Making enquiries about shares
Is anything possible, and if so, how? Because of the circumstances, there is nothing you can do. You do not have the ISIN, nor are you a part-owner of the account.  The information you would need is:  As always, good luck.
The market maker will always compare the highest bid and the lowest ask. A trade will happen if the highest bid is at least as high as the lowest ask. Adding one share (or a million shares) at a higher asking price, here: $210 instead of $200, will not have any effect at all. Nobody will buy the share.  Adding a bid for one share (or a million shares) at a higher bid price will trigger a sale. If you bid $210 for one share, you will pay $210 for one of the shares that were offered at $200. If you have $210 million in cash and add a bid for 1,000,000 AAPL at $210, you will pay $210 for all shares with an ask of $200.00, then $200.01, then $200.02 until you either bought all shares with an ask up to $210, or until you bought a million shares.  With AAPL, you probably bid the price up to $201 with a million shares, so you made lots of people very happy while losing about 10 million dollars. So let's say this is a much smaller company.  You have driven the share price up to $210, but there is nobody else bidding above $200. So nobody is going to buy your shares. Until some people think there is something going on and enter higher bids, but then some people will take advantage of this and ask lower than your $210. And there will be more people trying to make cash by selling their shares at a good price than people tricked into bidding over $200, so it is most likely that you lose out.  (This completely ignores legality; attempting to do this would be market manipulation and in many countries illegal. I don't know if losing money in the process would protect you from criminal charges). 10k in taser stock at $1.00 per share made those who held into the hundreds per share made millions.  But think about the likelihood of you owning a $1 stock and holding it past $10.00. They (taser millionaires) were both crazy and lucky.  A direct answer, better off buying a lottery ticket. Stocks are for growing wealth not gaining wealth imho. Of course there are outliers though.  To the point in the other answer, if it was repeatable the people teaching the tricks (if they worked) would make much more if they followed their own advice if it worked.  Also, if everyone tells you how good gold is to buy that just means they are selling to get out. If it was that good they would be buying and not saying anything about it. In practical terms, it shouldn't.  Market cap changes every day (assuming public trading, of course) or even second-by-second, and focusing on investor sentiment toward your company's stock is not the wisest way to make strategic decisions. That being said, company execs do need to be mindful of unusual swings in their company's share prices because it can sometimes be an indicator of news/information of which they're unaware.  At the same time, you can't just disregard your shareholders, especially the big institutional players who may have large voting blocks with which to replace you if they feel you're not responsive to events.  They are the ones who make strategic decisions based on your company's share price, right? (grin) The issue around swings in market cap is more about public perception than reality, so it is important for companies to have a good public relations strategy ready to go that can address questions/concerns in case of some market event.  After all, consumers who hear that a company's share price has suddenly fallen by, say, 30% might be more hesitant to do business with that company because there's a (perhaps irrational) fear the company's not doing well and may not be around much longer. Investors are, by their very nature, emotional rather than rational.  Any kind of news can cause a stampede toward or away from a stock for no reason that an investment professional could ever explain.  That's why it's impossible to spend any real time focusing on market cap (leave that to your P.R. department to worry about). IF, as a company executive, you focus on doing the right things to make your company successful then any questions/concerns about market cap will resolve themselves. Good luck! Bicycles Phoenix is your ideal weblog that shares useful information about almost anything. We travel with our bicycle around the world just to gather the most interesting articles that we will deliver on this website. If you ever need a trusted blog that shares amazing content, then you are in the right place. Follow us on our journey of making this site the best medium for all the cool people like you! Have questions? Contact Us! What you will probably get is an option to buy, for £10,000, £10,000 worth of stock. If the stock price on the day your option is granted is £2.50, then that's 4,000 shares. Companies rarely grant discounted options, as there are tax disincentives. The benefit of the stock option is that when you exercise it, you still only pay £10,000, no matter what the 4,000 shares are now worth. This is supposed to be an incentive for you to work harder to increase the value of the company. You should also check the vesting schedule. You will typically not be able to exercise all your options for some years, although some portion of it may vest each year. My broker offers a service to transfer the shares where you only pay commission once. Therefore say if standard commission is £10, then you don't end up paying £20 (10 for selling + 10 for buy back). You'll have to be okay with the spread though. Hope this helps. The least expensive way to buy such small amounts is through ING's Sharebuilder service. You can perform a real-time trade for $9, or you can add a one-time trade to their investment schedule for $4 (transaction will be processed on the next upcoming Tuesday morning). They also allow you to purchase fractional shares. Well, you can just say that 1 dollar contributed = one share and pay out dividends based on number of shares. That makes it pretty easy to make things fair based. There are pros and cons with this pooling approach.