59. Share Market

Market share is used by businesses to determine their competitive strength in a sector as compared to other companies in the same sector. It also allows you to accurately assess your performance from year to year. If you only use sales to measure your performance, then you don't take into account the market conditions that may have improved or decreased your sales. Your sales may have gone up because of increased popularity of your type of widget, or they may have gone down because of a drought or recession. Since those factors are beyond your control, they don't give you meaningful information about how you are actually doing as a company in terms of improving your business. By measuring market share, you can see if you are doing better or worse compared to other companies that are facing the same challenges and opportunities that you are.

There are four basic ways you can improve your market share. You can improve your product so that it is better than your competitors or you can change the price or offer special incentives for buyers, such as discounts or sales. Alternatively, you can find new methods to distribute your product so people can buy it in more places. Finally, you can advertise and promote your product. Using these techniques in any combination may improve market share. The term 'the stock market' is a concept for the mechanism that enables the trading of company stocks (collective shares), other securities, and derivatives. Bonds are still traditionally traded in an informal, over-the-counter market known as the bond market.

Commodities are traded in commodities markets, and derivatives are traded in a variety of markets (but, like bonds, mostly 'over-the-counter'). The size of the worldwide 'bond market' is estimated at $45 trillion. The size of the 'stock market' is estimated at about $51 trillion. The world derivatives market has been estimated at about $300 trillion. [1] The major U.S. Banks alone are said to account for about $100 trillion. It must be noted though that the derivatives market, because it is stated in terms of notional outstanding amounts, cannot be directly compared to a stock or fixed income market, which refers to actual value.

Most companies are usually started privately by their promoter(s). However, the promoters' capital and the borrowings from banks and financial institutions may not be sufficient for setting up or running the business over a long term. So companies invite the public to contribute towards the equity and issue shares to individual investors. The way to invite share capital from the public is through a 'Public Issue'. Simply stated, a public issue is an offer to the public to subscribe to the share capital of a company. Once this is done, the company allots shares to the applicants as per the prescribed rules and regulations laid down by SEBI.

The stocks are listed and traded on stock exchanges which are entities (a corporation or mutual organization) specialized in the business of bringing buyers and sellers of stocks and securities together. The stock market in the United States includes the trading of all securities listed on the NYSE, the NASDAQ, the Amex, as well as on the many regional exchanges, the OTCBB, and Pink Sheets. European examples of stock exchanges include the Paris Bourse (now part of Euronext), the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse.