The fancy term for issuing stock to raise money is equity financing. The money received from investors who buy stocks is called equity capital. The other method of raising money is debt financing, which involves selling bonds. That is the subject of other tutorials. When companies make profits, they may reward their stockholders with pieces of their profits, known as dividends.
Dividends are an incentive for investors to hold stocks.
Now that you know the why of buying stocks, you will need to know the where. Exchanges are the physical locations where stocks are bought and sold. The OTC refers to a market in which securities transactions are conducted through a telephone and computer network connecting dealers in stocks and bonds, rather than on the floor of an exchange. Together, these two markets form the secondary market. The primary and secondary markets together make up the stock market.