Topic: What is a Shareholder?

After seeing Nintendo buying shares and all profit just made me wonder exactly......what is a shareholder? I learnt it from school and all but I didn't get its purpose. Also could you give it in Nintendo's situation as an example cause that would be nice and easy to understand.

Someone who owns stocks (or "shares") in a company is a shareholder.

The more money Nintendo makes, the more valuable your share(s) get.

...I can't explain it very well, but I'm sure someone else around here can.

basically a shareholder is someone who owns a part of a company(a "Share") if you have more shares than everyone else you pretty much own the company.(please someone correct me if I'm wrong in any point)
though you might want to trust wikipedia more than me(didn't read the page) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder

It is depend on the company if they are public or private. You can have shares for both public and private but since private is not open to the public therefore you cannot invest in it to obtains more shares. Nintendo is an public company. We can buy share and if we do then we are an part owner of the company as well. These people are called shareholder. Be careful, stakeholder is not the same as shareholder. If you invest in Nintendo and you are part owner of the company. (I don't know the percentage.) If you kept investing in Nintendo then you will get more shares which mean more part of Nintendo is owned by you. If you reach somewhere about 50% of the shares then you are owner of Nintendo and you have also full control over it. Think Steve Jobs in this situation. (Notes: Iwata is not an owner and he is just an CEO.) Investors or shareholders can appointed CEO, managers, and etc for the company.

Some people just want to invest in the company to be part of the stock market. If the stock go up then you sell. If the stock go down then you buy. Other want to support Nintendo and make some dividends off Nintendo for being an shareholder. Also financial statements are very important to investors. They can determine if Nintendo is doing well or not. Unfortunately Nintendo is not doing well due to negative Operating Income. Remember Operating Income does not equal to Net Income. Financial statements are statements such as income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement. If I was an investor and I wouldn't invest in Nintendo due to negative operating income. This is why people saying Nintendo is doomed now a day but I say they just need to change their strategy or industry.

Stakeholder are people that involved with the projects or company plans. Stakeholder do not have to be an shareholder or work for Nintendo to be involved with Nintendo's projects or plans.

A shareholder is an agent (a person or a company) that owns part of a company.

The purpose of shareholders is for a company to acquire money for future investments.

Agents buy shares from Nintendo for money, so that Nintendo can get more money and invest more. In turn, the agents who invest in Nintendo are going to want something in return for lending them money. So the people who invest are going to want more in return than what they originally contributed with.

Someone who holds a share,