Stock

Stock is the fundamental unit of equity capital — the ownership layer of a corporation's capital structure that stands junior to all debt obligations, absorbs losses first in the event of financial distress, and benefits last and most profoundly from the corporation's success. 

The two primary categories of stock — common stock and preferred stock — have distinct rights structures, distinct positions in the capital structure, and distinct investment characteristics that are among the most foundational topics tested on the SIE and Series 7 examinations.

The Corporate Structure — Why Stock Exists

The corporate form of business organisation — established under state corporation law in every United States jurisdiction and internationally under equivalent statutory frameworks — creates a legal entity that is separate and distinct from its owners. 

A corporation can own property, enter contracts, sue and be sued, and incur obligations in its own name, independently of the individuals who own its stock. 

This separation of the corporation from its owners produces the defining characteristic of corporate stock ownership — limited liability — the principle that a shareholder's financial exposure is limited to the amount invested in the stock, regardless of how large the corporation's obligations become.

Limited liability is the foundational economic justification for the stock form of ownership. Without it, investors would be reluctant to hold stock in large corporations whose potential liabilities they cannot monitor or control — the unlimited personal liability that characterises partnership ownership makes it impractical as a structure for raising capital from large numbers of passive investors. 

Limited liability enables the separation of ownership from management — shareholders can own pieces of corporations without having to participate in their operation — and makes possible the diversified investment across many corporations that Modern Portfolio Theory identifies as the rational strategy for risk-averse investors.

A corporation's stock is authorised by its articles of incorporation — the foundational charter document filed with the state of incorporation — which specifies the total number of shares the corporation is permitted to issue across all classes. 

The authorised share count establishes the ceiling on the corporation's equity capital structure. The issued shares — those actually distributed to shareholders — may be less than the authorised total. 

Shares that have been issued and subsequently repurchased by the corporation are called treasury shares — they are issued but not outstanding, carrying no voting rights or dividend entitlement while held by the corporation. Outstanding shares — issued shares minus treasury shares — are the shares held by investors and used in earnings per share, book value per share, and other per-share financial calculations.

Common Stock — The Primary Equity Instrument

Common stock is the primary and most widely distributed form of corporate equity — the security most investors mean when they refer to a company's stock without qualification. Common stockholders are the residual owners of the corporation — they receive whatever economic value remains after all other claims against the corporation have been satisfied.

Voting rights are the most fundamental governance right of common stockholders. Common shareholders typically receive one vote per share on all matters submitted to a shareholder vote — including the election of directors to the corporation's board, the approval of major corporate transactions including mergers, acquisitions, and asset sales, the ratification of the independent auditor, and advisory votes on executive compensation mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act's Section 951 say-on-pay requirements. 

Directors are elected by majority vote or — in some corporate governance structures — by plurality vote in uncontested elections. Some corporations maintain dual-class stock structures — discussed in the Dual Class Stock entry of this dictionary — in which founder or management-held shares carry multiple votes per share while publicly distributed shares carry one vote per share, concentrating voting control without requiring concentrated economic ownership.

The right to elect the board of directors is the cornerstone of common stockholder governance — the board is the highest governing authority of the corporation and is responsible for hiring and overseeing executive management, approving major strategic decisions, and ensuring that the corporation is operated in the interests of shareholders. 

The board's accountability to shareholders is the formal mechanism through which the separation of ownership from management is governed — shareholders cannot directly manage the corporation but can elect representatives who are legally obligated to act as fiduciaries in the corporation's and shareholders' collective interest.

Dividend rights for common stockholders are discretionary rather than mandatory — common shareholders have no legal right to receive a dividend unless and until the board of directors declares one. Dividends must be declared by the board from funds legally available for the purpose — typically the corporation's retained earnings and, in some states, paid-in capital above par value — and the board has complete discretion over whether to declare dividends, in what amount, and on what schedule. 

A corporation that has consistently paid quarterly dividends has no legal obligation to continue doing so — the board may reduce, suspend, or eliminate dividends at any time it deems appropriate, subject only to any covenants in debt agreements restricting dividend payments. This discretionary nature of common dividends contrasts with the mandatory nature of preferred dividends, discussed below.

Liquidation rights of common stockholders are residual — in a corporate liquidation or bankruptcy, common shareholders receive whatever assets remain after all creditors and preferred stockholders have been paid in full. 

The liquidation priority order runs from secured creditors — who have specific asset collateral securing their claims — to unsecured senior creditors — who have first priority among general creditors — to subordinated creditors — who rank below senior unsecured claims — to preferred stockholders — who have priority over common in both dividends and liquidation — to common stockholders — who receive whatever, if anything, remains. In most corporate liquidations that involve significant financial distress, common stockholders receive little or nothing — the corporation's assets are exhausted satisfying creditor claims before any residual reaches equity.

Preferred Stock — The Hybrid Security

Preferred stock occupies the capital structure between common equity and debt — it is legally classified as equity but possesses characteristics — fixed dividend rights, priority over common in dividends and liquidation, and often a face or par value — that give it economic characteristics similar to debt. 

The complete characteristics of preferred stock are covered in the Preferred Stock entry of this dictionary — the present entry addresses preferred stock's relationship to common stock in the context of the overall stock concept.

Preferred dividends are typically fixed — either a specified dollar amount per share or a specified percentage of par value — and must be paid before any common dividend may be declared. The priority nature of preferred dividends is their defining advantage — preferred shareholders do not share in the corporation's profit growth the way common shareholders do, but they receive their stated dividend before common shareholders receive anything. 

Cumulative preferred dividends — the most common type — accumulate when unpaid and must be paid in full before any common dividend can be declared, creating an arrear that the corporation must satisfy in future periods even if it was unable to pay the preferred dividend in the current period.

Liquidation preference is the second major advantage of preferred stock — in liquidation, preferred stockholders receive their stated liquidation value — typically par value plus accrued and unpaid dividends — before common stockholders receive anything. 

This preference over common equity in liquidation reflects the quasi-debt nature of preferred stock — preferred holders have given up the upside of common equity growth in exchange for priority claim in adverse scenarios.

Convertible preferred stock — particularly prevalent in venture capital and private equity financing — carries the right to convert each preferred share into a specified number of common shares at the holder's option. This conversion feature provides preferred investors with downside protection through the liquidation preference and dividend priority while preserving the ability to participate in upside value creation by converting to common stock if the corporation's value grows sufficiently.

Voting rights of preferred stockholders are typically limited or absent — most preferred stock does not carry ordinary voting rights and preferred holders typically do not vote for directors or on general corporate matters. However, preferred shares commonly carry conditional voting rights that are triggered by specific adverse events — typically the failure to pay preferred dividends for a specified number of consecutive periods, at which point the preferred holders acquire the right to elect a specified number of directors until the dividend arrearage is cured.

The Capital Structure Hierarchy — Stock's Position

Understanding stock's position in the corporate capital structure is essential for understanding the risk and return characteristics of equity investment and for applying the concepts tested on securities licensing examinations.

In the capital structure hierarchy from least to most risk and from highest to lowest priority:

Secured debt holders have the first claim on specific identified assets pledged as collateral for their loans. In a liquidation, the secured lender's collateral is sold first and the proceeds applied to the secured obligation before any other claim is addressed.

Senior unsecured creditors — holders of investment grade bonds and bank term loans without specific asset collateral — rank below secured creditors but above all other unsecured claims. They are entitled to payment from the corporation's general assets after secured claims but before subordinated claims.

Subordinated debt holders — including high yield bond investors — rank below senior unsecured creditors but above equity. In bankruptcy, subordinated creditors typically receive something — partial recovery on their face value claims — while equity often receives nothing.

Preferred stockholders rank below all debt holders but above common equity. They receive their liquidation preference before common stockholders receive anything.

Common stockholders rank last — the residual claimants who receive whatever value remains after every other claim in the capital structure has been satisfied. This junior position explains why common stock carries both the greatest risk — it is the first to be wiped out in financial distress — and the greatest return potential — it is the primary beneficiary of a corporation's success because every dollar of value created above all senior claims belongs to common equity holders.

The Statutory Framework — Securities Exchange Act Section 12

A company's stock becomes subject to the full disclosure, governance, and regulatory framework of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 when the stock is registered under Exchange Act Section 12. 

Securities are subject to Section 12 registration in two circumstances — when the stock is listed on a national securities exchange, or when the stock is held by more than two thousand holders of record and the company has total assets above ten million dollars under the Dodd-Frank Act-adjusted thresholds.

Upon registration under Section 12, the company and its stockholders become subject to the full suite of Exchange Act obligations — periodic reporting on Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K under Section 13(a); proxy solicitation rules under Section 14 governing the shareholder voting process including notice requirements, the content of proxy statements, and the say-on-pay and say-on-frequency votes required by Dodd-Frank; beneficial ownership reporting under Section 13(d) and 13(g) for holders of more than five percent of a registered class; insider transaction reporting under Section 16 requiring Form 4 filing within two business days of any change in insider beneficial ownership; and the short-swing profit disgorgement obligation of Section 16(b) applicable to officers, directors, and ten percent stockholders.

The registration of equity securities under the Exchange Act is the pivotal transformation that converts a private company — whose stock is subject to minimal regulatory disclosure requirements — into a public company subject to the most comprehensive corporate transparency regime in the world.

Stock Valuation — The Fundamental Analytical Framework

The value of a share of stock is the present value of all future cash flows the investor expects to receive — dividends during the holding period and the proceeds from the eventual sale of the shares. This discounted cash flow framework, applied to stocks through the Dividend Discount Model and related equity valuation approaches, connects the abstract concept of stock ownership to concrete financial analysis.

The Dividend Discount Model — covered in its own entry in this dictionary — values a stock as the present value of all expected future dividends, discounted at the required rate of return determined by the Capital Asset Pricing Model. In its simplest constant growth form — the Gordon Growth Model — the stock price equals the next expected dividend divided by the required rate of return minus the expected perpetual growth rate of dividends. 

This formula reveals the inverse relationship between required return and stock value — as the required return rises, the stock price falls — and connects Federal Reserve monetary policy directly to equity valuations through the interest rate's effect on required returns.

Price-to-earnings and price-to-book multiples — covered in the Price to Earnings Ratio and Price to Book Ratio entries of this dictionary — provide relative valuation comparisons that supplement the absolute valuation framework of discounted cash flow. Fundamental analysis — the examination of a company's financial statements, competitive position, management quality, and industry dynamics to assess intrinsic value — and technical analysis — the study of price and volume patterns in historical trading data to identify buying and selling opportunities — are the two primary analytical frameworks that investors apply to stock selection.

The Primary and Secondary Market for Stock

Stock is initially distributed to investors in the primary market — through an initial public offering, a follow-on offering, a direct listing, or a private placement — in transactions in which the corporation receives the capital raised. After initial distribution, stock trades in the secondary market among investors — on national securities exchanges, alternative trading systems, and over-the-counter markets — in transactions in which the proceeds flow to the selling investor rather than to the corporation.

The secondary market trading of stock provides the liquidity that makes stock a practical investment for the vast majority of investors — without the ability to sell, stock ownership would be an illiquid long-term commitment to a single company's fortunes that most investors could not accept. The existence of deep and liquid secondary markets for stock is what makes the primary market effective — investors are willing to purchase newly issued stock at IPOs precisely because they know they can sell in the secondary market if they need to.

Examination Relevance and Key Takeaways

Stock is tested on the SIE and Series 7 examinations in the context of corporate ownership structure, the rights of common and preferred shareholders, the capital structure hierarchy, Exchange Act Section 12 registration, and the primary and secondary market framework.

The key points to retain are these.

Stock is a security representing a fractional ownership interest in a corporation — the fundamental unit of equity capital. Limited liability — the principle that shareholders cannot lose more than their investment regardless of the corporation's obligations — is the foundational economic justification for the corporate and stock form of ownership. 

Authorised shares are the maximum number the corporation may issue as specified in its articles of incorporation. Issued shares are those distributed to shareholders. Outstanding shares are issued shares minus treasury shares — used in all per-share calculations. Treasury shares are issued but not outstanding — held by the corporation itself, carrying no voting rights or dividends.

Common stockholders hold the residual ownership interest — they vote for directors and on major corporate matters, receive discretionary dividends when declared by the board, and receive whatever assets remain in liquidation after all creditors and preferred holders are satisfied. 

Common equity is the junior-most claim in the capital structure — first to absorb losses and last to receive value — producing both the greatest risk and the greatest return potential of any security in the capital structure. Preferred stockholders have priority over common in both dividends — typically fixed in amount — and liquidation — typically at par value plus accrued dividends — but typically lack ordinary voting rights except upon dividend payment failure for a specified number of periods. Preferred stock is a hybrid security combining equity classification with debt-like economic characteristics of fixed dividends and priority claims.

The capital structure priority from highest to lowest claim is secured debt, senior unsecured debt, subordinated debt, preferred stock, and common stock. Exchange Act Section 12 requires stock registration when a company lists on a national securities exchange or when stock is held by more than two thousand holders of record with total assets above ten million dollars — triggering the full Exchange Act periodic reporting, proxy, insider reporting, and short-swing profit disgorgement framework. 

Stock is valued using discounted cash flow analysis — through the Dividend Discount Model and its Gordon Growth Model variant — and relative valuation multiples including price-to-earnings and price-to-book ratios.