Stock market news is all around us everyday in different forms. It's on TV, it's on ticker tapes in front of financial buildings, it's in the newspaper in the form of stock tables and it's on the internet. So how do you make sense of the all the financial data coming from these resources? Learning how to read the stock market is an essential requirement for becoming a successful investor.Here are the basics you need to know.

How to Read the Stock Market Tables

Open any newspaper to the financial section and you'll see a table full of numbers, arrows and letters. This is usually a stock table and it encapsulates the stock market's performance for that day as well as gives you past data for comparative analysis.

Although every paper's stock tables might be slightly different, in general, they all contain the same basic info. Here's how to read the stock market table:

52 week high: This figure gives you the highest price for a particular share in the last 52 weeks. It's crucial to be able to determine the performance of a stock over time and analyze trends.

52 week low: This figure will give you the lowest price for a share in the last 52 weeks (nearly a year). It's also crucial for evaluating trends and performance. When combined with the 52-week high figure, it should give you an accurate assessment of the stock's yearly performance.