ratio

This one's a little more complicated than the others. As you can see on the chart, the figure comes from dividing the price per share by earnings per share (EPS). And, you need more division to get to the EPS; namely you divide the earnings by the number of outstanding shares. Usually, the earnings are those that were reported from the last four quarters. A PE of 19 means that the stock share price was 19 times higher than its earnings per share.

PE ratios can vary widely from industry to industry. Some high-tech companies, for example, tend to have a high PE. Other companies, such as auto manufacturers and home builders, often have low PE ratios. A PE of about 14 to 20 is considered by some analysts to be "average."

Generally, studying PE is one way investors determine if a stock is overvalued or undervalued, compared to competitors. But, even expert analysts disagree on how much emphasis should be given to this number.

Volume, in Hundreds (sometimes listed as "Sales")

This number tells you how many shares were traded that day. Add two zeros to get the real number--in our example, 65,100 shares of FUN were traded. If the volume is higher than usual, that's usually a tip-off that investors are reacting to news they've heard about the stock. To know what a "normal" volume is for any given stock, you have to watch this column over a period of time.

Close (sometimes listed as "Last")

The last price paid when the trading ended for the day.

Net Change

This compares the closing price with the previous day's closing price. A minus sign (-) indicates that the price is down, compared with the previous day's last price. A plus sign (+) means that, you guessed it, the price is up. If you hear some guy on the street say, "Cedar Fair was down for the day," this is how he knows what he's talking about.