How do you find out who the investors are in a U.S. stock? e.g. how ownership may be concentrated?
I don't think that you will be able to find a list of every owner for a given stock. There are probably very few people who would know this. One source would be whoever sends out the shareholder meeting mailers.  I suspect that the company itself would know this, the exchange to a lesser extent, and possibly the brokerage houses to a even lesser extent. Consider these resources: "Companies absolutely know who ALL their shareholders are. Ownership is filed on Form 3/4 and in 10-Q/Ks. Look there.  Guidelines for required disclosure are as follows: 1) Individuals must disclose when their ownership exceeds 5%; 2) Non-individual legal entities (read: companies; e.g. a hedge fund) must disclose when their ownership exceeds 10% (Form 13-F); and 3) All Officers and Directors Notice the word ""required."" For example, a entity (individual/company) may file ""confidentiality letter"" (which allows them to delay disclosing ownership) with the SEC as they are building a position.  So at any given point in time the information that is publicaly available may not be ""up-to-date."" And in all cases beneficial owner(ship)."
In my experience, any kind of equity you may be offered by the company is just a carrot. Your offer may be written in such a way that your potential ownership represents, say, 1% of the company today. But if the company goes for a round of financing your ownership percentage can get diluted. If this happens a couple of times and the terms of financing aren't very favorable then your percentage can go from that 1% down to 0.001%, making the equity worthless. I've known people who heard their company was being bought and thought they might get some kind of payoff. Come to find out the company hadn't done all that well and there wasn't anything to pay out after the main investors got some money back. (The main investors took a loss.) For obvious reasons, management wasn't keeping the staff up to date about the fact that they were operating in the red and their options were worthless. Some people grumbled about lawyers and filing lawsuits, but at the end of the day, there wasn't any money to be won. Keep this in mind. As to your question regarding what to look out for: "I'll take a stab at this question and offer a disclosure: I recently got in RING (5.1), NEM (16.4), ASX:RIO (46.3), and FCX (8.2).  While I won't add to my positions at current prices, I may add other positions, or more to them if they fall further.  This is called catching a falling dagger and it's a high risk move. Cons (let's scare everyone away) Pros The ECB didn't engage in as much QE as the market hoped and look at how it reacted, especially commodities.  Consider that the ECB's actions were ""tighter"" than expected and the Fed plans to raise rates, or claims so.  Commodities should be falling off a cliff on that news. While most American/Western attention is on the latest news or entertainment, China has been seizing commodities around the globe like crazy, and the media have failed to mention that even with its market failing, China is still seizing commodities.  If China was truly panicked about its market, it would stop investing in other countries and commodities and just bail out its own country.  Yet, it's not doing that.  The whole ""China crisis"" is completely oversold in the West; China is saying one thing (""oh no""), but doing another (using its money to snap up cheap commodities). Capitalism works because hard times strengthen good companies.  You know how many bailouts ExxonMobil has received compared to Goldman Sachs?  You know who owns more real wealth?  Oil doesn't get bailed out, banks do, and banks can't innovate to save their lives, while oil innovates.  Hard times strengthen good companies.  This means that this harsh bust in commodities will separate the winners from the losers and history shows the winners do very well in the long run. Related to the above point: how many bailouts from tax payers do you think mining companies will get?  Zero.  At least you're investing in companies that don't steal your money through government confiscation. If you're like me, you can probably find at least 9 people out of 10 who think ""investing in miners is a VERY BAD idea.""  What do they think is a good idea?  ""Duh, Snapchat and Twitter, bruh!""  Then there's the old saying, ""Be greedy when everyone's fearful and fearful when everyone's greedy."" Finally, miners own hard assets.  Benjamin Graham used to point this out with the ""dead company"" strategy like finding a used cigarette with one more smoke.  You're getting assets cheap, while other investors are overpaying for stocks, hoping that the Fed unleashes moar QE!  Think strategy here: seize cheap assets, begin limiting the supply of these assets (if you're the saver and not borrowing), then watch as the price begins to rise for them because of low supply.  Remember, investors are part owners in companies - take more control to limit the supply.  Using Graham's analogy, stock pile those one-puff cigarettes for a day when there's a low supply of cigarettes. Many miners are in trouble now because they've borrowed too much and must sell at a low profit, or in some cases, must lose.  When you own assets debt free, you can cut the supply.  This will also help the Federal Reserve, who's been desperately trying to figure out how to raise inflation.  The new patriotic thing to do is stimulate the economy by sending inflation up, and limiting the supply here is key." "How often do investors really lose money? All the time. And it's almost always reason number 1. Let's start with the beginner investor, the person most likely to make some real losses and feel they've ""learned"" that investing is no better than Vegas. This person typically gets into it because they've been given a hot stock tip, or because they've received a windfall, decided to give this investing lark a try, and bought stock in half a dozen companies whose names they know from their everyday lives (""I own a bit of Google! How cool is that?""). These are people who don't understand the cyclic nature of the market (bear gives way to bull gives way to bear, and on and on), and so when they suddenly see that what was $1000 is now $900 they panic and sell everything. Especially as all the pundits are declaring the end of the world (they always do). Until the moment they sold, they only had paper losses. But they crystallised those losses, made them real, and ended at a loss. Then there's the trend-follower. These are people who don't necessarily hit a bear market, or even a downturn, in their early days, but never really try to learn how the market works in any real sense. They jump into every hot stock, then panic and sell out of anything that starts to go the wrong way. Both of these reactive behaviours seem reasonable in the moment (""It's gone up 15% in the past week? Buy buy buy!"" and ""I've lost 10% this month on that thing? Get rid of it before I lose any more!""), but they work out over time to lots of buying high and selling low, the very opposite of what you want to do. Then there's the day-trader. These are people who sit in their home office, buying and selling all day to try and make lots of little gains that add up to a lot. The reason these people don't do well in the long run is slightly different to the other examples. First, fees. Yes, most platforms offer a discount for ""frequent traders"", but it still ain't free. Second, they're peewees playing in the big leagues. Of course there are exceptions who make out like bandits, but day traders are playing a different game than the people I'd call investors. That game, unlike buy-and-hold investing, is much more like gambling, and day-traders are the enthusiastic amateurs sitting down at a table with professional poker players – institutional investors and the computers and research departments that work for them. Even buy-and-hold investors, even the more sophisticated ones, can easily realise losses on a given stock. You say you should just hold on to a stock until it goes back up, but if it goes low enough, it could take a decade or more to even just break even again. More savvy stock-pickers will have a system worked out, something like ""ok, if it gets down to 90% of what I bought it for, I cut my losses and sell."" This is actually a sensible precaution, because defining hard rules like that helps​ you eliminate emotion from your investing, which is incredibly important if you want to avoid becoming the trend-follower above. It's still a loss, but it's a calculated one, and hopefully over time the exception rather than the rule. There are probably as many other ways to lose money as there are people investing, but I think I've given you a taste. The key to avoiding such things is understanding the psychology of investing, and defining the rules that you'll follow no matter what (as in that last example). Or just go learn about index investing. That's what I did." Is my financial status OK? If not, how can I improve it? I'm going to concentrate on this question, particularly the first half.   Net income $4500 per month (I'm taking this to be after taxes; correct me if wrong).  Rent is $1600 and other expenses are up to $800.  So let's call that $2500.  That leaves you $2000 a month, which is $24,000 a year.   You can contribute up to $18,000 a year to a 401k and if you want to maintain your income in retirement, you probably should.  The average social security payment now is under $1200.  You have an above average income but not a maximum income.  So let's set that at $1500.  You need an additional income stream of $900 a month in retirement plus enough to cover taxes.  Another $5500 for an IRA (probably a Roth).  That's $23,500.  That leaves you $500 a year of reliable savings for other purposes.  Another $5500 for an IRA (probably a Roth).  That's $23,500.  That leaves you $500 a year of reliable savings for other purposes.   You are basically even.  Your income is just about what you need to cover expenses and retirement.  You could cover a monthly mortgage payment of $1600 and have a $100,000 down payment.  That probably gets you around a $350,000 house, although check property taxes.  They have to come out of the $1600 a month.  That doesn't seem like a lot for a Bay area house even if it would buy a mansion in rural Mississippi.  Perhaps think condo instead.   Try to keep at least $15,000 to $27,000 as emergency savings.  If you lose your job or get stuck with a required expense (e.g. a major house repair), you'll need that money.   You don't have enough income to support a car unless it saves you money somewhere.  $500 a year is probably not going to cover insurance, parking, gas, and maintenance.   It's possible that you could tighten up your expenses, but in my experience, people are more likely to underestimate their expenses than overestimate.  That's why I'm saying $2500 (a little above the high end) rather than $2000 (your low end estimate).  If things are stable, wait a year and evaluate.  Track your actual spending.  Ask yourself if you made any large purchases.  Your budget should include an appliance (TV, refrigerator, washer/dryer, etc.) a year.  If you're not paying for that now (included in rent?), then you need to allow for it in your ownership budget.   I do not consider an ESPP to be a reliable investment vehicle.  Consider the Enron possibility.  You wake up one day and find out that there is no actual money.  Your stock is now worthless.  A diversified portfolio can survive this.  If you lose your job and your investment, you'll be stuck with just your savings.  Hopefully you didn't just tie them up in a house that you might have to sell to take your next job in a different location.  An ESPP might work as savings for the house.  If something goes wrong, don't buy the house.  But it's not retirement or emergency savings.   I would say that you are OK but could be better.  Get your retirement savings started.  That does two things.  One, it gives you money for retirement.  Two, it keeps you from having extra money now when it is easy to develop expensive habits.  An abrupt drop from $4500 in spending to $1200 will hurt.  A smooth transition from $2500 to $2500 is what you would like to see.  You are behind now, but you have the opportunity to catch up for a few years.   Work out how much you'll get from Social Security and how much you need to cover your typical expenses with the occasional emergency.  Expect high health care costs in retirement.  Medicare covers a lot but not everything, and health care is only getting more expensive.  Don't forget to assume higher taxes in the future to help cover that expense and the existing debt.  After a few years of catch up contributions, work out your long term plan assuming a reasonable real (after inflation) rate of return.  If you can reduce the $23,500 in retirement contributions then, that's OK.  But be pessimistic.  Most people overestimate good things and underestimate bad things.  It's much better to have extra than not enough.   A 401k comes with an administrator and your choice of mutual funds.  Try for diversification.  Some money in bonds (25% to 30%).  The remainder in stocks.  Look for index funds.  Try for a mix of value and growth, as they'll do better at different times.  As you approach retirement, you can convert some of that into shorter term, lower yield investments.  The rough rule of thumb is to have two to five years of withdrawals in short term investments like money market funds.  But that's more than twenty years off.   You have more choices with an IRA.  In particular, you can choose your own administrator.  But I'd keep the same stock/bond mix and stick to index funds if you're not interested in researching the more complex options.  You may want to invest your IRA in a growth fund and your 401k in value funds and bonds.  Then balance the stock/bond mix across both.   When you invest each year, look at the underrepresented funds and add the most to them.  So if bonds had a bad year and didn't keep pace, invest in bonds.  They're probably cheap.  You don't want to rebalance frequently, but once a year might be a good pace.  That's about how often you should invest in an IRA, so that can be a good time.   I'll let the others answer on the financial advisor part. Investors are typically a part of the board of directors of the company. Because of their ownership in the company, they have a vested interest in its stock price. The same is true for management also in cases where they hold a certain percentage of equity in the company. Their incentives also get aligned to the stock price. The answer to this question is given by the fact that many public companies have people who are opposed to the company's aims or practices and who own their stock, often a single share, for the purposes of turning up to shareholder meetings and haranguing directors/asking awkward questions/disrupting proceedings, etc. If public companies could stop these campaigning shareholders from owning stock they would. "First, note that a share represents a % of ownership of a company. In addition to the right to vote in the management of the company [by voting on the board of directors, who hires the CEO, who hires the VPs, etc...], this gives you the right to all future value of the company after paying off expenses and debts. You will receive this money in two forms: dividends approved by the board of directors, and the final liquidation value if the company closes shop. There are many ways to attempt to determine the value of a company, but the basic theory is that the company is worth a cashflow stream equal to all future dividends + the liquidation value. So, the market's ""goal"" is to attempt to determine what that future cash flow stream is, and what the risk related to it is. Depending on who you talk to, a typical stock market has some degree of 'market efficiency'. Market efficiency is basically a comment about how quickly the market reacts to news. In a regulated marketplace with a high degree of information available, market efficiency should be quite high. This basically means that stock markets in developed countries have enough traders and enough news reporting that as soon as something public is known about a company, there are many, many people who take that information and attempt to predict the impact on future earnings of the company. For example, if Starbucks announces earnings that were 10% less than estimated previously, the market will quickly respond with people buying Starbucks shares lowering their price on the assumption that the total value of the Starbucks company has decreased. Most of this trading analysis is done by institutional investors. It isn't simply office workers selling shares on their break in the coffee room, it's mostly people in the finance industry who specialize in various areas for their firms, and work to quickly react to news like this. Is the market perfectly efficient? No. The psychology of trading [ie: people panicking, or reacting based on emotion instead of logic], as well as any inadequacy of information, means that not all news is perfectly acted upon immediately. However, my personal opinion is that for large markets, the market is roughly efficient enough that you can assume that you won't be able to read the newspaper and analyze stock news in a way better than the institutional investors. If a market is generally efficient, then it would be very difficult for a group of people to manipulate it, because someone else would quickly take advantage of that. For example, you suggest that some people might collectively 'short AMZN' [a company worth half a trillion dollars, so your nefarious group would need to have $5 Billion of capital just to trade 1% of the company]. If someone did that, the rest of the market would happily buy up AMZN at reduced prices, and the people who shorted it would be left holding the bag. However, when you deal with smaller items, some more likely market manipulation can occur. For example, when trading penny stocks, there are people who attempt to manipulate the stock price and then make a profitable trade afterwards. This takes advantage of the low amount of information available for tiny companies, as well as the limited number of institutional investors who pay attention to them. Effectively it attempts to manipulate people who are not very sophisticated. So, some manipulation can occur in markets with limited information, but for the most part prices are determined by the 'market consensus' on what the future profits of a company will be.  Additional example of what a share really is: Imagine your neighbor has a treasure chest on his driveway: He gathers the neighborhood together, and asks if anyone wants to buy a % of the value he will get from opening the treasure chest. Perhaps it's a glass treasure chest, and you can mostly see inside it. You see that it is mostly gold and silver, and you weigh the chest and can see that it's about 100 lbs all together. So in your head, you take the price of gold and silver, and estimate how much gold is in the chest, and how much silver is there. You estimate that the chest has roughly $1,000,000 of value inside. So, you offer to buy 10% of the chest, for $90k [you don't want to pay exactly 10% of the value of the company, because you aren't completely sure of the value; you are taking on some risk, so you want to be compensated for that risk].  Now assume all your neighbors value the chest themselves, and they come up with the same approximate value as you. So your neighbor hands out little certificates to 10 of you, and they each say ""this person has a right to 10% of the value of the treasure chest"". He then calls for a vote from all the new 'shareholders', and asks if you want to get the money back as soon as he sells the chest, or if you want him to buy a ship and try and find more chests. It seems you're all impatient, because you all vote to fully pay out the money as soon as he has it. So your neighbor collects his $900k [$90k for each 10% share, * 10], and heads to the goldsmith to sell the chest. But before he gets there, a news report comes out that the price of gold has gone up. Because you own a share of something based on the price of gold, you know that your 10% treasure chest investment has increased in value. You now believe that your 10% is worth $105k. You put a flyer up around the neighborhood, saying you will sell your share for $105k. Because other flyers are going up to sell for about $103-$106k, it seems your valuation was mostly consistent with the market.  Eventually someone driving by sees your flyer, and offers you $104k for your shares. You agree, because you want the cash now and don't want to wait for the treasure chest to be sold. Now, when the treasure chest gets sold to the goldsmith, assume it sells for $1,060,000 [turns out you underestimated the value of the company]. The person who bought your 10% share will get $106k [he gained $2k]. Your neighbor who found the chest got $900k [because he sold the shares earlier, when the value of the chest was less clear], and you got $104k, which for you was a gain of $14k above what you paid for it. This is basically what happens with shares. Buy owning a portion of the company, you have a right to get a dividend of future earnings. But, it could take a long time for you to get those earnings, and they might not be exactly what you expect. So some people do buy and sell shares to try and earn money, but the reason they are able to do that is because the shares are inherently worth something - they are worth a small % of the company and its earnings." Will there be a scenario in which I want to sell, but nobody wants to buy from me and I'm stuck at the brokerage website? Similarly, if nobody wants to sell their stocks, I will not be able to buy at all? You're thinking of this as a normal purchase, but that's not really how US stock markets operate. First, just because there are shares of stock purchased, it doesn't mean that there was real investor buyer and seller demand for that instrument (at that point in time).  Markets have dedicated middlemen called Market Makers (NASDAQ) or Specialists (NYSE), who are responsible to make sure that there is always someone to buy or sell; this ensures that all instruments have sufficient liquidity.  Market Makers and specialists may decide to lower their bid on a stock based on a high number of sellers, or raise their ask for a high number of buyers. During an investor rush to buy or sell an instrument (perhaps in response to a news release), it's possible for the Market Maker / specialist to accumulate or distribute a large number of shares, without end-investors like you or I being involved on both sides of the same transaction.