In financial markets, stock is the capital raised by a corporation or joint-stock company through the issuance and distribution of shares. A person or organization which holds at least a partial share of stocks is called a shareholder. The aggregate value of a corporation's issued shares is its market capitalization.
In the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia, the term share is used the same way, but stocks there refer to either a completely different financial instrument, the bond, or more widely to all kinds of marketable securities.