Making enquiries about shares
Is anything possible, and if so, how? Because of the circumstances, there is nothing you can do. You do not have the ISIN, nor are you a part-owner of the account.  The information you would need is:  As always, good luck.
"Shares do not themselves carry any identity. Official shareholders are kept at the registrar.  In the UK, this may be kept up to date and publicly accessible.  In the US, it is not, but this doesn't matter because most shares are held ""in street name"". For a fully detailed history, one would need access to all exchange records, brokerage records, and any trades transacted off exchange. These records are almost totally unavailable." Another form of 'shareholder' activism. You might be able to buy a single share, which it seems would cost around $35, attend the AGM, and ask questions and/or shout or sing and delay proceedings. There would certainly be security guards or police ready to remove protesters at an AGM. A share is just a part ownership of a company. If you buy a share of a green stock in the open market, you now just own  part of a green company. Just like if you buy a house, the money you paid moves to the former owner, but what you are getting is a clear asset in return that you now own. Via mutual funds/indexes this can get a little more complicated (voting rights etc tend to go to the mutual/indexing company rather than the holders of the fund), but is approximately the same thing: the fund buys assets on the open market, then holds them, buys more, or sells them on behalf of the fund investors. Do a share split.  Your initial 1 share each becomes 10 (or 100) shares each,  then you can sell/gift/etc shares as needed. Shares are partial ownership of the company. A company can issue (not create) more of the shares it owns at any time, to anyone, at any price -- subject to antitrust and similar regulations. If they wanted to, for example, flat-out give 10% of their retained interest to charity, they could do so. It shouldn't substantially affect the stock's trading for others unless there's a completely irrational demand for shares. "Let's handle this as a ""proof of concept"" (POC); OP wants to buy 1 share of anything just to prove that they can do it before doing the months of painstaking analysis that is required before buying shares as an investment. I will also assume that the risks and costs of ownership and taxes would be included in OP's future analyses. To trade a stock you need a financed broker account and a way to place orders. Open a dealing account, NOT an options or CFD etc. account, with a broker. I chose a broker who I was confident that I could trust, others will tell you to look for brokers based on cost or other metrics. In the end you need to be happy that you can get what you want out of your broker, that is likely to include some modicum of trust since you will be keeping money with them. When you create this account they will ask for your bank account details (plus a few other details to prevent fraud, insider trading, money laundering etc.) and may also ask for a minimum deposit. Either deposit enough to cover the price of your share plus taxes and the broker's commission, plus a little extra to be on the safe side as prices move for every trade, including yours, or the minimum if it is higher. Once you have an account the broker will provide an interface through which to buy the share. This will usually either be a web interface, a phone number, or a fax number. They will also provide you with details of how their orders are structured. The simplest type of order is a ""market order"". This tells the broker that you want to buy your shares at the market price rather than specifying only to buy at a given price. After you have sent that order the broker will buy the share from the market, deduct the price plus tax and her commission from your account and credit your account with your share." I have been careful here to cover both shares in companies and in ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). Some information such as around corporate actions and AGMs is only applicable for company shares and not ETFs. The shares that you own are registered to you through the broker that you bought them via but are verified by independent fund administrators and brokerage reconciliation processes. This means that there is independent verification that the broker has those shares and that they are ring fenced as being yours. The important point in this is that the broker cannot sell them for their own profit or otherwise use them for their own benefit, such as for collateral against margin etc..  1) Since the broker is keeping the shares for you they are still acting as an intermediary. In order to prove that you own the shares and have the right to sell them you need to transfer the registration to another broker in order to sell them through that broker. This typically, but not always, involves some kind of fee and the broker that you transfer to will need to be able to hold and deal in those shares. Not all brokers have access to all markets. 2) You can sell your shares through a different broker to the one you bought them through but you will need to transfer your ownership to the other broker and that broker will need to have access to that market. 3) You will normally, depending on your broker, get an email or other message on settlement which can be around two days after your purchase. You should also be able to see them in your online account UI before settlement. You usually don't get any messages from the issuing entity for the instrument until AGM time when you may get invited to the AGM if you hold enough stock. All other corporate actions should be handled for you by your broker. It is rare that settlement does not go through on well regulated markets, such as European, Hong Kong, Japanese, and US markets but this is more common on other markets. In particular I have seen quite a lot of trades reversed on the Istanbul market (XIST) recently. That is not to say that XIST is unsafe its just that I happen to have seen a few trades reversed recently. So in your screenshot, someone or some group of someones is willing to buy 3,000 shares at $3.45, and someone or some group of someones is willing to sell 2,000 shares at 3.88. Without getting in to the specific mechanics, you can place a market buy order for 10 (or whatever number) shares and it will probably transact at $3.88 per share because that's the lowest price for which someone will currently sell their shares. As a small fish, you can generally ignore the volume notations in the bid/ask quotes. My go-to response whenever anyone asks me this is the Monevator table of platform fees. It looks a little complicated at first, but scroll past the table for a couple of paragraphs of useful info to help narrow down your search. The general tone of the page is geared more towards investors in index funds, but the fees on share-dealing are right there in the table too. There are also special notes if there are discounts for frequent traders and that sort of thing, so not too much passive-investor elitism on show! "@Alex B's answer hits most of it, but leaves out one thing: most companies control who can own their non-public shares, and prohibit transfers, sales, or in some cases, even ongoing ownership by ex-employees. So it's not that hard to ensure you stay under 500 investors.   Remember that Sharespost isn't an exchange or clearinghouse; it's basically a bulletin board with some light contract services and third-party escrow services.   I'd guess that many of the companies on their ""hot"" list explicitly prohibit the sale of their non-public shares." I don't think that you will be able to find a list of every owner for a given stock. There are probably very few people who would know this. One source would be whoever sends out the shareholder meeting mailers.  I suspect that the company itself would know this, the exchange to a lesser extent, and possibly the brokerage houses to a even lesser extent. Consider these resources: Rather than take anyone's word for it (including and especially mine) you need to do think very carefully about your company; you know it far better than almost anyone else. Do you feel that the company values its employees? If it values you and your immediate colleagues then its likely that it not only values its other employees but also its customers which is a sign that it will do well. Does the company have a good relationship with its customers? Since you are a software engineer using a web stack I assume that it is either a web consultancy or has an e-commerce side to it so you will have some exposure to what the customers complain about, either in terms of bugs or UX difficulties. You probably even get bug reports that tell you what customer pain points are. Are customers' concerns valid, serious and damaging? If they are then you should think twice about taking up the offer, if not then you may well be fine. Also bear in mind how much profit is made on each item of product and how many you can possibly sell - you need to be able to sell items that have been produced. Those factors indicate how the future of the company looks currently, next you need to think about why the IPO is needed. IPOs and other share offerings are generally done to raise capital for the firm so is your company raising money to invest for the future or to cover losses and cashflow shortfalls? Are you being paid on time and without issues? Do you get all of the equipment and hiring positions that you want or is money always a limiting factor? As an insider you have a better chance to analyse these things than outsiders as they effect your day-to-day work. Remember that anything in the prospectus is just marketing spiel; expecting a 4.5 - 5.3% div yield is not the same as actually paying it or guaranteeing it. Do you think that they could afford to pay it? The company is trying to sell these shares for the maximum price they can get, don't fall for the hyped up sales pitch. If you feel that all of these factors are positive then you should buy as much as you can, hopefully far more than the minimum, as it seems like the company is a strong, growing concern. If you have any concerns from thinking about these factors then you probably shouldn't buy any (unless you are getting a discount but that's a different set of considerations) as your money would be better utilized elsewhere. "There are several such ""lists."" The one that is maintained by the company is called the shareholder registry. That is a list that the company has given to it by the brokerage firms. It is a start, but not a full list, because many individual shareholders hold their stock with say Merrill Lynch, in ""street name"" or anonymously. A more useful list is the one of institutional ownership maintained by the SEC. Basically, ""large"" holders (of more than 5 percent of the stock) have to register their holdings with the SEC. More to the point, large holders of stocks, the Vanguards, Fidelitys, etc. over a certain size, have to file ALL their holdings of stock with the SEC. These are the people you want to contact if you want to start a proxy fight. The most comprehensive list is held by the Depositary Trust Company. People try to get that list only in rare instances." There are 2 main types of brokers, full service and online (or discount). Basically the full service can provide you with advice in the form of recommendations on what to buy and sell and when, you call them up when you want to put an order in and the commissions are usually higher. Whilst an online broker usually doesn't provide advice (unless you ask for it at a specified fee), you place your orders online through the brokers website or trading platform and the commissions are usually much lower. The best thing to do when starting off is to go to your country's stock exchange, for example, The ASX in Sydney Australia, and they should have a list of available brokers. Some of the online brokers may have a practice or simulation account you can practice on, and they usually provide good educational material to help you get started. If you went with an online broker and wanted to buy Facebook on the secondary market (that is on the stock exchange after the IPO closes), you would log onto your brokers website or platform and go to the orders section. You would place a new order to buy say 100 Facebook shares at a certain price. You can use a market order, meaning the order will be immediately executed at the current market price and you will own the shares, or a limit price order where you select a price below the current market price and wait for the price to come down and hit your limit price before your order is executed and you get your shares. There are other types of orders available with different brokers which you will learn about when you log onto their website. You also need to be careful that you have the funds available to pay for the share at settlement, which is 3 business days after your order was executed. Some brokers may require you to have the funds deposited into an account which is linked to your trading account with them. To sell your shares you do the same thing, except this time you choose a sell order instead of a buy order. It becomes quite simple once you have done it a couple of times. The best thing is to do some research and get started. Good Luck. "You can learn very little from it. Company directories are often given share options or shares as a bonus, and because of that they are unlikely to buy shares. When they sell shares, you'll hear people shouting ""so-and-so sold his or her shares, they must know something bad about the company"".  The truth is that you can't eat or drink shares. If that company director owning shares worth a million dollars wants to buy a new Ferrari, he will find that Ferrari doesn't give free cars to people owning lots of shares. He actually has to sell the shares to get the money for the car, and that's what he does."