The essential takeaway is that stock splits happen when a company decides to increase the number of its shares by dividing its existing shares. This typically happens when the price of a company’s stock is quite high, and the company wants to make the shares more affordable for investors. Noteworthy examples include Apple and Tesla, who have conducted stock splits multiple times.
Alright, so check this out. You ever have a pizza so big you needed to slice it up into more pieces so everyone gets a piece? That’s a stock split for ya. The company’s got this big, fat pie of shares, and they’re saying, “You know what, this pie’s so big, let’s cut it up into more slices.”
When a company’s doing well, I mean, like, really well, the price of its shares can go through the roof. It’s like that friend who starts lifting weights, and suddenly their shirts don’t fit anymore. They gotta get a bigger size. That company needs a stock split because its share price got too big.
Let’s talk about Apple – the folks that got you all glued to your iPhones. They’re the kings of this game, man. They’ve done this a bunch of times. In 2020, they had a 4-for-1 stock split, so if you had one share of Apple, boom! You wake up the next day, and you get four shares. But don’t start doing the happy dance just yet. Each of those shares is worth a quarter of what the one share was worth before the split.
Then you got Tesla, the electric car people. They pulled a 5-for-1 split, also in 2020. So, if you were holding onto one Tesla share, you found yourself with five shares after the split. Same deal, though – each of those new shares is worth a fifth of the original.
Now, don’t get it twisted. You ain’t making or losing money on a stock split. It’s like if I gave you a dollar bill and then swapped it for four quarters. You still got a dollar, right? Just in smaller chunks.
So, there you have it. Stock splits ain’t no magic money trick, but they sure can make those high-flying shares a little easier for regular folks to get their hands on.