One of the perks of owning shares is that it makes a whole new section of your daily newspaper, namely the financial pages, that bit more interesting.
The financial pages are those incomprehensible list of companies and numbers that appear at the back of most newspaper business sections.
These lists (an example of which is above) might look confusing at first glance but don't be intimidated. They're a simple record of the value of a company, spiced up with a bit of historical data and the odd investment ratio.
What will I find on the financial pages?
Most financial pages list information on all of the shares traded on the UK's main stock market, the London Stock Exchange (LSE).
If you read specialist financial papers you'll also find a host of other prices for things like overseas stock markets, metals markets, currency markets and other more obscure exchanges.
How do I find my company?
Those companies whose shares are traded on the LSE are listed alphabetically, by industry sector and then by name.
For example, if you're looking for Vodafone you would first need to search for T, for the telecommunications sector, then scan down that sector until you hit V, for Vodafone.
It would be too simple if everything worked this way, so shares listed on other stock exchanges, including London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and overseas markets, are not broken down by industry sector.
Instead they appear in alphabetical order under the stock market that they trade on.
So if you're looking for Microsoft, for example, then it is a matter of finding the Nasdaq market - Microsoft is the biggest company traded on Nasdaq - then searching for M for Microsoft, and bingo!
What do the numbers mean?
When you find the company you're after you'll see that its name is followed, and in some cases preceded, by a bunch of numbers and fractions - as in our example.
 By the time share prices, volumes and the rest of the information appear in the financial pages, they are out of date.  |
Apart from scaring most people off, each of these figures also serves a purpose by telling us a bit about the company we are interested in.
What does each column mean?
Market Capitalisation. This is a fancy way of saying how much the company is worth.
It's expressed in millions of pounds, or in the case of overseas stock markets, the local currency.
You'll only get this figure in Monday's papers - on other days of the week you'll tend to get the 52-week (one year) highest and lowest share values.
But to demonstrate, we've shown both of these columns in our example at the top of the page.
Company The company name appears here, usually in a slightly butchered and shortened form. For example, Abbey National will often appear as Abbey Nat.
Price (p) This tells you the previous trading day's share price at the time the stock market closed. The number quoted is the mid-point between the closing bid price (what you could have sold a share for) and the closing offer price (what you could have bought a share for).
+/-, or Weekly +/- On every day except Monday, this column gives you the change in your company's share price over the previous day.
In Monday's paper the column is headed weekly +/- and gives you the share price movement over the whole of the preceding week.
Volume '000s This tells you how many shares have been traded over the previous day. The number is expressed in thousands.
52 week high/low This column, which is split into two, tells you the highest and lowest price the share has reached in the past year.
The further apart the two numbers are the more volatile your share has been.
Yield % This tells you the dividend (return on your investment) you should expect as a percentage of the share price.
For example, if a �10 share was expected to pay a �1 dividend, the yield would be 10%.
P/E This column tells you the price-earnings ratio.
This is a measure of how much each share is worth as a function of its company's net profits.
As a basic rule conservative, solid companies (think builders and water companies) have low, often single digit p/e ratios. More speculative companies (like telecoms and internet businesses) can have p/e ratios running into the thousands.
The problem with the financial pages
Before you start reading the financial pages, a word of warning.
In brief Market cap:
company value Company:
company name Price:
share price +/-:
share price movement Volume:
shares traded High/low:
historical high and low price Yield:
expected income P/E:
earnings divided by price |
By the time share prices, volumes and the rest of the information appear in the financial pages, they are out of date.
Financial pages are a historical record, so don't be surprised when the numbers in front of you are not those that you can buy or sell stocks at.
Over the course of any trading day you should expect share prices to fluctuate.
Even when the markets are closed you can be sure that a combination of forces will have shifted the price of many shares.
One-Minute World News 
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