What is investing, anyway? Very simply, investing is when you allocate something (usually money, but it could also be your time or efforts) with the goal of getting some sort of gain (income or profit) from it.
Most of the time, buying a car isn’t investing because a vehicle is likely to decrease in value over the time you own it. But when you put your money into shares, you usually expect them to be worth more in the future than they are now (although they may go up and down), and you might get some income (dividends) from the shares while you hold them too.
What is a “share”? Well, when you invest in a company, you take ownership of a piece of that company, known as a share. Company owners might decide to put a portion of their company up for sale by listing it if they want to raise money, maybe for growth plans or because they want some reward for the work they have put in. People buy those
