What's the stock market? (where many people with suits are walking around and waiting for something?)?

[Timothy]

Yes, the stock market affects the entire global economic system. Buying stock is like investing in a company, say you buy a share of stock for $5 and the company makes a billion dollars, your share is now worth more, and you can sell it back, or to somebody else and make money off of it.

A stock share is literally like owning a portion of that company, if you own more than 50% of a company's stock, you now own that company ( I think). So companies only sell out certain ammount of their total stock. If you own a certain percentage you can vote on policies and activities of the company, like a chairman in some ways.

If a company's stock goes down to 0, then the company is not worth anything and they are most likely bankrupt at this point.

A company will sell stock when they are beginning to get big to give them some support money to accomplish their goals. For example say that a company worth $10,000 splits up 100 shares of stock and then sells 40 shares, each of those shares are worth $100, so they just made $4000 on nothing, however they have to buy them back if at any time nobody wants that stock.