A stock, or a share is a unit of exchange representing a sliver of a corporation that publicly trades on a particular

stock market. Each stock is a stand-in for usually something like one-one-millionth or less

of the company in question. There are about 4.3 billion shares of the Coca-Cola Corporation on the market, for instance.

So if you bought a single share of ticker symbol K-O, which is Coca-Cola's symbol on the New York Stock Exchange,

you would own one 4,295 millionth or so of the Coca-Cola company, which as of the day I'm recording this would cost

you around $46. Shares of companies can also be bought and sold in private, on markets or between

individuals or companies, but these public markets, introduced in semi-modern form in the 17th and 18th centuries,

served to close the gap between those who had corporate shares to sell and those who wished

to buy such shares. In economics, this is what's sometimes called an efficiency. By making it

more likely that people who want shares can get them, and people who have shares can

sell them, you also, theoretically at least, make it more likely that those shares will be sold

for a price the seller can stomach, and the buyer is willing to pay, a point of pricing

equilibrium that is considered to be ideal, so that everyone gets what they want, no one gets

ripped off, and the market as a whole can identify something approximating true value measures

for the companies with stocks that are the spot and sold. Complicating common understanding

of the stock market, though, and I would argue, understandably so, is the question

of where these values come from in the first place. Sure, buyers are willing to pay X amount

for a share of Coca-Cola, but why? How do they come to that figure, and why would they want to

pay it to own what seems to be an incredibly piddly amount of a major

corporation? These are questions with many answers, but one superficial explanation might be that

stocks have become value vaults, means of exchange that like currency, gold, and artwork,

are sometimes used in lieu of money as a method of exchange,

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