I was trying to be nice about this.
Originally posted by fakeyboy
Now you're playing with words MacLuv...
If you truly did work on Wal St you know that having unissued stock is not the same as having tradeable stock.
It's not? That's news to me. And the rest of the world. You're suggesting that unissued stock is not tradeable. That statement is pure ignorance.
And creating treasury stock is equivalent to a share buyback - again not the same as owning tradeable stock.
You're wrong. Treasury stock can be resold to the public, and often is. In case you haven't heard, some companies sell directly to the public through
DRPs "drips". Here you're buying stock directly from a company's treasury* (if it's company run). As far as "buybacks" are concerned, there are many reasons why a company would buyback stock, and it's not just to push up the price.
So going from your initial post of helping Apple by buying its stock, yes you can if it issues unissued but this would be part of an IPO as I mentioned earlier.
You're wrong again.
First of all, charters keep aside a large percentage of unissued stock. You seem to be under the misconception that unissued stock is "not tradable". This is BS. Of course it is.
Apple can sell unissued shares any time it wants. In fact, a company can do anything it wants with unissued shares. It can sell them, give them to directors/employees in the form of compensation (options), stick them up a pigs arse, or host a stockburning ritual and set the whole lot on fire if they wish.
You seem to think that the only time a company makes money from the sale of stock is from the IPO, which is not true. If the IPO was set up as an "exit plan" then perhaps you could say that this was true, but this only happened recently during the "dot com" rush--but that's not what we're talking about here.
I've only answered these questions (in a very oversimplified and direct to the point fashion) for the benefit of anyone else reading this post. Once again, I'm not here to give a lecture on investing or teach you the basics of the stock market. However, your statements have been misleading and incorrect.
*note... more than likely one would be receiving stock that had already been issued. It's not as "black and white" as this but for the sake of agrument I'm oversimplifying things. Once again, not here to argue semantics.
