Stock Price Listing Numbers on a Korean Newspaper

A share price is the price of a single share of a number of saleable equity shares of a company. In layman's terms, the stock price is the highest amount someone is willing to pay for the stock, or the lowest amount that it can be bought for.

Behaviour of share prices

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

and financial theory, analysts use

random walk In mathematics, a random walk, sometimes known as a drunkard's walk, is a stochastic process that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some Space (mathematics), mathematical space. An elementary example of a rand ...

techniques to model behavior of

asset In financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value of ownership that can b ...

price A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation expected, required, or given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, especially when the product is a service rather than a ph ...

s, in particular share prices of companies publicly listed. This practice has its basis in the presumption that investors act rationally and without biases, and that at any moment they estimate the value of an asset based on future expectations. Under these conditions, all existing information affects the price, which changes only when new information comes out. By definition, new information appears randomly and influences the asset price randomly. Empirical studies have demonstrated that prices do not completely follow random walks. Low serial correlations (around 0.05) exist in the short term, and slightly stronger correlations over the longer term. Their sign and the strength depend on a variety of factors. Researchers have found that some of the biggest price deviations from random walks result from seasonal and temporal patterns. In particular, returns in January significantly exceed those in other months ( January effect) and on Mondays stock prices go down more than on any other day. Observers have noted these effects in many different markets for more than half a century, but without succeeding in giving a completely satisfactory explanation for their persistence.

Technical analysis In finance, technical analysis is an analysis methodology for analysing and forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. As a type of active management, it stands in contradiction to ...

uses most of the anomalies to extract information on future price movements from historical data. Technical analysis also takes market sentiment into account. But some economists, for example Eugene Fama, argue that most of these patterns occur accidentally, rather than as a result of irrational or inefficient behavior of investors: the huge amount of data available to researchers for analysis allegedly causes the fluctuations. Another school of thought, behavioral finance, attributes non-randomness to investors' cognitive and emotional biases. This can be contrasted with fundamental analysis. When viewed over long periods, the share price is related to expectations of future earnings and dividends of the firm. Over short periods, especially for younger or smaller firms, the relationship between share price and dividends can be quite unmatched.

Share prices in the United States

Many U.S.-based companies seek to keep their share price (also called stock price) low, partly based on "round lot" trading (multiples of 100 shares). A corporation can adjust its stock price by a stock split, substituting a quantity of shares at one price for a different number of shares at an adjusted price where the value of shares x price remains equivalent. (For example, 500 shares at $32 may become 1000 shares at $16.) Many major firms like to keep their price in the $25 to $75 price range. A US share must be priced at $1 or more to be covered by NASDAQ. If the share price falls below that level, the stock is "delisted" and becomes an OTC (over the counter stock). A stock must have a price of $1 or more for 10 consecutive trading days during each month to remain listed.

Most expensive shares

The highest share prices on the

NYSE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

have been those of

Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Originally a textile manufacturer, the company transitioned into a conglomerate starting in 1965 under the management of c ...

class A, trading at over $625,000/share (in February 2024). Berkshire Hathaway has refused to split its stock and make it more affordable to retail investors, as they want to attract shareholders with a long-term vision. In 1996, Berkshire Hathaway issued the class B shares that come with 1/1000 of the value and 1/1500 of the voting rights in order to avoid the formation of

mutual fund A mutual fund is an investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase Security (finance), securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV in ...

s that buy class A shares. Lindt & Sprüngli shares topped out at approximately $140,000 (December 2021). Like Berkshire Hathaway, the Swiss chocolate manufacturer issued so-called '' Partizipationsschein'' shares, valued at 1/100 of the original share value, and come void of voting rights.

List of historical highest-priced publicly traded shares

History

Robert D. Coleman's ''Evolution of Stock Pricing'' notes that the invention of

double-entry bookkeeping Double-entry bookkeeping, also known as double-entry accounting, is a method of bookkeeping that relies on a two-sided accounting entry to maintain financial information. Every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a ...

in the fourteenth century led to company valuations being based upon ratios such as price per unit of earnings (from the income statement), price per unit of net worth (from the balance sheet) and price per unit of cash flow (from the funds statement). The next advance was to price individual shares rather than whole companies. A price/dividends ratio began to be used. Following this, the next stage was the use of discounted cash flows, based on the

time value of money The time value of money refers to the fact that there is normally a greater benefit to receiving a sum of money now rather than an identical sum later. It may be seen as an implication of the later-developed concept of time preference. The time ...

, to estimate the intrinsic value of stock.

References