Share
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | One single unit of ownership in a company, like one slice of the whole pie of common stock. |
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| Category | Finance |
| Related | Common Stock, Stock |
If a whole company's ownership is a pie cut into 100 equal slices, a share is just one of those slices. Owning more shares means owning a bigger piece of the pie, and owning fewer means owning a smaller piece.
A share is a single unit of Common Stock in a company. If common stock is the overall idea of owning a piece of a company, a share is the actual countable unit of it, the thing you can say you own one, ten, or a thousand of.
Fun facts
- The price of a single share changes constantly based on how valuable investors think the whole company is, since a share is always just a slice of that total value.
- Owning enough shares can sometimes come with the right to vote on big company decisions, alongside the chance to gain or lose money as the shares change in value.
- People often use the words share and Stock almost interchangeably in everyday conversation, even though a share is technically just one unit of stock.