[perl4ever]

This is a popular thing to say, and it's something that people say a lot because they like to say it.

I don't know all the forms that companies file to issue stock in the US, but I think S-1 and S-8 are a couple of them. Lots of these are constantly filed with the SEC.

Yesterday, Monday, there were:

  40 S-1s (or amendments) which are registrations for issuing securities.
  23 S-8s (which I believe are registration of securities used to pay employees).
  11 F-1s (which are for foreign issuers of securities)
  12 S-6s (which are for unit trusts issuing securities)

At this rate, say there are 260 business days in a year, 86 x 260 = 22,360. I vaguely think that the total number of public companies in the US is like a quarter of that, so issuing stock appears to be a pretty common thing.

[fulafel]

I think getting into the numbers is the right idea. I wouldn't know where to look for the $$ volumes of issues/IPOS vs eg dividends or stock trades, if someone does please chime in :)

My gut feeling is that despite being common, issuing stock is still peanuts compared to the old stock trades/dividends.

[perl4ever]

I don't think the numerical comparison you want to make has any meaning at all, let alone something to do with the relative importance of the activities of trading vs. issuing stock.

The ratio of stock traded to stock issued can be anything from zero to infinity.

We could imagine having "high frequency trading" of car loans producing a huge volume and it wouldn't change the fact that the car loans exist because people need transportation.