quarter stock
- noun
- Specialized
- The company's earnings report highlighted their strong performance in the quarter stock market.
- quarter stock purchases and sales
- quarter stock purchases
Examples
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Investors were interested in the dividends paid by the quarter stock shares.
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Many older corporations used to offer quarter stock as part of their capital structure.
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The company issued a new series of quarter stock to attract smaller investors.
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The quarter stock market is volatile right now.
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Are you familiar with quarter stocks?
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Investors are paying close attention to the quarter stock options available for trading this week.
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She decided to invest in a quarter stock to diversify her portfolio with lower-risk options.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The constituents 'quarter' (one fourth / 25) and 'stock' (a share) give a loose semantic cue, but the specific interpretation as a stock with a par value of $25 per share depends on a specialized financial convention rather than ordinary compositional meaning. A B1 learner who knows the words would not reliably infer the exact $25 par value without domain knowledge, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Quarter stock comes from its money value: companies sold a stock that was a quarter of the common $100 share, so each share was $25. Because it cost less, companies used quarter stock to let smaller investors buy in, and that's why the term means 'a stock with a $25 face value'.