Understanding Stocks

What is a stock?
Its very simple, stock is a share in the ownership of a company. More shares you buy, greater is the ownership stake in the company.
Shares, Equity and Stocks are same thing with different names.

there are mainly two types of stocks:

• Common stocks
• Preferred stocks

Common stocks as from the name we can understand that its common, stocks people usually talk about are common stocks. People who own stocks of a company are members of that company and holds a vote per share to elect board members.

Common stocks yields higher returns but with higher returns comes higher risk. if company goes bankrupt and is entitled to liquidate its assets to pay debts, Common shareholders are last to get paid after creditors bondholders and preferred shareholders.  

Preferred stocks are ownership of an company up-to some extent. preferred shareholders are not entitled to vote and company can purchase their shares from shareholders at anytime.

Preferred shareholders have advantage of guaranteed for fixed dividend forever and on the time of liquidation of a company preferred shareholders are paid before common shareholders.

Trading of Stocks:
Stocks have two markets primary market and secondary market. Primary market is where IPO issues securities and secondary market is where investors trade and secondary market does not involve company directly itself. 

Every company has its unique symbol on different exchanges:
Royal Bank of Canada has RY.TO on Toronto stock exchange.

i have been tracking RY.TO from last 4 weeks and heres a picture of stock: 

 source

Any question regarding stocks will be answered as soon as possible to make it clear. Please comment your questions.
Source: http://www.investopedia.com/university/stocks/stocks1.asp