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AOF Advanced Finance
Lesson 9
Stocks
Student Resources
Resource
Description
Student Resource 9.1
K-W-L Chart: Stocks
Student Resource 9.2
Reading: The Vocabulary of Stocks
Student Resource 9.3
Reading: An Introduction to the Stock Market
Student Resource 9.4
Note-Taking Guide: An Introduction to the Stock Market
Student Resource 9.5
Reading: Why Go Public?
Student Resource 9.6
T-Chart: The Pros and Cons of Going Public
Student Resource 9.7
Assignment: Going Public
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Student Resource 9.1
K-W-L Chart: Stocks
Directions: Use the following K-W-L chart to assess your knowledge of stocks. Begin by listing all of the
information that you do know about stocks in the first column. Next, think about things that you would like
to know. Finally, you will be adding new learning under the “What I Learned” column. You will be referring
to this chart throughout the entire lesson and it will be collected for credit/no credit.
What I Know
What I Want to Know
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
What I Learned
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Student Resource 9.2
Reading: The Vocabulary of Stocks
Picture yourself as the owner of a growing company. You operate in a rented office that is so crammed
with people and desks and equipment that you have bruises on your thighs from trying to get around the
desk corners each day. You know you have to expand—in fact, you need to hire two more people to
handle shipping and tracking right now, but there’s no place to put them. You also don’t have the money
to rent—or buy—a larger space and to purchase more manufacturing equipment and hire staff. Where
can you get money to grow?
You’ve asked family members and friends to invest in the company. Some of them shrink away from you
as if you have an infectious disease. Others offer you $1,000 or $5,000. That won’t put a dent in the
$500,000 you know you’ll need in the coming year. The bank wants to see stronger profits before they’ll
consider a loan. What’s left?
Last year you made the decision to make the company a corporation. Doesn’t this give you the power to
sell stock? Yes, you can sell small shares of your company to total strangers and maybe raise the money
to make your company the success it is in your vision of its future.
Now you have to decide which kind of stock you’re going to offer: common stock or preferred stock?
This calls for a chart of the pros and cons of each.
If you sell common stock, your shareholders (or “stockholders”) get to vote for the corporation’s Board of
Directors. There’s a very remote risk, if you sell enough stock, that someday in the future, they could hold
enough voting stock to control the Board and work against you. On the other hand, although they may
expect dividends—a small share of the company’s profits—you don’t have to guarantee that you’ll pay
them a set amount every year. If you sell preferred stock, you are stuck paying shareholders a
guaranteed dividend, as long as you are making a profit. However, they wouldn’t have any vote when it
comes to choosing your Board of Directors.
What are your choices? Continue operating on a shoestring, crammed in two rooms and a warehouse
half the size you need, unable to expand—or taking the risk of letting the public buy shares through an
initial public offering (IPO)?
This is called “going public,” and it applies in more ways than one. Brokers and potential investors will
start scrutinizing your operation and balance sheet; you’ll have to register your stock with the Securities &
Exchange Commission, and your business will be subject to new regulations, including regular audits.
Your company will have to find an investment bank (really, a securities firm, which specializes in this
kind of deal) to handle the sale of your IPO, a process called underwriting. They will either buy the stock
offering outright and then resell it for whatever they can get (a higher price, they hope) or they will sell it
and take a commission. Because it is the first offering of your stock, it will be sold in the primary market.
(If the first purchasers sell the stock later on, it will be sold in the secondary market.)
Then you, the underwriters, lawyers, and accountants must put together a prospectus, a written
document that potential investors will read. It contains a detailed analysis of the company’s finances, its
management team, and its products or services. The prospectus also spells out difficulties the company
could face in the future, and the risks of investing in the company.
Whew! That’s not all, though. You’ll still have to submit the prospectus to the Securities and Exchange
Commission and stock market regulators. One to four months later, you’ll print the prospectus, the
underwriters will recommend an opening stock price and number of shares to offer—and you go public.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Student Resource 9.3
Reading: An Introduction to the Stock Market
The stock market is an everyday term used to talk about a place where stocks and bonds are "traded" –
meaning bought and sold. For many people, that is the first thing that comes to mind for investing. The
goal is to buy the stock, hold it for a time, and then sell the stock for more than you paid for it.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Buying stock in a corporation makes you a shareholder (or stockholder).
The Board of Directors of a company decides how many shares the company will have. (This is the case
even with privately held companies, where stock is not offered to the public, just owned by a few people.)
Not all of those shares are offered to the public.
The company may use offers of stock to lure “key employees” and to reward them for meeting
performance goals. In that case, executives would hold some percentage of the outstanding shares.
Some companies also let employees buy their stock (called “profit sharing”) to encourage them to feel
more vested in the company’s outcome or as the corporation’s contribution to a retirement plan.
The remainder of the shares may be offered to the public, though not necessarily all at once.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
There are stock exchanges in major cities all over the world. The largest in dollar volume is the New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE), which has its trading floor at 11 Wall Street. (That is why the U.S. financial
markets are sometimes called “Wall Street.”) The Bombay Stock Exchange in India has the most
companies listed; the NYSE is second.
More information about the stock market can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Stock_Exchange and
http://www.tdd.lt/slnews/Stock_Exchanges/Stock.Exchanges.html
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Because stock prices are constantly updated at the exchanges, investors and market traders can watch
as they fluctuate with news from the company, media reports, national economic news, and other factors.

With thousands of stock prices rising and falling at once, it would be hard to get a general
sense of how the market was doing without some way to group stocks.

A market index does just that. When you hear that the Dow fell 12 points, it means the average
decline of stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (the average of 30 large industrial
companies’ stocks) was 12%. General Motors, IBM, Goodyear, and Exxon are on this index.

Some other well-known indexes are the S&P 500 (U.S.); FTSE 500 (Britain); CAC (France),
Nikkei (Japan), Hang Seng (Hong Kong), and DAX (Germany).

Other indexes track a sector of the economy, such as high-tech stocks or the auto industry. The
Morgan Stanley Biotech Index tracks 36 U.S. biotech firms.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Offering stock is an easy way to gather large quantities of investment capitalmoney to make major
improvements. The company could ask for a loan from a bank, but eventually it would have to pay the
money back. By issuing stock, a company can raise money without going into debt.
When a corporation first sells stock to the public, it makes an Initial Public Offering (an IPO). The
company might sell one million shares of stock at $20 a share to raise $20 million very quickly (less the
brokerage house’s commission). The company then invests the $20 million in equipment and employees.
The investors hope that the company will make a bigger profit and pay a dividend. The company will also
be worth more and be better rated by analysts.
Of course, if the stock price goes up on the stock market, the shareholder may also choose to sell the
stock and pocket the profit.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Investors buy stocks in the hope the company will earn money as it grows. If a company earns money,
the stockholder shares the profits.
Over time, people usually earn more from owning stock than from leaving money in the bank, buying
bonds, or making other types of investments. This is true even though investments in stocks are not
insured the way bank deposits are.
They may also want to have a vote in how the company is run. By buying common stock, they have
voting rights when the Board of Directors is up for election. The Board oversees company decisions.
Stockholders typically have one vote for each share they own. Every vote counts, but a stockholder with
5,000 shares will have more influence on the company than someone with only 1 share.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Although we have described the stock exchange as a chain of “stores,” you don’t need to go to one to buy
stocks. You can call a stockbroker at a firm authorized to trade at the exchange, such as Merrill Lynch or
Morgan Stanley. The broker relays your trade to the exchange floor, and a representative of the firm (or a
computer) makes the trade. You pay the broker a commission (generally $10 to $100 per trade).
Brokers provide different levels of service, from full-service brokers, who will call you with stock tips, to
online brokers, which offer limited personal assistance. In general, the more service you get, the higher
the fees the broker charges.
An experienced investor may use an online broker because of the low fees, while a new or inexperienced
investor may want a full-service broker. While the initial fees may be higher, the full-service broker may
choose stocks that perform well enough to make up for the initial fees or commission.
If you are interested in a company’s Initial Public Offering, you can research the company by reading the
prospectus for the company. To read a real prospectus, check out the one at
http://www.integrysgroup.com/investor/prospectus.pdf.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
When a company has strong earnings, the stock benefits. Buzz about new products, leadership changes,
and legislation can also affect the stock price, up or down.
The price-earnings (P/E) ratio measures share price against the company’s annual net profit. A higher
P/E ratio means investors are paying more for each unit of income. A ratio above 25 is in risky territory
(paying a high price for the earnings).
One measure of the value of a company is capitalization--the number of outstanding shares multiplied
by the share price.
The stock market operates on supply and demand. Given a limited supply of shares, the more demand
people make to buy a particular stock, the higher the price. The more people trying to sell a stock (that is,
the bigger the supply), the lower the price. Shortages of commodities (oil, for example) drive up the price
of the commodity but can make its stock more valuable.
Disasters may damage certain segments of the economy. For example, after 9/11, passenger planes
were grounded for 2 days, representing tremendous losses to the airline industry. Such losses can
depress the value of a stock.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Stocks have strong appeal because of their potential for growth. However, since they also have some
risks—your investments are not insured, and the markets are subject to factors beyond your control—they
should never be the only type of investment you make.
Even within your stock portfolio, you should have a mix of growth and income stocks. Companies with
growth stocks put most of their profit back into the business to make it grow, thereby increasing the
company’s value; the price of the shares also rises. Those with income stocks pay out most of their profit
to shareholders, but the share price for an income stock stays flat.
When you are young, you can invest more heavily in growth stocks, because if you suffer a loss, you
have time in your working years to recoup. As you near retirement, your portfolio should be weighted
toward income stocks, which are more stable and less risky.
The stock market can be a gamble, so be aware of how well you tolerate risk.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Student Resource 9.4
Note-Taking Guide:
An Introduction to the Stock Market
Directions: Use the following note-taking guide as a way to organize the information from the
presentation. This information will help you to complete the writing activity to come.
1. Corporations sell stock because _______________________________________ and they don’t
want to _______________________.
2. The first time a company sells shares to the public to raise capital is its _____________
__________ offering.
3. The document the investors read about the company is called a _________________.
4. Shares never offered before are sold on the _______________ market; they are resold on the
_________________ market.
5. People who purchase stocks become _______________________ of the company.
6. Stocks are sold at one of the many _________________________________ around the world.
7. _________________ stocks are called “voting shares” because their owners may vote for the
company’s Board of Directors.
8. Preferred shares have a ___________________ dividend.
9. Some of the factors affecting stock prices are ________________________,
_____________________, and ________________________.
10. A market with generally rising prices is called a _________________ market, and a falling market
is a _______________market.
11. Two indices of market performance are the ________________________ and
______________________.
12. Investors buy stocks because ___________________________________________.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Student Resource 9.5
Reading: Why Go Public?
The IPO Decision
Why does it make sense for the owner(s) of a private company to sell stock to the public? Think about
what an initial public offering (IPO) means. The owner(s) are accepting some number of strangers as
partners in their business. Furthermore, there are no restrictions on these new owners’ ability to sell their
stock, so these unknown partners can sell to other unknown partners.
The usual reason to “go public” is the need to expand the business. The company wants to take
advantage of some business opportunity but does not have the cash to do so.
Risks of Going Public
Going public can have its negatives for the company and its owner(s):

Other people will own part of the company and share its profits.

The money from the sale of stock does not go to the original owner(s).

The company’s current owner(s) must give up a lot of control over the way the business is run,
because management must consider the needs of public investors.

The company must be managed in a more formal, more deliberate way, which means decisions
will take longer.

The federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will oversee the way management
reports financial results, and the company will face significant legal penalties for violations.

Pressure from stockholders to produce a profit every quarter may limit management’s ability to
take a long-term view of the business.
Benefits to the Original Owners
The other side of going public is that it can offer benefits to the company and its original owners. If all
goes as expected, the company’s sales will grow with the influx of new capital, and the company will
make much more money. With the money it makes, it can pay a healthy dividend on its stock, causing the
price of the stock to increase. Even though their ownership in the company has been greatly reduced, the
original owners can benefit from stock dividends and the higher value of the stock they do own—and may
make considerably more money in the long run.
The IPO Process
When a company decides to issue securities (a certificate of ownership in an investment), it generally
hires an investment bank to underwrite the stock offering. Underwriting means the investment bank (or
a group of investment banks known collectively as a syndicate) agrees to one of the following:

Firm underwriting: The investment bank or syndicate will buy all the available shares of stock
and then resell them to investors at a profit.

Best efforts underwriting: The investment bank or syndicate will sell the stock as the
company’s agent, earning a commission on however many shares are sold.
The first sale of securities by a private company to the general public is called an initial public offering
(IPO). The underwriter (or lead underwriter in the case of a syndicate) plays a pivotal role in the IPO.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
The underwriter/lead underwriter handles all the legal and financial details of the sale. It also helps the
company:

Prepare a prospectus, a legal document that gives pertinent information about the company
offering the shares

Prepare an advertisement—called a tombstone because of its heavy black border and use of
capital letters—for the IPO

Line up investors or offer the shares to the public
IPOs are distributed through investment bankers in the primary market. If the underwriters have agreed
to buy the stock directly from the company, they sell it to the public for the first time. If their involvement is
on a “best efforts” basis, they sell the stock as the company’s agent, earning a commission on the shares
sold.
Who Buys the Stock?
Selling large amounts of stock a little at a time to thousands of investors is costly and time consuming.
Underwriters want to conduct the sale as quickly and cheaply as possible, so they prefer to sell to very
large investors. Underwriters usually offer IPO stock to pension plans, mutual funds, and very large
private investors first, with the hope that it will sell quickly. Later on, these investors will sell smaller blocks
to smaller investors.
Who Benefits?
When everything goes according to plan, the company raises the needed capital for expansion, debt
relief, operating expenses, or whatever reason it specified in the prospectus. The underwriter makes a
profit by buying all the new securities at one price and selling them to the public at a higher price (or by
collecting a commission on the shares sold). If the company puts the new capital to good use, it becomes
much more profitable, and its investors make money.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Student Resource 9.6
T-Chart: The Pros and Cons of Going Public
Directions: Using the graphic organizer below, list five positive and five negative effects of issuing stock to
finance a company. Remember, you will be using this resource as a guide for the following writing
assignment.
Positive
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Negative
Unit 4 Capital and Financial Markets
Lesson 9 Stocks
Student Resource 9.7
Assignment: Going Public
Directions:
Imagine that you have an early-stage company in need of funding. Based upon your metacognitive
statements and your research, write a summary in which you list the top three reasons why a company
should or should not go public. Remember that your summary must be neat, legible, and presentable,
and must include proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Your summary should include the following:

Introduce the topic of going public. What does an initial public offering mean?

A clearly written statement describing why a business would choose to issue stock to finance a
company.

Statement informing your reader of your point of view. For example, there are several
advantages (or disadvantages) to raising financing for a company in a stock market. Among the
most important are…

Include three statements supporting your position. Remember not to just list your supporting
statements one after the other, but to include one or two sentences of opinion or facts to help
clarify your position to the reader.

Include transitional words such as: first, in addition, furthermore, and finally, as a way to
connect your ideas.
Copyright © 2008 National Academy Foundation. All rights reserved.