Intro. to the Stock Market

1. A stock is basically your own small piece of the company in terms of the money (profits) the business makes. Main reason why companies sell stock to begin with is because once the profits come in and the business is doing well, investors are willing to pay more for their share of stock.

2. The difference between a public and a private company is that a public company is one whose stock is traded by the public and listed on an exchange such as the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. A private company is one whose stock is generally held by one shareholder or a small group of shareholders

3. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, also referred to as the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is one of several Stock Market indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & company Co-founder, Charles Dow

4. A blue chip stock is a piece of stock from a very successful company having stable earnings and no extensive liabilities.

5. The New York Stock (NYSE) is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in lower Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. It is the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at US$28.5 trillion as of May 2008. The NASDAQ Stock Market, known as NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations," Electronic screen-based It is the largest equity securities trading market in the United States. With approximately 3,700 companies and corporations, it has more trading volume than any other stock exchange in the world.

6. A mutual fund is nothing more than a collection of stocks and/or bonds. You can think of a mutual fund as a company that brings together a group of people and invests their money in stocks, bonds, and other securities. Each investor owns shares, which represent a portion of the holdings of the fund.

7. Citi Group,Exxon Mobile,Microsoft,Wal-mart, Apple, Ebay....ETC are the biggest companies in the stock.

8. PE -Price-Earnings Ratio calculated as =Market Value per share / Earnings per share(EPS)