Share (finance)

In financial markets, a share is a unit of account for various financial instruments including stocks, mutual funds, limited partnerships, and REIT's. In British English, use of the word shares in the plural to refer to stock is so common that it almost replaces the word stock itself. And especially in American English, the plural stocks is widely used instead of shares, in other words to refer to the stock (or perhaps originally stock certificates) of even a single company. Traditionalist demands that the plural stocks be used to refer only to stock of more than one company are rarely heard nowadays....

The income received from shares is called a dividend, and a person who owns shares is called a shareholder.

A share is one of a finite number of equal portions in the capital of a company, entitling the owner to a proportion of distributed, non-reinvested profits known as dividends and to a portion of the value of the company in case of liquidation. Shares can be voting or non-voting, meaning they either do or do not carry the right to vote on the board of directors and corporate policy. Whether this right exists often affects the value of the share. Voting and Non-Voting shares are also known as Class A and B shares.