** what are shares and how do they work So buying shares is probably as close as we're ever going to get to this magical savings account that just returns some amount of money each year And the idea is that when you buy a share you are buying a part ownership of the company that you've got the share in For example let's say that Apple have a particularly profitable year because lots of people have bought iPads as per my recommenda tions and because Apple are feeling kind they are choosing to pay out a dividend to their shareholders So for example they might say that they're going to issue a dividend of a million pounds and that's going to be split evenly amongst whoever owns shares in Apple based on how many shares they own So for example if you happen to own 1% of Apple you would get 1% of that dividend that they've issued So 1% of a million pounds which is 10,000 pounds Obviously no one watching this actually owns 1% of Apple unless Tim Cook you're watching I don't even know if you own that much because that would make you an extremely rich person because Apple is a very valuable company**