When we hear the word ‘stock’, we imagine it as numerical figures with the most weird graphs.
Well, if you think of it in another way, it’s not that hard! It could be interesting.
The basic thing you need to know about stock market is that it is never predictable; the price of a stock depends on the demands of people wanting to buy it.
Say, on 12th January 2010, people demand (request to the stock market) to buy 100,000 shares of Google stock, when only 50,000 shares are available for trade. Then, the price of Google stock went up for the day of 12th January 2010!
You may ask, “but what motivates people wanting to buy stocks, and wanting to sell stocks?” Well, to make a reference to a current issue, Toyota’s mass recall of their cars due to its flaws made Toyota’s stock to be unstable; people started to suspect Toyota’s technological abilities and its responsibilities, so there were more demands for selling the stock.
So there’s current issues that affect stock markets.
But there’s a lot more! Don’t start to panic, you don’t have to memorize them or something; just note that stock market is profound. It’s so profound that you don’t have to stick your head into it.
Other thing that affect stock market would be the stock company’s (ex. Google) financial status. If the company has lots of debt, then people are more cautious in investing. The disposition, ability, capacity of leader of the company is another thing people consider in mind when investing.
You may wonder, “Then how all this were created?”
To answer that question, we need to start from a whole new, but interesting story.
Remember the story about The Age of Discovery? Well, the stock market originate from that Age.
Say a ship called Victoria was planning to go find a new world during The Age of Discovery. Well, the ship must have been made by a rich guy who invests much of his money into the ship. And that rich guy resembles the characteristics of a founder of a company.
And there’s this captain who leads the ship. Well, doesn’t this resemble CEO of nowadays?
Not mentioning the crews as workers, there are those surge of people coming and investing the money to that Victoria ship!
This basic concept of investing to a ship evolved to be nowadays stock market. Although it looks complicated, the fundamental of it is easy!
p.s. the images could be found at :http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewalkingirony/3051500551/