If you’ve looked into buying stocks, you may have wondered if there any limits to how many shares of a single company you can own.
If you had the millions or billions of pesos needed, would you be able to buy all shares for sale in the market? What about if you only wanted to own 1 symbolic stock of a company? Read on to find out the details.
Maximum ownership
Naturally, the available number of shares offered for sale in the market is the primary limit. After that comes your ability to actually pay for shares.
For purposes of disclosure and transparency, the listed company will be required to make public once an individual’s ownership reaches 5% and up.
In addition, there are various safeguard measures in place for very large purchases. This is because investors with 51% of the issued shares become the majority shareholder, which gives them a lot of influence over the company’s decisions.
Minimum ownership
What about the other end of the spectrum? Well, the smallest amount of a company’s shares that you can buy in the normal market of the PSE (which is where most trades happen) depends on the price of one share, and its corresponding board lot.
For example, if you were to invest in Company A, whose shares are currently going for P55, you would need to buy at least 10 shares. If you wanted more than 10, you would have to get the next multiple, which would be 20 shares.
Company B, with a stock price of P3, can only be bought in multiples of 1,000. You would also have to start with at least 1,000 shares.
On the other hand, things are different in the oddlot market. This is the place for orders that are less than the board lot, like 4 or 7 shares of Company A, or 800 shares of Company B.
Since the normal market and the oddlot market are separate, the prices and availability of shares being bought and sold in each will be different. You can trade in each market through your stock brokerage.
