The shares are nothing more than a part of a company. In a nutshell it means that if you buy a share, you buy part of the company assuming the risk of the same.
The equity securities, are usually quoted on a regulated market where you can buy and sell during the opening hours of trading .
A stock reflects the performance of a company either positive, or negative. The possibility of gain or loss are not measurable and in case of poor performance the company's risk can also be that of the total loss of the invested assets.
If the company is profitable, most of these can be distributed to the holders of shares through a consideration which is called dividend.
The fluids may be of various types, common or preferred, the difference between the one and the other is about the right to vote in meetings of the shareholders and the percentage of dividend that you can cash out.
In each country there is a market, stock exchange, where are traded shares of companies that are in that particular country.
In future episodes we will list the indexes of the world's stock markets, the main and those in the developing world.
The largest companies by market capitalization:
| 1 | Apple (USA) |
| 2 | Exxon Mobil (USA) |
| 3 | Royal B.Scot (GB) |
| 4 | Google (USA) |
| 5 | Berkshire Hatw (USA) |
| 6 | Royal Dutch P. (NL) |
| 7 | Wal Mart Stores (USA) |
| 8 | Microsoft (USA) |
| 9 | General Electric (USA) |
| 10 | IBM (USA) |
| 11 | Chevron Corp (USA) |
| 12 | Nestle (CH) |
| 13 | Hsbc Holdings (GB) |
| 14 | Joh.&Johnson (USA) |
| 15 | Procter & Gamble (USA) |
| 16 | Pfizer (USA) |
| 17 | Bhp Billiton (GB) |
| 18 | AT&T Inc (USA) |
| 19 | Roche (CH) |
| 20 | Wells Fargo (USA) |
| 21 | Novartis (CH) |
| 22 | Jp Morgan Chase (USA) |
| 23 | Coca Cola (USA) |
| 24 | Oracle (USA) |
| 25 | Toyota Motor (JP) |
| 26 | Anheuser-Busch (B) |
| 27 | Philip Morris Inc (USA) |
| 28 | BP (GB) |
| 29 | Vodafone Group (GB) |
| 30 | Vodafone Group (USA) |
| 31 | Merck & Co (USA) |
| 32 | Sanofi (F) |
| 33 | Total SA (F) |
| 34 | Citigroup (USA) |
| 35 | Verizon Comm. (USA) |
| 36 | Amazon.com (USA) |
| 37 | Bank of America (USA) |
| 38 | Unilever (GB) |
| 39 | Unilever (NL) |
| 40 | Pepsico (USA) |
| 41 | GlaxoSmithKline (GB) |
| 42 | Volkswagen (D) |
| 43 | Rio Tinto (GB) |
| 44 | Cisco Systems (USA) |
| 45 | QUALCOMM (USA) |
| 46 | Intel (USA) |
| 47 | Schlumberger (USA) |
| 48 | Comcast (USA) |
| 49 | Home Depot (USA) |
| 50 | Sap (D) |
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