What are stocks?

Question

What are stocks?

Answer 1

Yahoo finance has a good glossary with all the investment terms . . .

Stocks are about 1/2 way down . .

http://biz.yahoo.com/f/g/ss.html

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Answer 2

Stock investment is the method of putting money in stocks to earn more money in future.

You should understand the main reason why you want to spend money buying a particular stock. This step should preclude investing in stock. It allows you to move swiftly as soon as the price of the stock goes down a lot. If you know the main motivation about purchasing a specific stock, you will not hesitate to buy it once the price falls. Stocks purchased on the spur of the moment can be sold as soon as the price goes down.

Answer 3

In simplest terms, a stock is partial ownership in a company. The company's ownership is divided among all the stockholders and you own a percentage of the company depending on how many of those shares you own. As an owner, you are entitled to vote on certain issues as well as receive a portion of the company's profits, called dividends. The catch is that the company is not legally required to pay dividends. The board of directors will allow the company to post profits for a few years before it declares dividends. Also, if the company is rapidly growing, it will reinvest most of its profits back into the company instead of pay dividends. However, this means that hopefully the company will be able to pay even higher dividends if it grows.

The ultimate purpose of owning stocks is to have equity returned to you in the form of dividends. However, the price of a stock will increase if the company itself grows because future dividends will be potentially higher. In a round-about-way, dividends and increase in share prices are one in the same.

The risk with stocks is that the company may falter, never pay dividends, and your stock becomes worthless when the company goes bankrupt. You can mitigate this risk, however, by purchasing stocks in many different companies in different industries and from different countries, either directly or indirectly through a mutual fund.

Answer 4

When a private biz wants to sell itself to the public to get funds it lists on the stock market.

Once it's shares are made public you can buy bits of the company..biz via shares that are traded on the stock exchange.

When you own part of the company you also own part of the profit..if any..and if that profit is distributed to shareholders.

People trade these shares(stocks) to make money...some hold, but many want to sell to profit. The sellers make it very difficult for the holders of shares who can lose all their money when prices drop.

Answer 5

these are intangible assets which represent a share in the ownership of a stock corporation... usually manifested through certificates of shares of stocks..