What Are Stocks?
Alan Williams 
Stocks, or shares, are essentially small ownership stakes in a public company. Large corporations often have millions or billions of shares, meaning that your percentage ownership of that corporation is the number of shares you own divided by the total number of shares the company has.
The share price represents what the value of the firm is in the eyes of the market i.e., investors. So, why buy shares of a company?
The basic motivation behind buying them is to have the stock price rise over time such that you can sell some/all of the shares at a higher price than you bought them, thereby profiting from the price difference.
You’ve probably heard the cliché “Buy low, sell high” and, well, this is where it comes from.
Another reason is that some companies pay so-called dividends, which are small per-share payments that reward investors for investing in the company.
Categories: : Investment