stock for a particular brand
In addition to the answer by Craig Banach: Sometimes brands are owned by publicly traded companies which have a very diverse product portfolio. In case of Microsoft their stock price and dividend will not be controlled solely by that one product they make but also by their many other products (plus a billion other factors which can influence a stock price). So when you want to bet specifically on the success of Windows Phone then betting on the Microsoft Corporation as a whole might not achieve that goal. However, you can also try to find companies whose success depends indirectly on the success of the product. That can be suppliers (someone who makes a specific part which is only used for Windows phones), companies which make Windows Phone specific accessories or software developers who make applications which specifically target the Windows Phone ecosystem. When the product portfolio of these companies is far narrower than that of Microsoft they might be more dependent on the success of Windows Phone than Microsoft themselves. But as always, keep in mind that the success of their products is not the only factor which decides the stock value of a company. The stock market is far more complex than that. If you want to invest in the Windows Phone, then you go and find out who makes the Windows Phone i.e. Microsoft. Then you go and decide if Windows Phone is successful will the share price of Microsoft go up (own research/deduction) and if you think that the price of Microsoft has a positive correlation with the Windows Phone, then you could buy shares of Microsoft. There is no way to invest directly in individual products on stock exchanges, you are generally investing in the companies that produce them. You find the ticker of a company by googling. NASDAQ: MSFT
"Simple answer: Yes  A better question to ask might be ""Should I invest all my savings to buy 4 shares of a single stock."" My answer to that would be ""probably not"". If this is your first venture into the world of owning publicly traded companies, then you're better off starting with some sort of mutual fund or ETF. This will start your portfolio with some amount of diversification so you don't have all your eggs in one basket. If you really want to get into the world of picking individual stocks, a good rule of thumb to follow is to invest $1 in some sort of indexed fund for every $1 you invest in an individual stock. This gives you some diversification while still enabling you to scratch that itch of owning a part of Apple or whatever other company you think is going in the right direction." "Yes, there are a lot of places you can research stocks online, Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, Reuters etc. It's important to understand that the price of the stock doesn't actually mean anything.  Share price is just a function of the market capitalization divided by the number of shares outstanding.  As an example take two companies that are both worth $1 million, but Company A has issued 10,000 shares and Company B has issued 100,000 shares.  Company A has a share price of $100 while Company B has a share price of just $10.  Comparing share price does nothing to indicate the relative value or health of Company A versus Company B.   I know there are supposed to be no product recommendations but the dictionary area of investopedia.com is a good source of beginner investing information.  And as Joe points out below the questions here with the ""stock"" tag would also be a good place to start.  And while I'm on a roll, the book ""A Random Walk Down Wall Street"" is a good starting point in investing in the stock market." how does the trading company know which one I want to sell? It doesn't need to know. You just sell one. From taxation point of view depending on the country / tax jurisdiction, it can be only be FIFO or specific stock. The DOW is just an index, which is simply a group of stocks meeting the criteria for inclusion. In the case of the DOW, it's the 30 US stocks with the largest market capitalization, but other indices include many lesser stocks (such as the S&P500 or the Russell 2000). The fact that Holobeam is no longer a constituent of the DOW30 probably shouldn't be taken in and of itself as a signal to sell the stock. As far as I can tell, HOOB stock is still trading on the Nasdaq exchange. However, it is extremely ill-liquid, which means that there are very few people willing to buy or sell it. Whether or not this would work to your advantage is almost entirely down to luck - it depends whether there is a keen buyer out there at the time you try to sell. It is a publicly traded company.  My interest is more in their motivation for  instituting the new policy.  *I* expect the stock to go up, I'm not being told that by someone else.  Thanks for looking out though :) The only recommendation I have is to try the stock screener from Google Finance : https://www.google.com/finance?ei=oJz9VenXD8OxmAHR263YBg#stockscreener Pick one stock (probably within Utilities) and know it well. Understand what it trades on (EV / EBITDA, P / E, P / Rev) and why. What are the typical margins for the industry? What are rev growth trends? What isn't priced in? I think studying one company deeply would be helpful  Other things to look at would be how your fund is structured, what it's benchmark is, voting structure, and how ideas are sourced  Good luck! For all practical purposes the words mean the same thing.  Shares are just stock in a particular company whereas stock can refer to shares over many companies. Investopedia has a good explaination. If you are a financial journalist you might want to make sure you are using the right term at the right time, but otherwise they are synonyms. If the first one is literally a company name, then 'company name' is fine. However, companies can issue shares more than once, and those shares might be traded separately, so you could have 'Google ordinary', 'Google preference', 'Google ordinary issue B'. Seeing the name spelled out in full like this isn't as common as just the company name, but I'd normally see it referred to as 'display name'. The second one is 'symbol', 'ticker', 'ID', and others. Globally, there are many incompatible ways of referring to a stock, depending on where it's listed (companies can have dual listings, and different exchanges have different conventions), and who's referring to it (Bloomberg and Reuters have different sets of IDs, with no predictable mapping between them). So there's no one shorthand name, and the word you use depends on the context. However, 'symbol' or 'ticker' is normally fine. Let's take a step back. My fictional company 'A' is a solid, old, established company. It's in consumer staples, so people buy the products in good times and bad. It has a dividend of $1/yr. Only knowing this, you have to decide how much you would be willing to pay for one share.  You might decide that $20 is fair. Why? Because that's a 5% return on your money, 1/20 = 5%, and given the current rates, you're happy for a 5% dividend. But this company doesn't give out all its earnings as a dividend. It really earns $1.50, so the P/E you are willing to pay is 20/1.5 or 13.3.  Many companies offer no dividend, but of course they still might have earnings, and the P/E is one metric that used to judge whether one wishes to buy a stock.  A high P/E implies the buyers think the stock will have future growth, and they are wiling to pay more today to hold it. A low P/E might be a sign the company is solid, but not growing, if such a thing is possible. according to me it's the news about a particular stock which makes people to buy or sell it mostly thus creates a fluctuation in price . It also dependents on the major stock holder. "Here are some approaches you may value: Wolfram Alpha This is a search engine with a difference. It literally is connected to thousands of searchable databases, including financial databases. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=list+of+public+companies+ Just keep clicking the ""more"" button until you have them all.You can also get great company specific information there: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=NYSE%3ADIS&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Financial.NYSE%3ADIS- Just keep clicking the ""more"" button until you have them all.Then the company it'self will have great information for investors too:  [http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/investors][3] (Just keep clicking the ""more"" button until you have them all.) Regards, Stephen" At the present time, businesses are facing serious threat from various sources. This is needless to say that, if there is a new brand wants to occupy a small space in market, it has to make an elusive effort while there are different brands have already taken their places. The main question is, how much money you want to make?  With every transaction, you  should calculate the real price as the price plus costs. For example, if you but 10 GreatCorp stock of £100 each, and the transaction cost is £20 , then the real cost of buying a single share is in fact buying price of stock + broker costs / amount bought, or £104 in this case.  Now you want to make a profit so calculate your desired profit margin. You want to receive a sales price of buying price + profit margin + broker costs / amount bought. Suppose that you'd like 5%, then you'll need the price per stock of my example to increase to 100 + 5% + £40 / 10 = £109.  So you it only becomes worth while if you feel confident that GreatCorp's stock  will rise to that level. Read the yearly balance of that company to see if they don't have any debt, and are profitable. Look at their dividend earning history. Study the stock's candle graphs of the last ten years or so, to find out if there's no seasonal effects, and if the stock performs well overall. Get to know the company well. You should only buy GreatCorp shares after doing your homework.  But what about switching to another stock of LovelyInc? Actually it doesn't matter, since it's best to separate transactions. Sell your GreatCorp's stock when it has reached the desired profit margin or if it seems it is underperforming. Cut your losses! Make the calculations for LovelyCorp's shares without reference to GreatCorp's, and decide like that if it's worth while to buy. Stock is a part ownership of a business. First there has to be a business that people want to own part of because they expect to make a profit from that ownership.  Nobody is going to be interested if the business isn't worth anything.  In other words: sure, you could try to start a movie production house to make this film and others... But unless you are already a major player AND already have a lot of money invested in the studio, forget it. This isn't GoFundMe or Kickstarter. Nobody is going to buy stock because they want a copy of the DVD that you promise will be available in two years' time.