What would happen if 1 mil. Investors bought 1 share of the company at the same time?

A free market is based on supply and demand. If demand increased for a company's shares, then its likely the price would go up. If the demand increased while the supply decreased, the price might go even higher.

Remember that whenever someone buys a share of stock, someone else has sold it. So for the miilion investors to buy one share all at once, there have to be existing investors with 1 million shares who agree to sell. For large companies that typically have several milllion stock transactions per day it's not a big deal (Exxon-Mobil's volume today is about 25 million shares). For small companies that typically do a lot less than a million shares each day the price would go through the roof. If I was aware of your scheme ahead of time I could cheat by buying a bunch of shares the day before, so I could sell them to you and your fellow conspirators on the day you all step in to buy.

Hello k:

Ebaines is right. They don't sell one share at a time, so the exchange would wait till all million of you gathered together in large groups, and started to buy. Even with a large company like Exxon, a purchase like that is liable to raise the stock a few points. Then if there's no reason for the stock to have risen other than that purchase, the price will go down again.

excon