How to make money in shares!

veryone wants a piece of the stock market. And why not?

But do you know how shares reward an investor?

If you are a shareholder, there are two ways you can benefit from the profits of a company: capital appreciation or dividend. Read on to understand how shares reward you.

Dividends, dividends!

Usually, a company distributes part of the profit it earns as dividend.

Say a company earned a profit of Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) in 2004-05.

It keeps half that amount within the company. This is used for a variety of purposes -- buying more machinery, land or raw materials, building a new factory or setting up a new office. It could even be used to repay loans.

The other half is to be distributed as dividend.

Assume the company has 10,000 shares. This would mean half the profit -- ie Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million) -- would be divided by 10,000 shares.

So each share would earn Rs 500. The dividend would then be Rs 500 per share.

If you own 100 shares of the company, you get a cheque of Rs 50,000 (100 shares x Rs 500) from the company. more