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In general, yield is a return on the money you invest. However, in the stock tables, yield (“Yld” in Table 1-1) is a reference to what percentage that particular dividend is of the stock price. Yield is most important to income investors. It’s calculated by dividing the annual dividend by the current stock price. In Table 1-1, you can see that the yield du jour of ValueNowInc (VNI) is 4.5 percent (a dividend of $1 divided by the company’s stock price of $22). Notice that many companies report no yield; because they have no dividends, their yield is zero.

Keep in mind that the yield reported on the financial sites changes daily as the stock price changes. Yield is always reported as if you’re buying the stock that day. If you buy VNI on the day represented in Table 1-1, your yield is 4.5 percent. But what if VNI’s stock price rises to $30 the following day? Investors who buy stock at $30 per share obtain a yield of just 3.3 percent (the dividend of $1 divided by the new stock price, $30). Of course, because you bought the stock at $22, you essentially locked in the prior yield of 4.5 percent. Lucky you. Pat yourself on the back.