IPO

An initial public offering, or IPO is the first sale of stock by a company that has gone public. It's an offer by a company of its shares to potential buyers prior to the stock actually being listed on the stock exchange. Companies go public and sell IPO usually to raise a large amount of money. Like all kinds of investments, the success of IPO trading depends on market conditions. Do your homework before investing.

You may have first heard of the term IPO during the tech bull market of the late 1990s, the "spring" of the Silicon Valley dot.com companies. An initial public offering, or IPO, is the first sale of stock by a company that has gone public. It's an offer by a company of its shares to potential buyers prior to the stock actually being listed on the stock exchange.

How are the number of shares a company has determined?

Bill Gates is said to have a billion shares of Microsoft stock...of course since he owns the company and at roughly $25 a share he is a billionaire. But this is only because someone has detemined that Microsoft has over a billion shares. How do they get that number?

The number of shares is determined by the number of stocks issued at IPO and any other further offerings after the IPO depending on the companys' needs.