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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The IPO System

The equities market generates wealth in several different ways. As private companies expand, they come to a point where they need more capital to finance further growth. Many times the solution to this problem is to offer stock in the company to the public through an initial public offering (IPO).
To do this the company hires the services of a brokerage firm to underwrite its stock, which means the brokerage will buy all the shares the company is offering for sale. The brokerage then charges a commission for managing the IPO and generates cash by selling the shares to investors. The commission is usually about 10 percent of the total value of all shares.
There is a misconception among many people who believe a company makes money every time a share of its stock is traded after its IPO, but that simply is not true. Companies get the IPO money, and that is it. From that point on, the money derived from the buying and selling of a company’s stock is passed back and forth between the actual buyers and sellers.
The IPO is an avenue provided by the stock market for a company to fund expansion. If the expansion succeeds and the company prospers, it will hire more people and buy more raw materials from other companies. This process contributes to the expansion of the economy as a whole, generating wealth that would not have existed without the stock market.
Investors who profit from a successful IPO also create wealth for the overall economy. If they buy low and sell high, they have made a profit that improves their standard of living and their ability to buy goods and services. They also use stock profits to start small businesses, reinvest in the stock market, or add to their savings. This process of putting stock profits back into the economy helps the economy grow over the long term and is a vital component of economic prosperity.
If a company increases its profits year after year, its stock price will rise. The increase in price is the result of the law of supply and demand. When the company went public it issued a limited number of shares, called a float or the number of shares outstanding. As the demand for these shares increases, the supply decreases. In this situation, the price will rise.
Companies definitely benefit when their stocks are in great demand. A company’s market capitalization, the value of all shares of its stock, will go up. Market capitalization is computed by multiplying the current stock price by the number of outstanding shares. The equities market is a powerful mechanism of the capitalist system. It has an enormous influence on the business cycle, because it creates wealth and stimulates investment in the future.
This is also why it should be no surprise that the stock market is so sensitive to economic news such as an interest rate change. The economy is a fluid system, one that evolves through predictable ups and downs. Investors will buy stocks when it appears that companies will be able to use the capitalist system to improve their earnings. They will sell stocks when it seems that economic woes are on the horizon.
This buying and selling is prompted by economic news that provides the clues to the direction the economy is taking. All that said, the IPO market is one of capitalism’s greatest gifts because it provides a mechanism for companies to expand and create wealth in the future.

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