How to use a newspaper to study and report on shares and dividends?

Before getting into the newspaper records of stock market
activity, you would need to have background knowledge about how and why companies create
stock, how companies determine dividends, and what the symbols in the stock table
mean.

Once you have that working knowledge, I would suggest
selecting a portfolio of stocks that are included in the daily stock market table of the
newspaper you will be using. Create a spreadsheet or other method of tracking the
information you want to include in your report and add the statistics for each of your
stocks in each of your categories every day for a period of time. Ideally, this would
extend over a long period (at least one month) but you may need to use a shorter time
span. If you are allowed to use other resources in addition to the newspaper, check
readings for your chosen stocks over the past months and years by looking up the stock
records on their websites.

When you are done collecting
your data, you will be able to use it to analyze sales trends, price fluctuations,
correlation of sales prices or dividend payments to current news events, how stock
prices and dividend payments relate to companies being bought and sold by other
businesses, and many other possible topics. Some of your information may be limited by
the data you actually have to use, but you should be able to compile and present quite a
bit of information.