what are shares in a company?

[Amit Sharma]

i have heard and seen that people invest in shares and earn or loose money... i also want to earn money by trading in shares but i dont know what are shares in a company... till the time i dont get information about shares....i can not invest...
please help me regarding this....
help would be appreciated.... thanks in advance.... plz try to explain me in an easy way so that i can understand easily...

[Go with the flow]

Go get a book on Investing from a bookstore.
Don't buy it online. It is best if you look through them.
Look for books such as Investing made easy or investing for dummies.
Everything you need to know will be in those books.
Best investment you will ever make - you will refer back to it many, many times.

[Mark]

Shares are a way for a company to raise finance. The owner of the company will keep 51%of shares and sell the other 49% be it on the open market etc. This brings equity to the company so they can actually buy debt asets function as a business with some equity as a backbone in case it goes wrong. Anyone who has a share be it 1 of 1 million is a part owner of the company and is called a shareholder and the best interests of any shareholder such as yourself its what you wish to become is the growth of the value of the paticular comapny increases. So if you buy a share when a company was worth a dollar or lets say you own 49% and then this compnay turns into facebook and has half a billion in value and you the sell your shares you become extremely rich. Don't invest in any banks for the time being you never know what there doing it used to be a safe place to invest. Something like tesco or a company that you believe will do better in the future.

Also Companys pay out dividends (money) to there shareholders each year if they feel like it so checking how much they pay out each year in a company's history is also a good idea. Hope i shed some light on what a share is they can also make more of them by diluting shares and giving out bonus shares feel free to google the two terms for an easy definition of both.