30% share in business
Keep in mind a good lawyer will have the contract cover the five D's: Its really best to lay these things out ahead of time.  I watched, first hand, two friends start a business.  When they were broke and struggling the worked very well together.  Then the money started rolling in.  Despite exceeding their dreams they were constantly at each other's throats fighting and bickering over stupid stuff.  In the end, because they had decent legal docs, they both were able to pull money out of the business.   Had that not been worked out they would have destroyed the business so that no one would have profited. Get involved a lawyer and Accountant. Without it you may not be sure what you are getting. What exactly will 30% mean for me? It will mean exactly what gets written in contract. It can mean you are owner of 30% of the company. If this is structured as partnership, it would also mean you are party to 30% loss. It can mean by current valuation, you get x fixed shares. In future if the directors creates more shares, your % ownership can get diluted. Or anything else. It all depends on what is written in contract and how the contract is structured. Is there anything I should I be aware of before agreeing? Get a draft and talk to a Lawyer and Accountant, they should be able to tell you exactly what it means and you can then decide if you agree to it or not; or need this contract worded differently.
If you want to see one split, well, a reverse split anyway, keep an eye on TZA, FAZ, BGZ, and any Direxion fund.  These funds decay continuously forever.  Once they get close to $10-$15 or so, they reverse-split them back to the $30-$50 range and the process starts over.  This happens about once a year. A few years ago I sent Direxion an email asking what happens when they run out of shares to reverse split and the reply was that's its an open fund where shares can be created or redeemed at will.  That still didn't answer the question of what happens when they run out of shares.  If they create new shares, the price will drop below the $10 level where many fund managers aren't allowed to buy. "Like most forms of insurance, health insurance is regulated at the state level. So what is available to you will depend greatly upon which state you live in. You can probably find a list of insurance companies from your state's official website. Many states now provide ""insurance of last resort"" for individuals who can't get insurance through private insurance companies. You can try looking into professional and trade associations. Some offer group insurance plans comparable with COBRA coverage, meaning you'd get a group discount and benefits but without the benefit of an employer paying 30-80% of your premiums. As a software developer you may qualify for membership in the IEEE or ACM, which both offer several forms of insurance to members. The ASP also offers insurance, though they don't provide much information about it on the public portions of their website. These organization offer other benefits besides insurance so you may want to take that in to consideration. The National Federation of Independent Business also offers insurance to members. You may find other associations in your specific area. Credit Unions, Coops and the local chamber of commerce are all possible avenues of finding lower cost insurance options. If you are religious there are even some faith based non-insurance organizations that provide medical cost sharing services. They depend upon the generosity and sense of fairness and obligation of their members to share the burden of medical expenses so their definitely not for everyone." I was not able to find any authority for the opinion you suggest. Wash sale rules should, IMHO, apply. According to the regulations, you attribute the newly purchased shares to the oldest sold shares for the purposes of the calculation of the disallowed loss and cost basis. (c) Where the amount of stock or securities acquired within the 61-day period is less than the amount of stock or securities sold or   otherwise disposed of, then the particular shares of stock or   securities the loss from the sale or other disposition of which is not   deductible shall be those with which the stock or securities acquired   are matched in accordance with the following rule: The stock or   securities acquired will be matched in accordance with the order of   their acquisition (beginning with the earliest acquisition) with an   equal number of the shares of stock or securities sold or otherwise   disposed of. You can resort to the claim that you have not, in fact, entered into the contract within 30 days, but when you gave the instructions to reinvest dividends. I don't know if such a claim will hold, but to me it sounds reasonable. This is similar to the rules re short sales (in (g) there). In this case, wash sale rules will not apply (unless you instructed to reinvest dividends within the 30 days prior to the sale). But I'd ask a tax professional if such a claim would hold, talk to a EA/CPA licensed in your state. Now a days, your stocks can be seen virtually through a brokerage account. Back in the days, a stock certificate was the only way to authenticate stock ownership. You can still request them though from the corporation you have shares in or your brokerage. It will have your name, corporation name and number of shares you have. You have to buy shares of a stock either through a brokerage or the corporation itself. Most stock brokerages are legit and are FDIC or SIPC insured. But your risks are your own loses. The $10 you are referring to is the trade commission fee the brokerage charges. When you place an order to buy or sell a stock the brokerage will charge you $10. So for example if you bought 1 share of a $20 stock. The total transaction cost will be $30. Depending on the state you live in, you can basically starting trading stocks at either 18 or 21. You can donate/gift your shares to virtually anyone. When you sell a stock and experience a profit, you will be charged a capital gains tax. If you buy a stock and sell it for a gain within 1 year, you will taxed up to 35% or your tax bracket but if you hold it for more than a year, you will taxed only 15% or your tax bracket. Assuming there are no other liabilities...  The enterprise value is $5mm. $1mm loan + $4mm equity. The proforma enterprise value will be the same, but the equity will now represent all of it at $5mm. Your 4% will now be 3.2%, but equal the same value; $160,000. While the article correctly points out that 90% is done in store, I would be more interested to see how this breaks down by category. Things like groceries and clothing are notoriously difficult to showcase and browse online.   If I had a guess there are wild swings in % share for things like electronics. I was looking at NAT and NAO, NAT owns 20% of NAO.  They trade opposite each other on the price of oil, low is good for NAT, bad for NAO.  In bad times the other company's stock would probably rise, so they could trim excess shares to keep a stable monetary holding.  This would create cash in bad times, in good times they could buy more, creating a floor as well for the other. From your question, it seems your problem is that you have a company that wants to make a deal, but does not currently have enough money to go through with it. Therefore it needs to raise capital. Assuming that you cannot get a loan from a bank and you do not want to seek funding from other sources, the two owners must provide the funds themselves somehow. Option A: The easiest and fairest way to do this is for the two shareholders to provide 75%, and 25% of the funding as a loan to the company. They will provide this loan knowing it may not be paid back if the company goes under. Note that it would not be fair for one of the shareholders to provide more, as that shareholder would be taking all the risk, while the other still reaps the rewards (although you could add a large interest rate to account for this). Option B: But say one of the shareholders cannot provide additional funds. In that case, the company should issue new shares, and each shareholder can purchase however many of the new shares he/she wants (each shareholder is entitled to purchase at least 75% or 25% respectively, but does not have to). The result of this may be that company ownership percentages have changed after the capital raising. This is more complex as it require valuing the company accurately to be fair, and probably requires reporting to a government (depending on the jurisdiction).