institutional ownership — why is it so convoluted
The reason for such differences is that there's no source to get this information. The companies do not (and cannot) report who are their shareholders except for large shareholders and stakes of interest. These, in the case of GoPro, were identified during the IPO (you can look the filings up on EDGAR). You can get information from this or that publicly traded mutual fund about their larger holdings from their reports, but private investors don't provide even that. Institutional (public) investors buy and sell shares all the time and only report large investments. So there's no reliable way to get a snapshot picture you're looking for.
More shares mean less volatility because it takes a larger number of trades, a larger number of shares per trade, or a combination of both to raise or lower the stock price. Institutional investors (mutual funds, pensions, hedge funds, other investment firms, etc) are the sorts of organizations with the large amounts of money needed to move a stock price one way or the other.  But the more floating shares there are in a company, the harder it is for one or two firms to move a stock price.  A company with fewer floating shares wouldn't require as many trades (or as many shares per trade) to see wider swings in price. When it comes to stock price, insider trading isn't the same as manipulation.  In the (surprisingly few) cases of insider trading that are prosecuted, it tends to be an individual (or small group) with early access to information that the broader market doesn't have being able to buy or sell ahead of the broader market.  Their individual sales are seldom if ever enough to noticeably move a stock price.  They're locking in profit or limiting a loss.  Manipulation might (but doesn't always) precede insider trading, if misinformation (or truth) is released for the purpose of creating a situation that can be profited from via a trade or trades. "It is not clear when you mean ""company's directors"" are they also majority owners.   There are several reasons for Buy;   Similarly there are enough reasons for sell;   Quite often the exact reasons for Buy or Sell are not known and hence blindly following that strategy is not useful. It can be one of the inputs to make a decision." That's not what is entirely happening. It's two separate situations.   They don't have equal voting and some are able to vote more than once. The two investors want to keep it that way while the rest want to implement an even voting system.   The two investors have been asked to drop their lawsuit against the old CEO since he's no longer with the company but it's implied that they will continue to sue him because he still has influence and the ability to elect new board members which he recently added two.   Also it's disengrnous to say just the two investors. They are being asked to do this by the shareholders. "The language in the starbucks accounts is highly ambiguous. But Starbucks has no treasury shares which helps work out what is going on.  Where it says ""respectively"" it is referring to the years 2014 and 2013 rather than ""issued and outstanding""...even though it doesn't read that way. Not easy to work out. The figures are:  Authorised 1200 2014 Issued 749.5 2014 Outstanding 749.5 2013 Issued 753.2 2013 Outstanding 753.2" Yep, you have it pretty much right.   The volume is the number of shares traded that day. The ticker is giving you the number of shares bought at that price in a given transaction, the arrow meaning whether the stock is up or down on the day at that price.   Institutional can also refer to pensions, mutuals funds, corporates; generally any shareholder that isn't an individual person. Don't have access to a Bloomberg, Eikon ect terminal but I was wondering if those that do know of any functions that show say, the percentage of companies (in different Mcap ranges) held by differing rates institutionally. For example - if I wanted to compare what percentage of small cap companies' shares are 75% or more held by institutions relative to large cap companies what could I search in the terminal? Regardless of whether a stock is owned by a retail investor or an institutional investor, it is subject to the same rules.  For example, say that as part of the buyout, 1 share of Company B is equivalent to 0.75 shares of Company A and any fractional shares will be paid out in cash.  This rule will apply to both the retail investor who holds 500 shares of Company B, as well as the asset manager or hedge fund holding 5,000,000 shares of Company B. "It could be just as exploitable given the current system.  Also, who is this ""owner""?  A large shareholder of a public corporation isn't just going to come into 16 houses.  There's a board of directors, and about a million other shareholders, including those in blackrock and vangaurd who have nothing to gain from allowing such corruption.  A private company's owner who decided to buy himself a house on the company's dime and not tell the IRS can do so at his peril regardless of tax policy.  I still don't understand the point." Yes that is the case for the public company approach, but I was referring to the transaction approach:   Firm A and Firm B both have $100 in EBITDA. Firm A has $50 in cash, Firm B has $100 in cash.  Firm A sells for $500, Firm B sells for $600.  If we didn't subtract cash before calculating the multiple: Firm A: 5x Firm B: 6x  If we DO subtract cash before calculating the multiple: Firm A: 4.5x Firm B: 5x  So yea, subtracting cash does skew the multiple. The United Services Automobile Association has a funny legal structure: it's not a corporation and has no shareholders. Policyholders and account holders are paid any profits. In that respect, it functions very much like a credit union; technically, it's structured as a Texas-based and Texas Department of Insurance regulated unincorporated reciprocal inter-insurance exchange and Fortune 500 financial services company offering banking, investing, and insurance to people and families that serve, or served, in the United States military. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA Normally a company like this is a corporation so that its owners can benefit from limited liability: otherwise, if the company loses millions or billions, any one of the individual owners / members could be held liable for paying those millions and billions! However, the Texas laws which govern them as a Texas-based inter-insurance exchange also serve to limit the liability of members. The banking services are provided by the USAA Federal Savings Bank, which is structured as a  (drumroll) federal savings bank. They also own a couple of other random businesses. Lending of securities is done by institutional investors and mutual funds. The costs of dealing with thousands of individual investors, small share blocks and the various screw-ups and drama associated with each individual are too high. Like many exotic financial transactions, if you have to ask about it, you're probably not qualified to do it. When you own stock in a company, you do literally own part of the business, even if it's a small portion. Anyone amassing over 50% of shares really does have a controlling interest. No, you can't trade a handful of AAPL shares back to Apple for an iPod, but you can sell the shares and then go buy an iPod with the proceeds. Stock prices change over time because the underlying companies are worth more or less and people are willing to pay more or less for those shares. There is no Ponzi scheme because each share you own can be bought or sold on the open market. Dividends come from the company profits, not from other investors. On the other hand, money only has value because everyone believes it has value. There's the real conspiracy. "Institutional investors are the ""elephant"" in the room. When they ""sneeze,"" everyone else ""catches cold."" They're fine, if they're buying after YOU do. They're not bad, if you want to buy after they sell en masse. But when you read about moves of 10 percent, 15 percent or more in a single day, it's because a bunch of institutional investors all decided to do the same thing on the same day.  That's more volatility than most people can stomach. Fewer institutional investors in a stock mean fewer chances of those things happening." Because it's a declining company and used as an institutional sized pump and dump with a new toxic financing every week. Look up Kalani Investments - they're behind it all. "Are you talking long-term institutional or retail investors? Long-term *retail* investors look for *orderly markets*, the antithesis of HFT business models, which have a direct correlation between market volatility and profits. To a lesser extent, some ""dumb money""/""muppet"" institutionals do as well. HFT firms tout they supply liquidity into markets, when in fact the opposite is true.  Yes, HFTs supply liquidity, *but only when the liquidity's benefits runs in their direction*. That is, they are applying the part of the liquidity definition that mentions ""high trading activity"", and conveniently ignoring the part that simultaneously requires ""*easily* buying *or* selling an asset"".  If HFT's are the new exchange floor, then they need to be formalized as such, *and become bound to market maker responsibilities*. If they are actually supplying liquidity, like real Designated Market Makers in the NYSE for example, they become responsible to supply a specified liquidity for specified ticker symbols in exchange for their informational advantage on those tickers. The indisputable fact is that HFT cannot exist at their current profit levels without the information advantage they gain with preferential access to tick-by-tick data unavailable to investors who cannot afford the exchange fees ($1M per exchange 10 years ago, more now). Restrict the entire market, including HFTs, to only second-by-second price data without the tick-by-tick depth, and they won't do so well.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking HFTs *per se*; I think they are a marvelous development, so long as they really do ""supply liquidity"". Right now, they aren't doing so, and especially in an orderly manner. If you want retail investors to keep out of the water as they are doing now, by all means let HFT (and regulatory capture, and a whole host of other financial service industry ills) run as they are. There are arguments to be made about ""only let the professionals play the market"", where there is no role for retail and anyone who doesn't know how to play the long-term investment game needs to get out of the kitchen. But if you are making such an argument, come out and say so."