What is the purpose of buying facebook stock?

[fatwinter578]

is it to buy it and sell it later when its worth more or something?

[Kim]

Buying stock gets you three things: you get dividends (a part of the company's profits), you get to vote on company policy at shareholder's meetings, and you can sell the stock for a profit if the price goes up.

The reason you'd want Facebook stock over others is because you either want to have a say in Facebook policy specifically, or because you imagine it'll be a betters investment of your money. People who thought the latter thing were wrong.

[Scott R]

That is the general idea yes. Although, it has not been doing well so I wouldn't recommend it!

[DShaz]

That is the whole point of the stock market. You buy shares in companies in the hope that the price will rise. If it rises, you can sell it and make a profit. If it goes down, you can sell it and take a loss or wait for it to go back up again and risk losing even more money. The thing about Facebook stocks is that the price has gone down considerably since the IPO. Since Facebook was one of the biggest IPO's in history, many people bought in. Facebook originally sold their stocks for $38. The current price, as of May 29th at 11:30am is $29.03. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that many investors probably lost some money on this stock so far. However, if they have kept their stocks instead of cutting their losses, there is a chance that it may rise again and they could still make money.

[John W]

Why would you buy a lottery ticket? It's clearly costs more than it's value as a slip of paper but there is the remote chance that you could redeem it for something in the future. Facebook stock isn't justified by it's earnings or it's growth therefore you are just hoping to be able to sell it to someone else who is willing to pay even more for less or on the off chance that they do figure out a way to grow their revenue to improve their value.

[Ana Ramos]

no you buy it and hope it goes down, then sell it