Do stock splits make one's shares double in voting power?
"Ordinarily a stock split increases all shareholders' share counts, so that there is no change in anybody's voting power.  For example, if you owned 1% of the company before the split, after the split you now have twice as many shares, but there are now twice as many shares outstanding, so you still own 1% of the company.  Also, stock splits are not ordinarily ""triggered"".  Usually they happen when the board decides that for one reason or another it's desirable to increase the number of shares in circulation, which causes the price of each share to decrease proportionally.   I'm not familiar with the show, and in particular I don't know what the action is that the character being addressed is thinking of taking, but it sounds like they are describing something akin to a ""poison pill"".  In these arrangements, the ""pill"" is triggered by some predefined condition, say a party acquiring shares in excess of a defined threshold.  What typically happens is that shareholders other than the ones who triggered the pill get a chance to buy shares at a substantial discount, thereby diluting the shares of the party that triggered it.  Because the other shareholders have to buy their additional shares, albeit at a discount, and because it applies only to certain shares, it's not really a split, but it's close enough that the writers of the show may have felt it was worth using the term that is more familiar to the public."
"I don't have anything definitive, but in general positions in a company are not affected materially by what is called a corporate action. ""Corp Actions"" can really be anything that affects the details of a stock. Common examples are a ticker change, or exchange change, IPO (ie a new ticker), doing a split, or merging with another ticker. All of these events do not change the total value of people's positions. If a stock splits, you might have more shares, but they are worth less per share. A merger is quite similar to a split. The old company's stock is converted two the new companies stock at some ratio (ie 10 shares become 1 share) and then converted 1-to-1 to the new symbol. Shorting a stock that splits is no different. You shorted 10 shares, but after the split those are now 100 shares, when you exit the position you have to deliver back 100 ""new"" shares, though dollar-for-dollar they are the same total value. I don't see why a merger would affect your short position. The only difference is you are now shorting a different company, so when you exit the position you'll have to deliver shares of the new company back to the brokerage where you ""borrowed"" the shares you shorted." "A 100% stock dividend means that you get one share of the ""stock dividend"" for every share you own. For example, Google did this in 2014 when they gave all of their Class A shareholders one class C share for every Class A that they owned. If the 100% stock dividend is for the exactly the same stock, it is basically the same as a 2-for-1 stock split. If, however, the 100% stock dividend is to give you a different stock, then this is typically due to a corporate reorganization or demerger/spinoff event. Some countries have different tax treatments for the events - for example, with demergers in Australia, Class Rulings need to be obtained from the Australian Taxation Office to declare demergers as tax free.  A recent demerger was in Australia as South32, demerged from BHP Billiton. References: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/the-many-classes-of-google-stock/ http://www.bhpbilliton.com/investors/shareholderinfo/demerger-taxation-information" Firstly a stock split is easy, for example each unit of stock is converted into 10 units.  So if you owned 1% of the company before the stock split, you will still own 1% after the stock split, but have 10 times the number of shares.   The company does not pay out any money when doing this and there is no effect on tax for the company or the share holder. Now onto stock dividend… When a company make a profit, the company gives some of the profit to the share holders as a dividend; this is normally paid in cash.  An investor may then wish to buy more shares in the company using the money from the dividend.      However buying shares used to have a large cost in broker charges etc. Therefore some companies allowed share holders to choose to have the dividend paid as shares.   The company buys enough of their own shares to cover the payout, only having one set of broker charges and then sends the correct number of shares to each share holder that has opted for a stock dividend.  (Along with any cash that was not enough to buy a complete share.) This made since when you had paper shares and admin costs where high for stock brokers.   It does not make sense these days. A stock dividend is taxed as if you had been paid the dividend in cash and then brought the stock yourself. A reason not to split your stock is that the value of the company might fall back again, and if its stock price falls below $1 it will be delisted from the NYSE. So if the value of your company grows tenfold so the shares go from $5 to $50, you do a ten-for-one split, and then its value shrinks back to where it started, you're off the stock exchange. This is how capital shares in split capital investment trusts work they never get any dividend they just get the capital when the company is wound up How about this rule? Sell 10% of your shares every time they double in price.  (of course, only buy stocks that repeatedly double in price) You actually have a few options. First, you can do a share split and then sell an equal number of shares from both you and your wife to maintain parity. Second, you can have the company issue additional shares/convert shares and then have the company sell the appropriate percentage to the third party while the rest is distributed to you and your wife. Third, you can have the company issue a separate class of stock. For example there are companies that have voting stock and non-voting stock. Depending on your goal, you could just issue non-voting stock and sell that.  Best bet is to contact a lawyer who specializes in this type of work and have them recommend a course of action. One caveat that has not been mentioned is that what/how you do this will also depend on the type of corporation that you have created. Depends on the structure of the company and what shares are outstanding.  If the pink sheet stock has no voting power then buying all that stock doesn't get you any control at all.  On the other hand, if the outstanding shares only represent 20% of the company's overall shares, then buying all the shares isn't likely enough to have a controlling interest. Thus, you'll have to dig into the details.  If you want an example of where I'd have my doubts, look at Nestle's stock which has the ticker of NSRGY.  There can be companies that are structured with stock on multiple exchanges that can also be a challenge at times.  There is also something to be said if you own enough stock in a company that this has to be disclosed to the SEC when you buy more. It's not quite identical, due to fees, stock rights, and reporting & tax obligations.  But the primary difference is that a person could have voting rights in a company while maintaining zero economic exposure to the company, sometimes known as empty voting. As an abstract matter, it's identical in that you reduce your financial exposure whether you sell your stock or short it.  So the essence of your question is fundamentally true.  But the details make it different.  Of course there are fee differences in how your broker will handle it, and also margin requirements for shorting.  Somebody playing games with overlapping features of ownership, sales, and purchases, may have tax and reporting obligations for straddles, wash sales, and related issues.  A straight sale is generally less complicated for tax reporting purposes, and a loss is more likely to be respected than someone playing games with sales and purchases. But the empty voting issue is an important difference.  You could buy stock with rights such as voting, engage in other behavior such as forwards, shorts, or options to negate your economic exposure to the stock, while maintaining the right to vote.  Of course in some cases this may have to be disclosed or may be covered by contract, and most people engaging in stock trades are unlikely to have meaningful voting power in a public company.  But the principle is still there. As explained in the article by Henry Hu and Bernie Black: Hedge funds have been especially creative in decoupling voting rights from economic ownership. Sometimes they hold more votes than economic ownership - a pattern we call empty voting. In an extreme situation, a vote holder can have a negative economic interest and, thus, an incentive to vote in ways that reduce the company's share price. Sometimes investors hold more economic ownership than votes, though often with morphable voting rights - the de facto ability to acquire the votes if needed. We call this situation hidden (morphable) ownership because the economic ownership and (de facto) voting ownership are often not disclosed. Your example shows a 4% dividend.  If we assume the stock continues to yield 4%, the math drops to something simple. Rule of 72 says your shares will double in 18 years. So in 18 years, 1000 shares will be 2000, at whatever price it's trading.  Shares X (1.04)^N years = shares after N years. This is as good an oversimplification as any. Alot of these answers have focused on the dilution aspect, but from a purely legal aspect, there are usually corporate bylaws that spell out what kind of vote and percentage of votes is needed to take this type of action.  If all other holders of stock voted to do this, so 90% for, and you didn't, so 10% against, it's still legal if that vote meets the threshold for taking the action. As an example of this, I known of a startup where employees got $0/share for their vested shares when the company was sold because the voting stock holders agreed to it.  Effectively the purchase amount was just enough to cover debts and preferred stock. Most corporations have a limit on the number of shares that they can issue, which is written into their corporate charter.  They usually sell a number that is fewer than the maximum authorized number so that they have a reserve for secondary offerings, employee incentives, etc. In a scrip dividend, the company is distributing authorized shares that were not previously issued.  This reduces the number of shares that it has to sell in the future to raise capital, so it reduces the assets of the company. In a split, every share (including the authorized shares that haven't been distributed) are divided.  This results in more total shares (which then trade at a price that's roughly proportional to the split), but it does not reduce the assets of the company. You can't own fractional shares. If the Reverse Split resulted in you having less a full share (for example, if you had 500 shares, and they did a 1000:1 reverse split), your fractional share was cashed in (sold). That could be that 'money market' activity shown on the next day? It is your responsibility to be prepared for a reverse split, by either selling at your desired price, or buying more shares, so you end with an integer number of shares after the reverse split. "Also note that a share of voting stock is a vote at the stockholder's meeting, whether it's dividend or non-dividend. That has value to the company and major stockholders in terms of protecting their own interests, and has value to anyone considering a takeover of the company or who otherwise wants to drive the company's policy. Similarly, if the company is bought out, the share will generally be replaced by shares in whatever the new owning company is. So it really does represent ""a slice of the company"" in several vary practical ways, and thus has fairly well-defined intrinsic value linked to the company's perceived value. If its price drops too low the company becomes more vulnerable to hostile takeover, which means the company itself will often be motivated to buy back shares to protect itself from that threat. One of the questions always asked when making an investment is whether you're looking for growth (are you hoping its intrinsic value will increase) or income (are you hoping it will pay you a premium for owning it). Non-dividend stocks are a pure growth bet. Dividend-paying stocks are typically a mixture of growth and income, at various trade-off points. What's right for you depends on your goals, timeframe, risk tolerance, and what else is already in your portfolio." When you own a share, you also own a vote (in most cases). That vote is your means of controlling the assets and management of the company. If you had enough votes and wanted to trade a share for an iPhone or liquidate the company entirely, you could do it. The only thing that prevents you from doing that is that companies are not set up to handle the transaction that way. Stock holders are usually trying to buy investments, not iPhones. There are companies that have more cash in the bank than the market cap (total value) of their stock. They usually don't remain as public companies for long in that case. An investor or group of investors buy them up and split the cash. If you had enough shares of Apple, you could do that to; or, just trade one for an iPhone.