What a share is and what the stock market is
A share (or stock) is a small piece of a company. If you buy an Inditex share, you own a (very small) part of Inditex.
You make money in two ways: if the share goes up in price and you sell it for more, or if the company pays dividends (part of its profits).
The stock market is where shares are bought and sold. Each country has its own:
NYSE and Nasdaq (US)The biggest in the world. Open from 15:30 to 22:00, Spanish time.
BME (Spain)The Madrid Stock Exchange. From 9:00 to 17:30.
XETRA, Euronext, LSEGermany, France/the Netherlands and London.
Tokyo, Hong Kong, ShanghaiOpen in the early hours, Spanish time.
Every company has a ticker: a short code. Apple is AAPL, Inditex is ITX, Tesla is TSLA. You’ll see it in the Stocks list.
Unlike crypto, stock markets close at night and at weekends. That’s why a share sometimes opens with a “jump” from the previous day’s close (a gap).