Public Shareholder

See: Shareholder. See: Public Offering. See: IPO. See: Secondary Offering. See: Private Offering.

The gist: when you sell shares to the public, the rules and regs are hurdles vastly higher than when shares are sold to the Private, or private investors. Too many good ol' hard-workin' farmers got taken along the way. So we created myriad laws to protect 'em when they wanted to hop on board the capitalist train and let their money work for them, instead of the other way around.