I'm amazed at the number of people that I run into that have no idea how the Stock Market works. HISTORY: Ships sank a lot back in the old days so it was a bit of a gamble that the ship carrying your goods would make it to its port. Somebody in New York City decided to buy the goods on the ship before it arrived in port. If the ship arrived, they made a bundle of money because the price they paid was usually well below wholesale. Well, that didn't last long before companies were formed, and they pooled their money and decided what ships they would gamble on. Things then started to evolve and PRIVATE land based companies started offering the PUBLIC shares in their business. In other words they went PUBLIC. That's when the real stock market took off. Instead of one, two, three, or more partners who owned PRIVATE companies would sell shares in their companies to the PUBLIC as a way to bring in cash to operate or expand their companies. As one would expect, the companies would hold the majority of the stock so they would have full control of how the company was run. Then some genius figured out that you didn't need to own 50% of the stock to run the company as long as they held more shares than anyone else did. Now into todays world with Elon Musk. He only has to find out who owns the most stock and then only buy a few more shares and then HE becomes the guy who runs the company. Now it gets complicated. If someone owns, let's say 40% of the stock and all the other stockholders don't like what he wants to do, they can get together and pool there 60% of votes and overrule the 40% guy. The safest way to not lose control of a company is to own 51% of the stock and you can't be outvoted.
