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At the most basic level, stock (often referred to as shares) is ownership, or equity, in a company. Investors buy stock in the form of shares, which represent a portion of a company's assets (capital) and earnings (dividends).
As a shareholder, the extent of your ownership (your stake) in a company depends on the number of shares you own in relation to the total number of shares available.
For example, if you buy 1000 shares of stock in a company that has issued a total of 100,000 shares, you own one per cent of the company.
While one per cent seems like a small holding, very few private investors are able to accumulate a shareholding of that size in publicly quoted companies, many of which have a market value running into billions of pounds.
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Your stake may authorise you to vote at the company's annual general meeting, where shareholders usually receive one vote per share.
In theory, every stockholder, no matter how small their stake, can exercise some influence over company management at the annual general meeting. In reality, however, most private investors' stakes are insignificant. Management policy is far more likely to be influenced by the votes of large institutional investors such as pension funds.
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A stock symbol, or 'Epic' symbol, is the standard abbreviation of a stock's name. You can find stock symbols wherever stock performance information is published - for example, newspaper stock listings and investment websites.
Company names also have abbreviations called ticker symbols. However, it's worth remembering that these may vary at the different exchanges where the company is quoted.
Alongside the stock symbol you will find performance indicators for that particular stock.
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Here is a list of the standard performance indicators:
| Closing price |
The last price at which the stock was bought or sold. |
| High and low |
The highest and lowest price of the stock from the previous trading day |
| 52 week range |
The highest and lowest price over the previous 52 weeks |
| Volume |
The amount of shares traded during the previous trading day |
| Net change |
The difference between the closing price on the last trading day and the closing price on the trading day prior to the last |
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