Why would I vote for an increase in the number of authorized shares?
"I'll skip the ""authorizing...."" and go right to uses of new shares: Companies need stock as another liquid asset for a variety of purposes, and if not enough stock is available, then may be forced to the open market to acquire, either by exchanging cash or taking on debt to get the cash." Why would I want to approve an increase in the number of authorized shares? Because you trust management to use those shares wisely. What it comes down to is, management is asking for money. While it may not be cash they're asking for, it has the same effect. Before you approve this, you have to evaluate the request (similarly to how a bank would evaluate a loan request), and ask if you approve of their reasons for needing the money, and if you think that it will be used to increase the value of the company (making your shares more valuable in the process). "As a common shareholder, why would I want to approve an increase in the number of authorized shares?"" Because it could increase the value of your existing shares. Companies sell new shares to raise capital, and they use capital to (among other things) expand. If Whole Foods issues new shares and uses the capital to opens new stores, then profit could increase enough to offset the dilution effect, and your stock price will go up. You should ask yourself:  What areas is is your company of choice planning on expanding into? Will they do well there? Are there better ways for the company to raise capital (debt, cash in hand, cut expenses elsewhere, etc)? If you think that the management has a good plan for expanding, then authorizing new shares makes good sense for you personally."
The Euro will collapse because Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece will have to default on their debt. In order to keep up with current payments they have to take emergency loans at the same time that their economies are in recession and demands on social programs are increasing. There is simply no way that they can cut enough spending and raise enough revenue to balance their budgets. That is not opinion, it is arithmetic.   If they cannot pay their loans they will either voluntarily leave the Euro, or they will be forced out.   Next comes France who also has a large and growing budget deficit and a large public debt. It is unsustainable. That which is unsustainable will end.   The last reason that the Euro will fail and that it will be soon is Germany. Up to now, all the bailouts of Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain have come predominantly from Germany. In order to float the Eurobonds that some idiots think might save Europe, the German people have to authorize their government to participate and thereby take on another mountain of debt. The German people will not vote for that authorization.  Is that enough reasons? Because there are more. Lots more. Read [Mike Shedlock](http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com) I think, based on their publicly available records, that they believe their own rather substantial increases in wealth since being elected are repeated amongst the general public.  Since they only circulate amongst the elite that pay for their elections, they probably are unaware that the average American has see their income decrease since the 1980's, while they and their friends incomes have increased an average of 10% per year since the 1980's.  So, for them, at least, their strategy is working.  But I still can't see why people vote for them. "I thought the other answers had some good aspect but also some things that might not be completely correct, so I'll take a shot. As noted by others, there are three different types of entities in your question:  The ETF SPY, the index SPX, and options contracts. First, let's deal with the options contracts.  You can buy options on the ETF SPY or marked to the index SPX.  Either way, options are about the price of the ETF / index at some future date, so the local min and max of the ""underlying"" symbol generally will not coincide with the min and max of the options.  Of course, the closer the expiration date on the option, the more closely the option price tracks its underlying directly.  Beyond the difference in how they are priced, the options market has different liquidity, and so it may not be able to track quick moves in the underlying. (Although there's a reasonably robust market for option on SPY and SPX specifically.) Second, let's ask what forces really make SPY and SPX move together as much as they do.  It's one thing to say ""SPY is tied to SPX,"" but how?  There are several answers to this, but I'll argue that the most important factor is that there's a notion of ""authorized participants"" who are players in the market who can ""create"" shares of SPY at will.  They do this by accumulating stock in the constituent companies and turning them into the market maker.  There's also the corresponding notion of ""redemption"" by which an authorized participant will turn in a share of SPY to get stock in the constituent companies. (See http://www.spdrsmobile.com/content/how-etfs-are-created-and-redeemed and http://www.etf.com/etf-education-center/7540-what-is-the-etf-creationredemption-mechanism.html) Meanwhile, SPX is just computed from the prices of the constituent companies, so it's got no market forces directly on it.  It just reflects what the prices of the companies in the index are doing. (Of course those companies are subject to market forces.) Key point: Creation / redemption is the real driver for keeping the price aligned.  If it gets too far out of line, then it creates an arbitrage opportunity for an authorized participant.  If the price of SPY gets ""too high"" compared to SPX (and therefore the constituent stocks), an authorized participant can simultaneously sell short SPY shares and buy the constituent companies' stocks.  They can then use the redemption process to close their position at no risk.  And vice versa if SPY gets ""too low."" Now that we understand why they move together, why don't they move together perfectly.  To some extent information about fees, slight differences in composition between SPY and SPX over time, etc. do play.  The bigger reasons are probably that (a) there are not a lot of authorized participants, (b) there are a relatively large number of companies represented in SPY, so there's some actual cost and risk involved in trying to quickly buy/sell the full set to capture the theoretical arbitrage that I described, and (c) redemption / creation units only come in pretty big blocks, which complicates the issues under point b. You asked about dividends, so let me comment briefly on that too.  The dividend on SPY is (more or less) passing on the dividends from the constituent companies. (I think - not completely sure - that the market maker deducts its fees from this cash, so it's not a direct pass through.)  But each company pays on its own schedule and SPY does not make a payment every time, so it's holding a corresponding amount of cash between its dividend payments.  This is factored into the price through the creation / redemption process.  I don't know how big of a factor it is though." "I have 3 favorite sites that I use. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/mcd/dividend-history - lists the entire history of dividends and what dates they were paid so you can predict when future dividends will be paid. http://www.dividend.com/dividend-stocks/services/restaurants/mcd-mcdonalds/ - this site lists key stats like dividend yield, and number of years dividend has increased.  If the next dividend is announced, it shows the number of days until the ex-dividend date, the next ex-div and payment date and amount. If you just want to research good dividend stocks to get into, I would highly recommend the site seekingalpha.com.  Spend some time reading the articles on that site under the dividends section.  Make sure you read the comments on each article to make sure the author is not way off base. Finally, my favorite tool for researching good dividend stocks is the CCC Lists produced by Seeking Alpha's David Fish.  It is a giant spreadsheet of stocks that have been increasing dividends every year for 5+, 10+, or 25+ years.  The link to that spreadsheet is here: http://dripinvesting.org/tools/tools.asp under ""U.S. Dividend Champions""." Let's assume that the bonds have a par value of $1,000.  If conversion happens, then one bond would be converted into 500 shares.  The price in the market is unimportant.  Regardless of the share price in the market, the income per share would be increased by the absence of $70 in interest expense.  It would be decreased by the lost tax deduction.  It would be further diluted by the increase in 500 shares.  Likewise, the debt would be extinguished and the equity section increased.  Whether it increased or decreased on a per share basis would depend upon the average amount paid in per share in the currently existing structure, adjusted for changes in retained earnings since the initial offering and for any treasury shares. There would be a loss in value, generally, if it is trading far from $2.00 because it would be valued based on the market price.  Had the bond not converted, it would trade in the market as a pure bond if the stock price is far below the strike price and as an ordinary pure bond plus a premium if near enough to the strike price in a manner that depends upon the time remaining under the conversion privilege.   I cannot think of a general case where someone would want to convert below strike and indeed, barring a very strange tax, inheritance or legal situation (such as a weird divorce), I cannot think of a case where it would make sense.  It often does not make sense to convert far from maturity either as the option premium only vanishes well above $2.  The primary case for conversion would be where the after-tax dividend is greater than the after-tax interest payment. Most businesses want to grow, and there are a variety of ways to raise the money needed to hire new employees and otherwise invest in the business to increase the rate of that growth. You as a stock holder should hope that management is choosing the least expensive option for growth. Some of the options are debt, selling equity to venture capitalists, or selling equity on the open market (going public). If they choose debt, they pay interest on that debt. If they choose to sell equity to venture capitalists, then your shares get diluted, but hopefully the growth makes up for some of that dilution. If they choose to go public, dilution is still a concern, but the terms are usually a little more favorable for the company selling because the market is so liquid.  In the US, current regulations for publicly traded companies cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1M/year, so that's the rule of thumb for considering whether going public makes sense when calculating the cost of fundraising, but as mentioned, regulations make it less advantageous for executives who choose to sell their shares after the company goes public. (They can't sell when good spot prices appear.) Going public is often considered the next step for a company that has grown past the initial venture funding phase, but if cash-flow is good, plenty of companies decide to just reinvest profits and skip the equity markets altogether. "What does it mean in terms of share price? Should the share price increase by 15 cents?  No, but you're on the right track. In theory, the price of a share reflects it's ""share"" of time discounted future earnings. To put it concretely, imagine a company consistently earning 15 cents a share every year and paying it all out as dividends. If you only paid 25 cents for it, you could earn five cents a share by just holding it for two years. If you imagine that stocks are priced assuming a holding period of 20 years or so, so we'd expect the stock to cost less than 3 dollars.  More accurately, the share price reflects expected future earnings. If everyone is assuming this company is growing earnings every quarter, an announcement will only confirm information people have already been trading based on. So if this 15 cents announcement is a surprise, then we'd expect the stock price to rise as a function of both the ""surprise"" in earnings, and how long we expect them to stay at this new profitability level before competition claws their earnings away. Concretely, if 5 cents a share of that announcement were ""earnings surprise,"" you'd expect it to rise somewhere around a dollar." Not really on the corporate finance side, so excuse me if my explanation seems a bit verbose.  Nobody *wants* to give away control of their company, but investors are going to demand a pretty steep discount on your equity if you don't give them some way to steer management. Control is valuable, and to this extent, voting shares should always be worth *at least* as much as non-voting shares.  If the owner still retains 51% of the company, however, then the voting shares provide essentially no benefit over non-voting, barring the founder's sudden divestiture. With this in mind, there's basically no reason to issue voting shares in the first place.  On the other hand, with 40% of the voting power the founder's still have a key vote and will rarely be overturned unless a supermajority (84%) of the other investors disagree. This still gives them *de facto* control while offering equity holders some degree of security if the founders were ever to suddenly lose their mind. This added security allows the voting shares to trade at a premium over non-voting, which in turn allows the company to raise more money from their equity issuance.