2. Where to start on iGame? What is the stock market and what does it mean to buy a share?

Not inventing the wheel for the second time, Investopedia gives the following definition:

“The market in which shares of publicly held companies are issued and traded…Also known as the equity market, the stock market is one of the most vital components of a free-market economy, as it provides companies with access to capital in exchange for giving investors a slice of ownership in the company. “

Ok, everything sounds very simple and it really is: you register an account with the stock broker like DNB Trade, who facilitates the trading between you and the stock market, pay him some small commission and you are officially the owner of the tiny part of the company. How comparatively tangible is this part that you just purchased? It depends. For example, imagine that you have 10 000 EUR and you buy for them shares of famous Russian gas&oil company GAZPROM. Currently, all the company’s shares outstanding in the market cost around 70 000 000 000 000 EUR, so make you own estimations here.

But what do you gain and lose from buying shares of the company?

Basically, “share” means that you have a claim for company’s profits. When company receives its profit, it might payout some part of it to (you and) all shareholders as dividends and the other part reinvests into the business so that it keeps growing. You can

also gain on selling the shares in the future if their price goes up. However, the downside risk here is that companies are not always profitable, so the amount of dividends can be decreased to 0 or the stock price can go down. Moreover,some companies might even go bankrupt if they fail to fulfill obligations in front of its creditors. What does bankruptcy mean for you as a shareholder? – Basically, in most cases you would lose the whole amount of money that you invested, but no more than that.

IGame allows you to get exposed to global stock markets without risking your own capital. The platform itself might seem too complicated from the very beginning. You log in there – see multiple buttons, graphs, prices going up and down, 10 000 000 000 on the account value… it might get you puzzled because you don’t know what it means and even get bored because you don’t know what to do there. But for you, as an investor, the platform is needed only to execute trades (to buy the company), the toughest thing actually happens before you log in on the platform: you read books and articles on investing, follow major investors, world news, study economics and finance at university, try to analyze the company on your own and make a decision. All these things take time and effort, and we would encourage you to dig deeper NOT into the functionality of the platform but rather into the world of investments and portfolio management.

For more information you can find articles on the web related to: stock exchange, ways of companies to payout profits, why some companies pay dividends and others don’t, bankruptcy procedure of a public company, also senior claim of bond holders, preferred shareholders).