Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 446
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 446 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 446
READING PASSAGE – 1
WHAT ARE SHARES FOR?
A. A company which is registered on the stock exchange offers shares under its ownership to anyone who wants to buy them. A large company may issue tens of millions of shares. Among different types of shares, the most common are called ‘ordinary shares’. When you buy one, you become partner, or shareholder in the company, and share profits, attend board meetings and vote on key issues and appointments. You can sell your shares anytime you want.
B. The price of a share gets regularly updated; it may have not much relation to the cash value of the company if all its assets gets sold. In cases where the company owned buildings were grossly undervalued than it should have been. In contrast, when the stock markets is climbing, many companies are valued at sky high prices in the stock market than their real value. As such, there are new challenges to valuation like how do you value a high-tech company whose products keep on changing every two months, and whose bread earners are its talented employees?
IELTS Academic Reading Test
The constantly changing difference between the market capitalisation (the total value of all a company’s shares at the current market price) and the ‘real’ value is one of the great topics of stock market evaluation.
C. Shares are a volatile property- their prices do not remain steady as people buy and sell them continuously. A lot of factors influence the share price, including company analysis, change in politics, natural disasters, cold wars and economic up-downs. One of the main factors is the behaviour share holders. If huge chunk of investors think the price of a share is going to rise and buy it, the price of the share will rise until they stop buying.
This kind of volatility is a temporary phase. In the long term, shares in reputed companies are thought to be good investments than those in bad companies.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
D. The capitalist financial system’s big business is central to the world’s present economic system. Since the 1990s, there has been no other system competing with it. Thus, people who want to increase their assets must learn how it works, and will decide to participate in the system at some point in their lives.
The strongest, best-established companies are known as ‘Blue chips’. The world of the casino gave it the name Blue chips, where they are those with the highest value. The other term – ‘secondary issues’ are shares in solid companies. These have slightly low confidence than the blue chips. “Growth stocks” are shares in newer companies that are supposed to do quite well in the time to come, but which may not do so. Finally, there are the “penny shares”, which belong to companies with a low value, but which may increase for some reason or the other.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
E. Companies normally start out by being privately owned. Later when they expand, the owners may opt to go ‘public’ and sell some shares on the stock market. There are strict rules of going public, the company must be worth buying. The advantage to the original owners is that they can realise very large sums of cash if the offering is successful.
However, some owners prefer to keep control in their hands by staying private, while others may buy back all company shares and return the company to private ownership. Taking a stock market listed company back into private ownership is though rare, but when it is done the aim is usually to strengthen control over decision-making process. For instance, business tycoons may decide they can do a better job of building the business by making a company private because the red tape and other shareholders interference is much less.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 1-5
Which paragraph contains the following information ?
Write the correct letter, A-E. Also, you may use any letter more than once.
1. a lack of connection between company viability and price of shares –
2. the rights of shareholders in a company –
3. reasons given by companies for seeking shareholders investment –
4. reasons for changes in what people pay for shares –
5. the basic structure of business dealings worldwide –
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 6-10
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.
6. What type of organisation may be difficult to value ? –
7. What we call to the combined value of shares at a particular point in time ? –
8. From where does the term used to describe the most secure shares derived ? –
9. What we call to untested but risky shares with rising value potential ? –
10. Who has the power to delist company from stock exchange, in order to regain control ? –
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Question 11-14
Do the following statements agree with the information given in passage 1 ?
TRUE – if the statement agrees
FALSE – if the statement contradicts
NOT GIVEN – if there is no information available
11. Share holders can decide who hold vital positions in a company –
12. A company can restrict the total number of shares held by any shareholder –
13. Buyer activity is an important factor to determine the cost of shares. –
14. A company can easily plan to go public as there is lack of organized process –
IELTS Academic Reading Test
IELTS Academic Reading Test
ANSWERS
1. C
2. A
3. E
4. C
5. D
6. HIGH-TECH COMPANY
7. MARKET CAPITALISATION
8. CASINO
9. GROWTH STOCKS
10. TYCOONS
11. TRUE
12. NOT GIVEN
13. TRUE
14. FALSE