With the implosion of the global financial and credit markets, leading to the worst conditions in at least 70 years, it might be important to have a better understanding of the stock market and it works.
First, why is it called a market? Well, a market is a place where goods are bought and sold. The stock market is where people buy and sell stocks, or shares of ownership in a company. Potential investors can choose from many companies that are listed on the stock exchange (or market). When people buy and sell stock, it's called trading.
Who Am I If I Own Stock?
When a person buys stock in a company, that person becomes a shareholder in that company. (Stockholder is another name for a shareholder.) A shareholder is also called an investor in the company. When that company makes money, the value of the company's stock often increases. Then more people become interested in investing in the company. Sometimes, shareholders receive a dividend, which is part of the company's earned income in the form of a cash payment.
Some people try to make money by buying and selling stocks. Stock prices move up and down. Sometimes very dramatic changes in prices occur and as we have seen with the crash of the markets in October of 2008 prices can fall very sharply. When that happens, shareholders lose money by selling stocks that they own. A company's stock price may be affected by market or economic conditions or in the case of a market crash, just irrational fears.
When people invest in a company's stock it has an effect on the stock's price. As more people want to buy shares, the stock's price usually goes up because more people want to own it. On the other hand, if more people want to sell their shares and there is less demand for them, then the price of the stock goes down.
Just like an individual, a mutual fund can also buy or sell shares of a company's stock. A mutual fund is a group of stocks and/or bonds that is owned by a group of people. The advantage of a mutual fund is professional managers select stocks to buy and when to sell. The people who invest in mutual funds are also known as shareholders because a unit of ownership in a mutual fund is called a share. A mutual fund uses the cash invested by its shareholders to purchase stocks, or in some case, bonds. Since a mutual fund may contain the stocks of many companies in its portfolio, shareholders are often able to own a greater and more diverse number of stocks than if they invested directly in the stock market.
Two Common Measures of Market Performance
Stock market averages are quoted in the media because they provide clues about overall movements in stock prices and whether most investors are trying to sell or buy shares. The most often-quoted market average is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The prices of a specially selected group of 30 industrial stocks (some of the largest companies in the United States) are averaged each day to determine the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (S&P 500) t 500 different stocks. It's an index composed of the stocks of 500 US companies. Created by the Standard and Poor's Corporation in 1923, today the S&P 500 follows a number of sectors, including financials, information technology, health care and many others.
A big difference between the Dow and the S&P 500 is how their values are calculated. While the Dow only looks at stock prices, the S&P 500 looks at the total market value of each stock in the index. A stock's total market value is found by multiplying its share price by the number of outstanding shares. To find the S&P 500's current value, a computer figures out the total market value of all 500 stocks in the index, adds them together and divides that sum by a number called the "index divisor."
A lot of investors prefer to use the S&P 500 as a market indicator because it looks at total market value and includes more stocks from different industries than the Dow. Many mutual fund portfolio managers compare their fund's performance with this index.
That's why many people think this index gives a clearer picture of the stock market than other stock market averages or indices. Since the S&P 500 includes so many companies and industries, it's known as a broad-based index. Although a mutual fund may compare its performance to the S&P 500 or another broad-based index, this does not mean the fund's portfolio has the same stocks that are tracked in the index.
WHAT IS NASDAQ?
Nasdaq is short for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation system. This computerized trading system was launched in 1971 and has become very popular as the market for smaller companies. Stocks traded over-the-counter, rather than on a traditional stock exchange, are reported here. The Nasdaq Stock Market now accounts for over half of the volume of all stocks traded every day, and the Nasdaq Composite currently tracks the prices of more than 3,000 stocks.
As with the S&P 500, the market values of the companies within the index are used to calculate the value of the Nasdaq Composite. But because it contains so many smaller companies, this index offers a look at a different section of the market than the Dow or the S&P 500. Investors use the composite to get an idea of what's going on with young, and possibly fast-growing, companies.
Which Index is Best?
No one market indicator is best for everything. There are more than 100 indices and averages for watching different parts of the market. But if you use the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite together, you should get a good idea of what's happening in the entire stock market.
All kinds of people invest in the stock market for all sorts of reasons. Some people are active traders, taking positions in stocks for a day or two looking for quick changes in the price of stocks, and then selling on any upward movement in price. This is known as day trading. Other people invest in stocks for the long-term potential for growth and the gains from the payments of dividends. Others have their accounts professionally managed by a stockbroker, who will often be authorized to buy and sell in the name of the account holder.
As we enter into 2009, most forecasters are calling for a sharper recession and predicting that both the credit markets and stock markets will take several months to recover. The smart money is looking around at the prices of stocks and carefully picking from the sharp declines to buy companies at way under real value. The risk for most investors, is as the economic continues to decline, even good companies that are under valued may fail.
Stock prices as low as this have not been seen for a very long time. If you plan to invest now, be there for the long haul and expect more sharp variances in prices before we see stability return to stock investing.
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