Shares are individual units of ownership of a publicly listed and traded company, while stock is a broader term referring to owning a general share of a company, or even the companies themselves. 

For example, you might invest in and own Apple stock, or multiples stocks. In doing so you own a specific number of shares in Apple, or in those multiple companies/stocks. To confuse matters further, stocks and shares are also often referred to as equities.

The terms investing and trading both can refer to the buying and selling of shares.

However, trading with leverage using a product like a share CFD is different from conventional share trading in that you don’t actually take ownership of the shares. Instead you ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ through the CFD, putting up a relatively small deposit (or margin) to gain the same exposure you would have by owning a certain number or value of shares. 

Trading on margin like this creates ‘leverage’, meaning you can profit (or lose) as if you were holding, say, $10,000 worth of shares in return for an initial ‘investment’ (or deposit) as low as $2000. It also allows you to ‘short sell’ stock if you think the price will fall. 

Trading on margin is riskier than investing in shares in the traditional sense because leverage amplifies the size of potential losses as well as returns. This is one of the reasons why leveraged trading is more of a short-term strategy, as opposed to the buy-and-hold approach that traditionally characterises investing in the stock market.

A company’s share price is essentially what the market is willing to pay in return a share of its future profits. As such it is primarily a reflection of the strength, performance and long-term direction of the business, as perceived by the market. 

All these things can be affected by the actions of the company itself, as well as external factors like competitor activity, the state of the broader economy, and developments in things like regulation, technology, the environment and consumer preferences.  

Generally speaking if something happens to change an investor’s view on the future profitability of a particular company, then they will buy or sell shares accordingly. If they think the future’s looking good, they’ll buy. If they think it looks bad, they’ll sell. The resulting impact on supply and demand for the shares in the market is what moves the price (up if the sentiment is positive, or bullish, and down if it’s negative, or bearish).

Shares are listed and traded on various stock exchanges around the world, with standard market hours aligning with the local time zone.  

Our standard hours are (GMT+3 when US DST is in place, GMT+2 at all other times):

*Australian shares trade according to a staggered start, with symbols beginning A-B opening at 01:01, C-F at 01:03, G-M at 01:05, N-R at 01:07 and S-Z at 01:10 

**At Pepperstone we also offer 24-hour trading on certain major US stocks, five days a week