what ia stock market.

Hello friends

Come, let us talk about the share market,

What is the share market? 

Why is it in place? How does it work? 

What are its advantages and disadvantages?

And how you can invest money in it?

Let us find out more about share markets!!

Stock market, share market or equity market- all three mean the same

These are markets where you can buy or sell a company's shares.

Buying shares of a company means buying some percentage of ownership of that company

That is, you become the holder of a percentage of that company

If that company makes a profit, some percentage of that profit would also be given to you

If that company incurs a loss, a percentage of that loss would also be borne by you

Telling you an example of this on the smallest scale, presume you have to establish a start up

You have 10,000 rupees, but that's not enough

So, you go to your friend and tell him to invest another 10,000 rupees and offer him a 50-50 partnership

So, whatever your company profits in the future, 50% of it would be yours. 50% of it would be your friend's

In this case, you've given 50% of the shares to your friend in this company

The same thing happens on a larger scale in the stock market

The only difference being, instead of going to your friend, you go the entire world

 and invite them to buy shares in your company

The origin of share markets dates to around 400 years ago

Around the 1600s, there was a Dutch East India company, like the British East India company,

There was a similar company in the country of Netherlands today, known as Dutch East India company

In those times, people used to indulge in a lot of exploration using ships

The entire world map had not yet been discovered

So the companies used to send their ships to discover new lands and trade with far away places

The journey used to be of over own stock exchange

 and every country has become greatly dependent upon the stock market

Stock exchange is that place, that building where people buy and sell shares of the companies

The market can be divided into two types- The primary market and the secondary market

Primary markets is where the companies sell their shares

The companies decide what exactly would be their share prices

Although there are some regulations in this too

The companies cannot manoeuvre too much because a lot of it depends upon the demand

How much price are the people willing to pay for the company's shares

If the value of the company is 1 lakh rupees,

it sells 1 lakh of its shares and offers shares at 1 re per share

If its demand is high and a lot of people want to buy its shares,

the company would obviously be able to sell its shares for a higher price

What the companies do nowadays is decide upon a range. There's a minimum price and a maximum price

They decide to sell their shares within that range

A point to be noted here is that every share of the company has equal value

It is upon the company to decide how many of its shares it wants to make

If the total value of the company is 1 lakh, then it may make 1 lakh shares of 1 re each,

Or it may make 2 lakh shares of 50 paise each

When companies sell their shares in the share market, it never sells 100% of them

The owner always retains majority of the shares to keep possession of his decision making power

If you sell all the shares, then all the buyers of the shares would become owners of the company

Since they all become owners, they all can take decisions regarding that company

The individual who has more than 50% of the shares would be able to make decisions regarding the company

Therefore the founders of the company prefer to retain more than 50% of the shares

For example, 60% of the shares of Facebook are retained by Mark Zuckerberg

The people who have bought shares of the company can sell it to the other people

This is called the Secondary Market

where people buy and sell shares amongst themselves and trade in shares

In the Primary Market, the companies set the prices of their shares

The companies cannot control the prices of their shares in the secondary market

The share prices fluctuate depending upon the demand and supply of the shares

So the prices of the shares fluctuate depending upon the demand and supply

Almost every big country has its own stock exchange

There are two popular stock exchanges in India

One is the Bombay Stock Exchange which has around 5400 registered companies

The other is the National Stock Exchange that has 1700 registered companies

With so many countries registered in the stock exchange,

If we want to observe, overall, whether the prices of the shares of the companies are moving up or down,

How do we view this?

To measure this, some measurements have been put in place- Sensex and Nifty

Sensex shows the average trend of the top thirty companies of the Bombay Stock Exchange

averaging out, whether the shares of the companies are moving up or down

The full form of Sensex, the sensitivity index, displays the same

The number of Sensex , that it has reached 40,000 marks

The number itself means not a lot

The value of this number can be understood only upon comparison with the past numbers

Because this number has been randomly decided

They decided, at the start that the values of the shares of the thirty companies would be this

So we compile all the numbers and then say that it is 500

So, gradually, the sensex has been rising and it has reached the 40,000 mark in the past 50 years

So this shows how far up have the share prices of these 30 companies gone in these past 50 years

There is another similar index- NIFTY- National + Fifty

Nifty shows the price fluctuations of the shares of top 50 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange

If a company wants to sell its shares on the stock exchange, then this is termed as "public listing"

If a company is selling its shares for the first time, then it is called IPO- Initial Public Offering

that is, offering the shares to the public for the first time

During the days of the East India company, it was very easier to get this done

Anyone could sell the shares of their company to the public

But today, this procedure is very long and complicated, and so it should be

Because, think about it, how easy it is to scam the people

Anyone could get listed on the stock exchange with a fake company,

and exaggerate the value and achievements of its company

They could lie to the people and the people would foolishly invest in his company

He then could abscond with the money

So it has become extremely easy to scam somebody

India in its history, has been a witness to a lot of scams like these. Eg. Harshad Mehta scam

Satyam scam, they were all the same- fooling the people and getting themselves listed on the stock exchange.

collecting the money and then absconding

So as and when these scams happened, the stock exchanges realized

 that they need to make their procedures stronger and scam proof

For this the resolutions and rules were made stronger due to which there are very complicated rules today

SEBI- Security And Exchange Board of India

is a regulatory body that looks into issues like which companies should be listed on the stock exchange

and whether it is being done in the proper manner or not

If you want to do this (i.e. get listed), then you would have to fulfill the norms of SEBI

Their norms are very strict, for example,

There need to be a lot of checks and balances on the accounting of your company

At least two auditors must have had checked your company's accounting

This entire process maybe take around 3 years.

More than 50 shareholders should be pre present in the company if you want a company to be publicly listed

When you go to sell their shares but there's no demand for it amongst people

then SEBI can remove your company from the stock market list

Now, how can you invest money in the stock markets?

During the times of the East India Company, one could go to the docks where the ships departed from

and indulge in biddings and buy and sell stocks

Before the dawn of internet, one had to physically go to the Bombay Stock Exchange building to do this

However, with the internet in place you merely need three things-

 A bank account, a trading account and a DEMAT account

A bank account because you would need your money

A trading account, to allow you to trade and invest money in a company

A DEMAT account to store the stocks that you buy in a digital form

Most of the banks today have started offering a 3 in 1 account

with all three accounts encompassed within your bank account

People like us would be called retail investors, that is, common people who want to invest in the stock market

A retail investor always requires a broker

A broker is someone who brings together the buyer and seller

For us, our brokers could be our banks, a third party app or even a platform

When we invest money through brokers in the stock market,

a broker retains some money as his commission. This is called "brokerage rate"

Banks mostly charge a brokerage rate of around 1%

But 1% is a little high. That's not how much it should be

If you look properly, you would discover platforms

that charge a brokerage rate of around 0.05% or 0.1%

This brokerage rate is a disadvantage for those who want to indulge in a lot of trading of stocks

If a lot of stocks are bought and sold in a day, a lot of money would be siphoned off as brokerage fee

But if you want to invest for a long term,

then a high brokerage rate wouldn't make a lot of difference because you'd pay it only once

So, investing and trading are two different things

Investing means putting in some amount of money in the stock market and letting it stay there for some time

Trading means quickly putting in money at different places and withdrawing from some places

This all happens in quick succession

In fact trading of shares is a job in itself

There are a lot of people in our country who are traders and do this job all day long

taking out money from one share and putting it in another

taking out from one place, putting it in another and earning profit in the process

An important question that arises is whether you should invest money in the share markets?

A lot of people compare it with gambling because a lot of risk is involved in it

In my opinion it is correct to say so because this is indeed some sort of gambling

If you are not aware of the type of the company and its performance,

 the parameters of the company and its financial record

if you don't observe its history and accounting information

then, in a way, this is akin to gambling

Because you would have no idea of how the company would perform in the future

You merely listen to people saying that the company is doing well and we should invest in it in the share market,

so that's why you invest in it

You should never do this because it is extremely risky

And obviously, when there are people that do this job day in and day out,

for examples the traders, who are experts in this field and have more knowledge about the stock market

They obviously would outperform the others because they have an idea of how this all works

So, in my opinion, you should never directly invest in the share market

and instead rely on the experts

A very competent form of it is mutual funds

Because in mutual funds you don't directly decide which companies you would invest in

In mutual funds, you place your trust in experts

and let the experts decide which companies to invest in

Infact a lot of mutual funds invest in many different companies to minimise the chances of loss

For instance I've given the example of the East India company.

Investors had quickly realised that they should not invest their money in one single ship

Investing money in 5-6 of them would ensure that atleast one of them came back.