How Banks Work
The funny thing about how a bank works is that it functions because of our trust. We give a bank our money to keep it safe for us, and then it turns around and gives it to someone else in order to make money for itself. Banks can legally extend considerably more credit than they have cash. Still, most of us have total trust in the bank's ability to protect our money and give it to us when we ask for it.

Why do we feel better about having our money in a bank than we do having it under a mattress? Is it just the fact that they pay interest on some of our accounts? Is it because we know that if we have the cash in our pockets we'll spend it? Or, is it simply the convenience of being able to write checks and use debit cards rather than carrying cash? Any and all of these may be the answer, particularly with the conveniences of electronic banking today. Now, we don't even have to manually write that check -- we can just swipe a debit card or click the "pay" button on the bank's Web site.

What is a bank?

According to Britannica.com, a bank is: an institution that deals in money and its substitutes and provides other financial services. Banks accept deposits and make loans and derive a profit from the difference in the interest rates paid and charged, respectively. Banks are critical to our economy. The primary function of banks is to put their account holders' money to use by lending it out to others who can then use it to buy homes, businesses, send kids to college... When you deposit your money in the bank, your money goes into a big pool of money along with everyone else's, and your account is credited with the amount of your deposit. When you write checks or make withdrawals, that amount is deducted from your account balance. Interest you earn on your balance is also added to your account. Banks create money in the economy by making loans. The amount of money that banks can lend is directly affected by the reserve requirement set by the Federal Reserve. The reserve requirement is currently 3 percent to 10 percent of a bank's total deposits. This amount can be held either in cash on hand or in the bank's reserve account with the Fed. To see how this affects the economy, think about it like this. When a bank gets a deposit of $100, assuming a reserve requirement of 10 percent, the bank can then lend out $90. That $90 goes back into the economy, purchasing goods or services, and usually ends up deposited in another bank. That bank can then lend out $81 of that $90 deposit, and that $81 goes into the economy to purchase goods or services and ultimately is deposited into another bank that proceeds to lend out a percentage of it. In this way, money grows and flows throughout the community in a much greater amount than physically exists. That $100 makes a much larger ripple in the economy than you may realize! Why does it work?Banking is all about trust. We trust that the bank will have our money for us when we go to get it. We trust that it will honor the checks we write to pay our bills. The thing that's hard to grasp is the fact that while people are putting money into the bank every day, the bank is lending that same money and more to other people every day. Banks consistently extend more credit than they have cash. That's a little scary; but if you go to the bank and demand your money, you'll get it. However, if everyone goes to the bank at the same time and demands their money (a run on the bank), there might be problem. Even though the Federal Reserve Act requires that banks keep a certain percentage of their money in reserve, if everyone came to withdraw their money at the same time, there wouldn't be enough. In the event of a bank failure, your money is protected as long as the bank is insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The key to the success of banking, however, still lies in the confidence that consumers have in the bank's ability to grow and protect their money. Because banks rely so heavily on consumer trust, and trust depends on the perception of integrity, the banking industry is highly regulated by the government.

How do banks make money?

Banks are just like other businesses. Their product just happens to be money. Other businesses sell widgets or services; banks sell money -- in the form of loans, certificates of deposit (CDs) and other financial products. They make money on the interest they charge on loans because that interest is higher than the interest they pay on depositors' accounts. The interest rate a bank charges its borrowers depends on both the number of people who want to borrow and the amount of money the bank has available to lend. As we mentioned in the previous section, the amount available to lend also depends upon the reserve requirement the Federal Reserve Board has set. At the same time, it may also be affected by the funds rate, which is the interest rate that banks charge each other for short-term loans to meet their reserve requirements. Check out How the Fed Works for more on how the Fed influences the economy. Loaning money is also inherently risky. A bank never really knows if it'll get that money back. Therefore, the riskier the loan the higher the interest rate the bank charges. While paying interest may not seem to be a great financial move in some respects, it really is a small price to pay for using someone else's money. Imagine having to save all of the money you needed in order to buy a house. We wouldn't be able to buy houses until we retired! Banks also charge fees for services like checking, ATM access and overdraft protection. Loans have their own set of fees that go along with them. Another source of income for banks is investments and securities.

How do you start your own bank?

What if you wanted to start your own bank? Do you just rent some space, put out a sign and started taking deposits? Not exactly. Let's look at the steps you have to go through in order to start your own bank. The rules and requirements vary from state to state, so in this article we'll use the requirements from the state of Florida.
The organizing groupJust as with any business, you'll first have to make some pre-planning decisions -- like who your partners (called the organizing group) will be. You'll also have to write a business plan. All of these things will be taken into consideration when you apply for a state or federal charter.
State vs. Federal ChartersSome of the benefits of a state-chartered bank include local access to decision-makers and, sometimes, faster responses to questions and concerns. Local decision makers also may be more familiar with the local economies and market conditions. Local regulatory assessment fees are often lower than federal fees, as well. A charter is an agreement that governs the manner in which the bank is regulated and operates. It authorizes the organization of the bank by either the state or federal agency. The agency that charters the bank is primarily responsible for protecting the public from unsafe banking practices. It conducts on-site examinations to make sure the bank's financial condition is good and that the bank is complying with banking laws. State charters and federal charters typically do not differ too much in the way the bank conducts business. They do, however, differ in other areas. For example, in Florida, a state bank is not required to be a member of the Federal Reserve System, while federally chartered banks are. Also, state-chartered banks are regulated by state agencies, while federally chartered banks are regulated by federal agencies.
The organizing group has to identify directors, a chief executive officer (who usually has to have past experience running a bank) and other executives. The integrity, past business histories and credit histories of these people will greatly affect the acceptance or denial of the bank's charter. The important thing is to carefully select these partners and make sure they are team players, have the experience and know-how to help you make the bank work, and can withstand (both professionally and personally) the close scrutiny of the regulatory investigation.
Holding CompanyA bank holding company is a company that has control over a bank. It holds 25 percent of the stock and has the ability to control the election of a majority of the directors of the bank. The Federal Reserve may also determine that a company either directly or indirectly has controlling influence over certain management and policy decisions for the bank. The organizing group has the option of establishing a holding company for the bank when it applies for the charter. The number of directors you must have varies from state to state. In Florida, you must have at least five, and there is no maximum number. These partners have to put up money as an initial offering that shows their level of commitment and helps get the bank going. The required amount in Florida is 25 percent. In other states it may be as low as 10 percent to 15 percent of the total capital needed to start the bank. This group then becomes shareholders in the bank. In most cases, there is a limit of 24.9 percent to how much stock an individual or company may have, unless the company is a holding company.
The bank's market and locationThe location of your bank is also a very important decision. You have to do some market research to determine how well a new bank will do in a particular area, or where the best spot in a large geographic region might be. This information is also required for your application for a charter. You may be competing against others who are also trying to charter a bank in that area! Even though competition is healthy for business and consumers, there is still the need to make sure a stable and safe financial environment is maintained. The economy will also be taken into consideration in locations where there are lots of competing banks.
The specific physical location of your bank is chosen by the organizing group and is just as important as finding the right market. You want the bank's location to be convenient for customers and in a heavily trafficked area. You also need to decide whether to buy or lease a building.
Raising money to start your bankThe capital requirements to start a bank often vary greatly from state to state. In Florida, the suggested capital requirement is $6 million for a bank in a metropolitan area and $4 million for a bank in a rural area. In other states, such as New York, that amount might be $10 million or more for metropolitan areas. Those capital requirements are usually determined by your strategic plan and pro forma financial statements for the market you've selected.
As mentioned above, the organizing group may be responsible for 10 percent to 15 percent of that amount. The remainder is sold to shareholders. Organizing groups may shoot for 400 to 750 or more shareholders in order to raise the money needed to start the bank. Usually, the more shareholders a bank has, the better its chance of succeeding.

The charter application and other details

There are still some details that have to be determined before you can submit your charter application. For instance, what are you going to call your bank? You have to come up a with a name that is different enough from other bank names to avoid confusion. You also need to think about whether you want the word "bank" in the name, and whether you want the geographic region in the name. Regardless of the name you choose, you have to verify that the name is not being used by any other corporations -- which leads us to the fact that you have to become incorporated. Before you actually file your application, it is recommended that you set up a pre-filing meeting with the state's department of finance and banking. This will help make sure that you have all of the information you need to file. Usually, the biggest delays come from incomplete background and/or financial information. Once you have all of the details ironed out, you fill out the charter application and submit it (along with a lot of other information) to the state's board of finance and banking -- or, if you're applying for a federal charter, you'll send it to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Here is the list of items you have to include in Florida: • The names and addresses of all of the organizers and the holding company (if there is one) • The names of the proposed directors, the CEO, the senior loan officer and the cashier • The name and address of the bank • The number of shares, par value, and share prices for each share that will be sold • The total amount of common stock, as well as surplus and reserves for operating expenses • The number of shares of bank stock that each organizer plans to purchase • Where the money for purchasing those shares is coming from • Names and addresses of proposed investors who will own more than 10 percent of the bank's total stock • A completed charter application (form DBF-C-10 in Florida) for each organizer, proposed director and principal stockholder, CEO, senior loan officer, cashier, and all other executive officers • Pro forma financial statements • An addendum to those financial statements that explains assumptions and strategies to achieve the projected market share for each type of product or service • Assumptions used to calculate earnings • Everyone involved in the purchase or lease of the proposed bank building • Any business or personal affiliations between the bank property seller or lessor and any of the organizers, other bank officers, and shareholders who will own 10 percent or more of the bank stock • Copies of location feasibility studies and local zoning laws • Copies of results of any environmental tests conducted at the bank's location • Projected organization costs (this includes filing and regulatory fees, professional and consulting fees, payroll and payroll taxes, rent, capital-raising costs, printing, postage, telephone and office supplies) • Proposed salaries and benefits for bank officers • Copies of any employment contracts that may be given to officers • Copies of proposed bank policies • And finally, your detailed business plan! As you can see, there is a lot of information that has to be gathered and submitted with your charter application. Leaving out any of this information, or having some of it incomplete, will slow down the review process considerably. There will also be a filing fee, which in Florida is $15,000. Most other states require a similar amount. If your application is deemed complete, then a decision will be given within 180 days. If your charter is granted, you will usually have up to one year to open your bank. In all states, you are required to apply for deposit insurance with the FDIC before you can accept deposits from the public.

How safe is your money in a bank?

The 12 regional Reserve Banks act as the service division of the Federal Reserve -- they carry out the monetary policy set by the Federal Reserve Board and regulate and supervise financial institutions. The agency that charters the bank is also responsible for conducting on-site examinations to make sure the bank is complying with banking laws. In addition to this supervision, your money is also protected by insurance. That "FDIC" logo you see as you walk in the door means that you hold insurance on your deposits. Depositors are typically protected for up to $100,000. Deposit insurance came about because of rumors of banking trouble that lead to panics and everyone running to the bank to withdraw all of their money. It didn't take much to make people uneasy about the security of their money in the bank. If they heard of the slightest hint of trouble, they ran to the bank to withdraw. This lead to the failure of many banks and huge losses of savings for many people. This roller coaster of personal finance lasted for many years and throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s. Finally, in 1934, Congress established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which initially provided deposit insurance coverage of $2,500 per depositor. This greatly improved the security of banks and reduced the number of bank failures by almost 4,000 from 1933 to 1934. Public confidence in the banking system has improved tremendously since the FDIC was established. The trust that depositors need in order to make the system work is maintained, and the economy keeps humming. Banks also carry private banking insurance -- specially designed private coverage to protect deposits in the case of burglaries, robberies, vandalism, etc

Loans, Checks and Savings

Banks offer lots of financial products for their depositors. They offer checking accounts, loans, certificates of deposits and money market accounts, not to mention traditional savings accounts. Some also allow you to set up individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and other retirement or education savings accounts. There are, of course, other types of accounts being offered at banks across the country, but these are the most common ones. What are the differences in these most common types of accounts?
Savings accounts - The most common type of account, and probably the first account you ever had, is a savings account. These accounts usually require either a low minimum balance or have no minimum balance requirement, and allow you to keep your money in a safe place while it earns a small amount of interest each month. There are no restrictions on when you can withdraw your money.
Checking accounts - This is another common account most everyone has. It's convenient because it lets you buy things without having to worry about carrying the cash -- or using a credit card and paying its interest. While most checking accounts do not pay interest, some do -- these are referred to as negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts. Some say that checks have been around since about 352 B.C. in the Roman Empire. It appears that checks really started becoming popular in Holland in the 1500 to 1600s. Dutch "cashiers" provided an alternative to keeping large amounts of cash at home and agreed to hold depositors' money for safekeeping. For a fee, they would pay the depositors' debts from the account based on a note that the depositor would write -- sounds a lot like a check! Today's banks do the same thing. It became a little more complicated when lots of banks became involved and money needed to be shifted from one bank to the next. To make things easier, banks now have a system of check "clearinghouses." Banks either send checks through the Federal Reserve or use a private clearinghouse to transfer the funds and clear the check. Here is a diagram of how that works.
Money market accounts - A money market account (MMA) is an interest-earning savings account with limited transaction privileges. You are usually limited to six transfers or withdrawals per month, with no more than three transactions as checks written against the account. The interest rate paid on a money market account is usually higher than that of a regular passbook savings rate. Money market accounts also have a minimum balance requirement.
Certificates of deposit - These are accounts that allow you to put in a specific amount of money for a specific period of time. In exchange for a higher interest rate, you have to agree not to withdraw the money for the duration of the fixed time period. The interest rate changes based on the length of time you decide to leave the money in the account. You can't write checks on certificates of deposit. This arrangement not only gives the bank money they can use for other purposes, but it also lets them know exactly how long they can use that money.
Individual retirement accounts and education savings accounts - These types of accounts require that you keep your money in the bank until you reach a certain age or your child enters college. There can be penalties with these types of accounts, however, if you use the money for something other than education, or if you withdraw the money prior to retirement age.

How Stocks and the Stock Market Work

How Stocks and the Stock Market Work

The stock market appears in the news every day. You hear about it any time it reaches a new high or a new low, and you also hear about it daily in statements like "The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2 percent today, with advances leading declines by a margin of..."
Obviously, stocks and the stock market are important, but you may find that you know very little about them. What is a stock? What is a stock market? Why do we need a stock market? Where does the stock come from to begin with, and why do people want to buy and sell it? If you have questions like these, then this edition will open your eyes to a whole new world

A Simple Example

A Simple Example

Let's say that you want to start a business, and you decide to open a restaurant. You go out and buy a building, buy all the kitchen equipment, tables and chairs that you need, buy your supplies and hire your cooks, servers, etc. You advertise and open your doors.

Let's say that:

You spend $500,000 buying the building and the equipment.
In the first year, you spend $250,000 on supplies, food and the payroll for your employees.
At the end of your first year, you add up all of the money you have received from customers and find that your total income is $300,000.
Since you have made $300,000 and paid out the $250,000 for expenses, your net profit is:

$300,000 (income) - $250,000 (expense) = $50,000 (profit)
At the end of the second year, you bring in $325,000 and your expenses remain the same, for a net profit of $75,000. At this point, you decide that you want to sell the business. What is it worth?

One way to look at it is to say that the business is "worth" $500,000. If you close the restaurant, you can sell the building, the equipment and everything else and get $500,000. This is a simplification, of course -- the building probably went up in value, and the equipment went down because it is now used. Let's just say that things balance out to $500,000. This is the asset value, or book value, of the business -- the value of all of the business's assets if you sold them outright today.

However, if you keep it going, it will probably make at least $75,000 this year -- you know that from your history with the business. Therefore, you can think of the restaurant as an investment that will pay out something like $75,000 in interest every year. Looking at it that way, someone might be willing to pay $750,000 for the restaurant, as a $75,000 return per year on a $750,000 investment represents a 10-percent rate of return. Someone might even be willing to pay $1,500,000, which represents a 5-percent rate of return, or more if he or she thought that the restaurant's income would grow and increase earnings over time at a rate faster than the rate of inflation.

The restaurant's owner, therefore, will set the price accordingly. You might price the restaurant at $1,500,000. What if 10 people come to you and say, "Wow, I would like to buy your restaurant but I don't have $1,500,000." You might want to somehow divide your restaurant into 10 equal pieces and sell each piece for $150,000. In other words, you might sell shares in the restaurant. Then, each person who bought a share would receive one-tenth of the profits at the end of the year, and each person would have one out of 10 votes in any business decisions. Or, you might divide ownership up into 1,500 shares and sell each share for $1,000 to make the price something that more people could afford. Or, you might divide ownership up into 3,000 shares, keep 1,500 for yourself, and sell the remaining shares for $500 each. That way, you retain a majority of the shares (and therefore the votes) and remain in control of the restaurant while sharing the profit with other people. In the meantime, you get to put $750,000 in the bank when you sell the 1,500 shares to other people.

Stock, at its core, is really that simple. It represents ownership of a company's assets and profits. A dividend on a share of stock represents that share's portion of the company's profits, generally dispersed yearly. If the restaurant has 10 owners, each owning one share of stock, and the restaurant makes $75,000 in profit during the year, then each owner gets a dividend of $7,500. A large company like IBM has millions of shares of stock outstanding -- around 1.1 billion in October, 1999 (see this page for details). In this case, the total profits of the company are divided by 1.1 billion and sent to the shareholders as dividends.

One measure of the value of a company, at least as far as investors are concerned, is the product of the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the share price. This value is called the capitalization of the company.



The Basic Idea
If I am a private citizen who owns a restaurant, and I am selling my restaurant stock to other private citizens in the community, I might do the whole transaction by word-of-mouth, or by placing an ad in the newspaper. This makes selling the stock easy for me. However, it creates a problem down the line for investors who want to sell their stock in the restaurant. The seller has to go out and find a buyer, which can be hard. A "stock market" solves this problem.

Stocks in publicly traded companies are bought and sold at a stock market (also known as a stock exchange). The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is an example of such a market. In your neighborhood, you have a "supermarket" that sells food. The reason you go the supermarket is because you can go to one place and buy all of the different types of food that you need in one stop -- it's a lot more convenient than driving around to the butcher, the dairy farmer, the baker, etc. The NYSE is a supermarket for stocks. The NYSE can be thought of as a big room where everyone who wants to buy and sell shares of stocks can go to do their buying and selling.

The exchange makes buying and selling easy. You don't have to actually travel to New York to visit the New York Stock Exchange -- you can call a stock broker who does business with the NYSE, and he or she will go to the NYSE on your behalf to buy or sell your stock. If the exchange did not exist, buying or selling stock would be a lot harder. You would have to place a classified ad in the newspaper, wait for a call and haggle on a price whenever you wanted to sell stock. With an exchange in place, you can buy and sell shares instantly.

The stock exchange has an interesting side effect. Because all the buying and selling is concentrated in one place, it allows the price of a stock to be known every second of the day. Therefore, investors can watch as a stock's price fluctuates based on news from the company, media reports, national economic news and lots of other factors. Buyers and sellers take all of these factors into account. So, for example, when the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) shut down the company ValuJet for a month in June 1996, the value of the stock plummeted. Investors could not be sure that the airline represented a "going concern" and began selling, driving the price down. The asset value of the company acted as a floor on the share price.

The price of a stock also reflects the dividend that the stock pays, the projected earnings of the company in the future, the price of tea in China (especially Lipton stock) and so on.

The Basic Idea

The Basic Idea

If I am a private citizen who owns a restaurant, and I am selling my restaurant stock to other private citizens in the community, I might do the whole transaction by word-of-mouth, or by placing an ad in the newspaper. This makes selling the stock easy for me. However, it creates a problem down the line for investors who want to sell their stock in the restaurant. The seller has to go out and find a buyer, which can be hard. A "stock market" solves this problem.

Stocks in publicly traded companies are bought and sold at a stock market (also known as a stock exchange). The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is an example of such a market. In your neighborhood, you have a "supermarket" that sells food. The reason you go the supermarket is because you can go to one place and buy all of the different types of food that you need in one stop -- it's a lot more convenient than driving around to the butcher, the dairy farmer, the baker, etc. The NYSE is a supermarket for stocks. The NYSE can be thought of as a big room where everyone who wants to buy and sell shares of stocks can go to do their buying and selling.

The exchange makes buying and selling easy. You don't have to actually travel to New York to visit the New York Stock Exchange -- you can call a stock broker who does business with the NYSE, and he or she will go to the NYSE on your behalf to buy or sell your stock. If the exchange did not exist, buying or selling stock would be a lot harder. You would have to place a classified ad in the newspaper, wait for a call and haggle on a price whenever you wanted to sell stock. With an exchange in place, you can buy and sell shares instantly.

The stock exchange has an interesting side effect. Because all the buying and selling is concentrated in one place, it allows the price of a stock to be known every second of the day. Therefore, investors can watch as a stock's price fluctuates based on news from the company, media reports, national economic news and lots of other factors. Buyers and sellers take all of these factors into account. So, for example, when the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) shut down the company ValuJet for a month in June 1996, the value of the stock plummeted. Investors could not be sure that the airline represented a "going concern" and began selling, driving the price down. The asset value of the company acted as a floor on the share price.

The price of a stock also reflects the dividend that the stock pays, the projected earnings of the company in the future, the price of tea in China (especially Lipton stock) and so on.

Corporations

Corporations

Any business that wants to sell shares of stock to a number of different people does so by turning itself into a corporation. The process of turning a business into a corporation is called incorporating.

If you start a restaurant by taking your own money to buy the building and the equipment, then what you have done is formed a sole proprietorship. You own the entire restaurant yourself -- you get to make all of the decisions and you keep all of the profit. If three people pool their money together and start a restaurant as a team, what they have done is formed a partnership. The three people own the restaurant themselves, sharing the profit and decision-making.

A corporation is different, and it is a pretty interesting concept. A corporation is a "virtual person". That is, a corporation is registered with the government, it has a social security number (known as a federal tax ID number), it can own property, it can go to court to sue people, it can be sued and it can make contracts. By definition, a corporation has stock that can be bought and sold, and all of the owners of the corporation hold shares of stock in the corporation to represent their ownership. One incredibly interesting characteristic of this "virtual person" is that it has an indefinite and potentially infinite life span.

There is a whole body of law that controls corporations -- these laws are in place to protect the shareholders and the public. These laws control a number of things about how a corporation operates and is organized. For example, every corporation has a board of directors (if all of the shares of a corporation are owned by one person, then that one person can decide that there will only be one person on the board of directors, but there is still a board). The shareholders in the company meet every year to vote on the people for the board. The board of directors makes the decisions for the company. It hires the officers (the president and other major officers of the company), makes the company's decisions and sets the company's policies. The board of directors can be thought of as the "brain" of the "virtual person."

From this description, you can see that a corporation has a group of owners -- the shareholders. The owners elect a board of directors to make the company's major decisions. The owners of a corporation become owners by buying shares of stock in the corporation. The board of directors decides how many total shares there will be. For example, a company might have one million shares of stock. The company can either be privately held or publicly held. In a privately held company, the shares of stock are owned by a small number of people who probably all know one another. They buy and sell their shares amongst themselves. A publicly held company is owned by thousands of people who trade their shares on a public stock exchange.

One of the big reasons why corporations exist is to create a structure for collecting lots of investment dollars in a business. Let's say that you would like to start your own airline. Most people cannot do this, because an airplane costs millions of dollars. An airline needs a whole fleet of planes and other equipment, plus it has to hire a lot of employees. A person who wants to start an airline will therefore form a corporation and sell stock in order to collect the money needed to get started.

A corporation is an easy way to gather large quantities of investment capital -- money from investors. When a corporation first sells stock to the public, it does so in an IPO (Initial Public Offering). The company might sell one million shares of stock at $20 a share to raise $20 million very quickly (that is a simplification -- the brokerage house in charge of the IPO will extract its fee from the $20 million, but let's ignore that here). The company then invests the $20 million in equipment and employees. The investors (the shareholders who bought the $20 million in stock) hope that with the equipment and employees, the company will make a profit and pay a dividend.

Another reason that corporations exist is to limit the liability of the owners to some extent. If the corporation gets sued, it is the corporation that pays the settlement. The corporation may go out of business, but that is the worst that can happen. If you are a sole proprietor who owns a restaurant and the restaurant gets sued, you are the one who is being sued. "You" and "the restaurant" are the same thing. If you lose the suit then you, personally, can lose everything you own in the process.

Stock Prices

Stock Prices

Let's say that a new corporation is created and in its IPO it raises $20 million by selling one million shares for $20 a share. The corporation buys its equipment and hires its employees with that money. In the first year, when all the income and expenses are added up, the company makes a profit of $1 million. The board of directors of the company can decide to do a number of things with that $1 million:

It could put it in the bank and save it for a rainy day.
It could decide to give all of the profits to its shareholders, so it would declare a dividend of $1 per share.
It could use the money to buy more equipment and hire more employees to expand the company.
It could pick some combination of these three options.
If a company traditionally pays out most its profits to its shareholders, it is generally called an income stock. The shareholders get income from the company's profits. If the company puts most of the money back into the business, it is called a growth stock. The company is trying to grow larger by increasing the amount of equipment and the number of people who run it.
The price of an income stock tends to stay fairly flat. That is, from year to year, the price of the stock tends to remain about the same unless profits (and therefore dividends) go up. People are getting their money each year and the business is not growing. This would be the case for stock in a single restaurant that distributes all of its profits to the shareholders each year.

Let's say that the single restaurant decides, for several years, to save its profits, and eventually it opens a second restaurant. That is the behavior of a growth company. The value of the stock rises because, when the second restaurant opens, there is twice as much equipment and twice as much profit being earned by the company. In a growth stock, the shareholders do not get a yearly dividend, but they own a company whose value is increasing. Therefore, the shareholders can get more money when they sell their shares -- someone buying the stock would see the increasing book value of the company (the value of the buildings, equipment, etc.) and the increasing profit that the company is earning and, based on these factors, pay a higher price for the stock.

In a publicly traded company, all of the financial information about the company is public. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in charge of collecting this information and making it available to investors. Shareholders also use a number of other indicators to determine how much a stock is worth. One simple indicator is the price/earnings ratio. This is the price of the stock divided by the earnings per share. There are all sorts of indicators like these, as well as a great deal of other financial information available on any stock. You can look up all of it on the Web in thousands of different places -- see the links at the end of this article for details.

Stock Averages

Stock Averages

Every day on the news you hear about the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and other averages like the S&P 500 or The Russel 2000. These are broad market averages designed to tell you how companies traded on the stock market are doing in general. For example, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is simply the average value of 30 large, industrial stocks. Big companies like General Motors, Goodyear, IBM and Exxon are the companies that make up this index (this page tells you which companies are currently in the Dow Jones average). The S&P 500 is the average value of 500 large companies. The Russel 2000 index averages the values of 2,000 smaller companies.

Wall Street's bronze bull, by Arturo De Modica, located at the northern tip of Bowling Green

What these averages tell you is the general health of stock prices as a whole. If the economy is "doing well," then the prices of stocks as a group tend to rise in what is referred to as a "bull market." If it is "doing poorly," prices as a group tend to fall in what is called a "bear market." The averages reveal these tendencies in the market as a whole.

Exchanges and Brokers

Exchanges and Brokers

There are three big stock exchanges in the United States:

NYSE - New York Stock Exchange
AMEX - American Stock Exchange
NASDAQ - National Association of Securities Dealers
A company "lists" its stock on an exchange. For example, the NYSE has about 3,000 companies listed. According to the NYSE:
At the end of November, 1998, there were 3,104 companies with stock listed on the NYSE. These companies had over 236 billion shares worth a total of $10.1 trillion available for trading on the Exchange, giving the NYSE the world's largest market capitalization (in global market-value terms, the total global value of the NYSE-listed companies exceeded $12.8 trillion).
Anyone who wants to buy or sell stock in any of these 3,000 or so companies goes to the New York Stock Exchange to do it.
Of course, no one wants to fly to New York to buy or sell their shares. A person therefore calls a stock broker in a firm that is authorized to trade at the exchange. There are dozens of such brokerage houses, including such familiar names as Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley. When you call up a broker at one of these companies, he or she relays your trade to the floor of the appropriate exchange, and a representative of the company (or, more commonly, a computer representing the company) makes the trade on your behalf. You pay the broker a commission (generally $10 to $100 per trade, depending on the broker) to provide this service to you.

Stocks that are not listed on an exchange are sold Over The Counter (OTC). OTC stocks are generally in smaller, riskier companies. Usually, an OTC stock is stock in a company that does not meet the requirements of an exchange.