Stocks Notes
Common Stock
- Securities - all of the investments, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, and commodities that are bought and sold on the stock market.
- Private corporation - a company that issues stock to a small group of people.
- Public corporation - a company that sells its shares openly in stock markets.
Preferred Stock
- par value - an assigned dollar value that is printed on a stock certificate.
- Cumulative preferred stock - a stock whose unpaid dividends build up and must be paid before any cash dividend is paid to the common stockholders.
- Convertible preferred stock - a stock that can be exchanged for a specific number of shares of common stock.
- Participation Feature - allows preferred stock holders to share in the corporation’s earnings with the common stockholders.
Types of Stock Investments
- Blue-chip stock - a stock that is issued by the strongest and most respected companies, that have a history of stable earnings.
- Income stock - pays higher-than-average dividends compared to other issues. Buyers are attracted this kind of stock because the dividends are predictable.
- Growth stock - issued by a corporation that has higher that average predicted earnings.
- Cyclical stock - has a market value that tends to reflect the state of the economy.
- Defensive stock - a stock that remains stable during declines in the economy.
- Large-cap-stock - a stock from a corporation that has issued a large number of shares of stock and has had large amounts of capitalization.
- Small-cap-stock - a stock issued by a company with a capitalization of $500 million or less.
- Penny stock - typically sells for less than $1 per share, although it can sell for as much as $10 per share.
Factors that influence the price of stock
- bull market - a market that occurs when investors are optimistic about the economy and buy bulky stocks.
- bear market - a market condition where investors are optimistic about the economy and sell stocks.
- Current yield - the annual calculation that includes the annual dividend by the current market value.
- Total return - a calculation that includes the annual dividend as well as any increase or decrease in the original purchase price of the investment.