Yes, in theory the above can be true but there are two ways to do that , the first one to start a company, make it profitable, sell a a majority share to somebody else then reap the fruits of your labor through that minority holding in that company. The other way is less labor and you can get started with as little as $1000. Start investing in a company you like on the stock market,once you own the shares you become the part owner of the company even through the part ownership may be only .002% of the company. But hey, you are still an owner and as you learn the stock market basics, take some risks, reap some rewards you can play bigger and become an owner of a bigger part of the company.
Before you take your cheque book out and start looking at companies to buy for $1000 , you should know the stock market basics and then start investing to make more money. It is absolutely very important to understand all the stock market terms and technical lingo which gets thrown around quite a bit to make some serious money in the market.
Let us get the initial understanding of what is a stock? I will take an example of a company called XYZ, newly formed and into the business of selling shirts. This company XYZ will need money to buy machinery, raw material, pay for employees salary etc and the money will come in the form of loans, money from friends and family and also you sell some part of the company to other persons or companies. How do you part with ownership of the company is that you create shares or parts of the company for say $10 each . Let us say you create 100 shares of the company , that means the total share capital of the company is $1000. Now ideally to maintain a majority shareholding XYZ company can sell 49 shares and still be a mahority shareholder.
Now let us assume that you are the person who bought 49 shares of the company XYZ at a price of say $10 only, the company is making decent amount of profits, then you would like to sell those 49 shares to someone who is willing to pay more than $10 to you. The place where you could Ideally go to buy or sell something is a market and that is what a stock exchange is all about, a place to market your shares or let us say either buy or sell the shares of the company XYZ.
Conclusion
This is in simple terms what is a stock and what is a stock exchange.
