Lesson 3 of 21 · 3 min read
What is a stock?
A small piece of a company: what owning one means, where it trades and why its price moves.
A piece of a company
A company can divide its ownership into millions of equal pieces called shares, or stock. Own one share and you own a very small part of that company.
Shareholders can vote on some company decisions, receive dividends when the company chooses to pay them, and gain or lose as the company's value changes.
Where stocks trade
Shares of large companies trade on stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, mostly on weekdays from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm New York time.
People don't trade on an exchange directly. They use a broker: a licensed firm that opens an account in their name, holds their shares and cash, and sends their orders to the market.
Why the price moves
A share's price reflects what buyers and sellers think the company's future profits are worth. It moves when the company reports its results, when interest rates change, when something happens to its industry, and sometimes on mood alone.
Funds: many stocks in one
An ETF (exchange-traded fund) is a fund that holds many stocks and trades like a single share. One that follows the S&P 500, for example, holds shares of about 500 large US companies at once.
On Viru
Viru is not a broker and doesn't hold shares. Markets shows US stock prices on a watchlist, for watching and learning. The lesson "Stocks vs. tokenized stocks" explains how a token that follows a share differs from the share itself.
Education only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.