trading terms

Outstanding Shares

The total number of shares held by retail investors, institutional investors, and company insiders. This count typically does not include treasury shares (shares that are held by the company themselves after being repurchased).

Retail Investors

Individuals who engage in transacting of securities and are NOT working for an organization. They seek to accumulate personal wealth.

Institutional Investors

Large-scale entities that pool money from clients and customers in order to make large trades for the sake of increasing capital. They have large control over global trade patterns and corporate governance in the companies they invest in.

Treasury Shares

Shares that a company has repurchased from shareholders and holds itself. These shares are still issued but are not considered outstanding. They do not have voting rights and do not receive divident payouts.

Corporate Governance

The system of rules, regulations, company policy, and team culture that a company employs in order to effectively run its firm. Typically, institutional investors will have extensive control over this because they are large shareholders in the company and thus hold high voting rights.

Public Shell Company

A company that has no or only nominal business operations and nearly or entirely no physical assets. Although they are technically only a company on paper, they still have a valid SEC filing and market shares. Private companies typically use these companies as a way to do a reverse merger to file for an IPO.

Reverse merger

A process by which a private company becomes public by taking a controlling interest in a public company, thus bypassing the traditionally long and cumbersome process of an IPO.