Number of Shares x Price per Shares =?

<<Number of Shares x Price per Shares =>>
market value of the shares. That price could go UP or DOWN tomorrow and as such the market value of thoses shares would follow.

Take ALL of the outstanding shares of a company (shares that are IN the marketplace) and multiply them by the price per share today and you have the Capitalised Market Value of the company.

A company initially issues stock according to a fixed formula and they are sold wholesale to a Brokerage firm for a fixed and negotiated price and then resold in the primary stockmarket known as an IPO or Initial Public offering. This is how a company raises cash to invest in its business, buy material, or finance expansion of buildings, machinery, and land.

After a stock has been sold in an IPO it is said to be on the secondary market. the buying and selling of a stock is now the concern of two individuals, the profit or loss of such sales being realized by them alone.

Shares of stock are the way that society has made it possible for individuals to own a part of a company. A stockholders claim of ownership (his number of shares of stock) is every bit as real and enforcable as if he owned a part of his own business.

People buy stocks for any number of reasons. They buy them because SOME companies pay a quarterly dividend (an equal part of the companied earnings for the year) per share owned and many people use this money as income to live on, keeping the "principal" (the value of the stock) untouched.

Some people buy stocks for investment purposes, believing that a good stock will increase in value (appreciate) and they plan on cashing them in at some date in the future. The concept is known as Buy Low, Sell High.

Some people by stocks to make money in the short term. these people are called speculators. they are always on the prowl for a weakened company, inside information, bad new in the world markets, natural disasters, political upheaval, wars, unnatural weather patterns; it is all grist for the stock speculator.

One of the great pieces of investment advice is to always be diversified in your portfolio. this means to invest in more then one company in a business sector and invest in many business sectors. The idea is that if a sector (banking, oil, pharmacuticals, automobiles) goes bad your total investment will not be lost because it is in only ONE sector.

If a company goes banhrupt the stock holder is always the last to get any money if any is left over from the reorganization. If you were to own bonds (a form of IOU) from a company (less yield and less risk) you are permitted to get your money back before the stockholders, again, if there is any left.

Stocks are bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the American Stock Exchange in Chicago, the Neiki Stock Exchange in Tokyo, among others. You HAVE to be a registered broker to deal in the buying and selling of stocks. A stock broker will execute your trade request for you through his brokerage house. For this he gets a percentage of the value transacted, called a fee.

Stocks are THE way for Americans and anyone else in the world to participate in the economic expansion of the marketplace.

The single largest concentration of wealth in the hands of the American people has come in the last 62 years from wealth generated in the American indusrtry and to some extent, the world industry.