Share
In financial markets, a stock is a unit of account for various investments. It often means the stock of a corporation, but it is also used for collective investments such as mutual funds, limited liability companies, and real estate investment trusts. Companies issue shares that are offered for sale to increase share capital. The owner of shares of the corporation is a shareholder (or shareholder) of the corporation. An action is an indivisible unit of capital, expressing the ownership relationship between the company and the shareholder. The denominated value of a share is its nominal value and the total of the nominal value of the shares issued represents the capital of a company, which may not reflect the market value of such shares.
The income received from ownership of shares is a dividend. The process of buying and selling stocks often involves going through a broker as an average man. The shares are valued according to several principles in different markets, but a basic premise is that a stock is worth the price at which it would be probable that a transaction would happen the shares to be sold. The liquidity of the markets is an important consideration as to whether an action can be sold at any given time. A real sale transaction of shares between the buyer and the seller is generally considered to provide the best prima facie indicator of the market as to the "true value" of the shares at that particular time.
Dividend
A dividend is a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits. When a corporation earns a profit or a surplus, the corporation may revert the profit to the business (called retained earnings) and pay a proportion of the dividend benefit to shareholders. The distribution to shareholders may be cash (usually a deposit into a bank account) or, if the corporation has a dividend reinvestment plan, the amount can be paid by issuing new shares or repurchasing shares.
A dividend is allocated as a fixed amount per share, with shareholders receiving a dividend proportional to their shareholding. For a corporation, paying dividends is not an expense; Rather, it is the division of profits after taxes among shareholders. Retained earnings (profits that have not been distributed as dividends) are shown in the equity section of the company balance sheet, as well as its issued share capital. Public corporations often pay dividends on a fixed schedule, but can declare a dividend at any time, sometimes called a special dividend to distinguish it from fixed-time dividends. Cooperatives, on the other hand, allocate dividends according to the activity of the partners, so that their dividends are often considered as an expense before taxes.
The word "dividend" comes from the Latin word "dividendum" ("to divide"). In the financial history of the world, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the first company (public) registered to pay regular dividends. The VOC paid annual dividends amounting to about 18 percent of the value of the shares during almost 200 years of existence (1602-1800).