Hey all, Very much a newbie here. I have a question below that I can’t get my head around if any one could answer that’d be great. Is there a limit to how many stocks of a company can be bought? E.g if more and more people keep buying amazon stocks then the % ownership of other peoples stock would have to decrease?
For the most part, yes, there is a limit. The total number of available shares available for trading is called the "float." Practically speaking for something as huge as AMZN, though, nobody would be shut out of buying who wants to buy. It's the old axiom of supply-and-demand. The more people who want to buy, the higher the demand, and therefore the market maker moves the price up in order to shake out current holders of their shares, enticing them to sell. If there are more sellers than buyers, than the market maker moves the price down in order to generate more demand in order to match the increase in supply. More buyers does not dilute the share ownership. That said, companies often add more shares to the "float" via secondary offerings (and other instruments) which have the effect of raising more ca$h for the company, but diluting the value of the current shares. This value usually is not eroded during the secondary offering, but rather when earnings occur and the various earnings-per-share measures are calculated across a larger number of shares. The opposite occurs when companies buy back their shares.
