Yes. IBM is a stock. One share of IBM stock costs ~$152 right now.
Keep in mind that market makers can also delta hedge, which allows them hedge against sudden price movements in stock.
Everything you need to know about the stock market: The market always does what you expect, but not when you expect.
The really big bigshots get a significant amount of their pay or bonus in “stock options”. This is the “option to buy X shares at $Y on this date”. Sometimes this comes with another requirement “but cannot sell it until date Z”. The theory is that the better the stock does, the better the company does.
So there’s that - the bosses get paid based on stock price. But unless they plan to quit next week, there’s a real incentive not to sabotage the company just to bump this week’s stock price; they do have to think about the long term (usually). A plummeting share indicates a lack of confidence in the “quality” of a company and it’s future performance. It’s not that the market hates consumers, it’s just that volatility and uncertainty can screw over business plans. Low oil prices are great for us, but not for Alberta or North Dakota, where drilling has stopped and many are laid off; many US fracking companies could end up losing money because the original drilling was based on much higher per-barrel price. Not everyone benefits.
Plus, usually companies take their profits and pay them out as dividends. So owning stocks means also a regular payout of dividends. This used to be significant, but lately it seems the rising stock value is more the game than earning an income from your company stocks.
A company usually starts out private; say, Zuckerberg and his friends, but not those twins, get together, draw up incorporation papers for their venture, and portion out the 100% of shares based on contributions to the company, monetary and otherwise. When a company “goes public”, they buy back those shares and/or exchange them for new, improved shares and/or issue more shares - and list those for sale on a stock market.
If a company issues additional shares, as others point out, the company rakes in the sales amount. Usually, this is for something along the lines of “we could borrow $10M at 6% to build that new factory, but we’ll issue $10M in new shares instead. That way, when we sell 10 times as many widgets, both the holders of the old and the new stock will see their shares rise substantially. And we don’t have to pay interest or pay the money back.” Both old and new shares have gained value from the transaction, so both are happy This assumes there are investors willing to part with a total of $10M at the price the shares are tendered.
Also note that the SEC has a myriad of rules relating to share sales, to protect the small shareholder. They can’t be cut out of takeover offers; insider trading is illegal; exec’s can’t even trade their shares during certain periods, like when the financial reports are about to be announced.
Usually shares are traded in “ranges”. So a seller will say “I will sell for $X or higher”. Buyers will post buy bids “I will buy for $Y or lower.” These offers are made to brokers who buy and sell on the market - used to be in noisy pits as seen on TV, but nowadays mostly on computer screens. The market lists average bid and asks as a guideline, so anyone really trying to unload (or load) will know what price to put on their offer.
Delta hedging is only relevant if you are holding a derivative (e.g. an option) on the stock, not the stock itself. Delta hedging is basically, “find the derivative of the price of my instrument with respect to the underlying stock price, and hold (or short) exactly that much underlying stock so the derivative of the combined position is zero”. That way you are insulated against small (but not large) movements of the underlying stock price.
If the thing you are trading in actually is the underlying stock, then the derivative of your position’s price with respect to the underlying stock price is, but definition, just the size of your position. The appropriate delta hedging action is just “sell your position”, which not an interesting action to take.