Currently a bit of a wildcard feature. You are able to take your company public if you wish. This will allow you to release stock for public trading, giving you oodles of money, but putting you on the hook for continuous expansion. 

To open your company for public trading you need to apply for an IPO, which costs $15,000,000 and has unknown pre-requisites. You will only be told what one is if you don't meet that requirement.

Since you are reading this, I will give you the prerequisites as they stand right now. But there may be more in the future.

PREREQ 1: SOLE OWNERSHIP - While it is certainly possible in real life for a company to go public if there are already privately owned shares, I didn't want to complicate the relationship with Uncle Ian, as he will have enough going on. This prerequisite requires that you are the owner of all 100 Private Shares
PREREQ 2: COMPANY VALUE OF AT LEAST $100M - Simply, your company value needs to be over the $100M mark.
PREREQ 3: ZERO OUTSTANDING DEBT - All Loans must be paid off
PREREQ 4: TOTAL NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES > 1000 - Need to employ more than 1000 people, not including managers.
PREREQ 5: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS - You need to be operating in at least 2 separate countries.
PREREQ 6: 1000 INFLUENCE - You need to have a reserve of 1000 Influence.

You will have to pay the $15,000,000 every time you apply, so it is best to be confident you will be approved or else you are throwing money away.

Once you have everything, and hit "apply", you will be greeted with a message similar to this:

Basically the price is always determined to start at $25, and then some math is done to divide your company value by that price. (With some of the new_game_options affecting that math.)

Once you hit "Accept" Your shares will being changing value, but it will be up to you to make some shares available for trading.

There is quite a bit of information on this screen, so I will go over it.

The three graphs are as follows from top to bottom:

-The Previous 30 days
-The Previous 12 months
-The Previous 10 years

This should help you see whatever trends there may be, but mostly it is just there so you know things are happening.

The other numbers are as follows: (Green is good!)

TODAY: This is the amount that the price has changed today compared to yesterday.
THIS MONTH: This compares the price right now to the 1st of last month.
THIS YEAR: This compares the price right now to the 1st of the year.
SHARE VALUE: This is the value of your share. It will always be between $1 and $1,000 (More on why that is in a moment.)
AVAILABLE QTY: These are the number of shares that are for sale that the public can buy. 
RELEASE: This amount is how many of your shares you want to make available for the public to buy.
ABSORB: This will buy back any un-purchased shares, and make them no longer tradable by the public.
OWNED BY COMPANY: This is the number of shares that you own, as well as their current value.
OWNED BY OTHERS: This is the number of shares owned by people other than you, as well as their current value.
TOTAL VOLUME: This is the total number of shares that comprise your company. Owned by you, owned by others, and unowned.
TOTAL VALUE: This is just the total volume multiplied by the current value.
"This stock has been split" label. This shows the number of times that your stock has been split. To put it simply, the value of the stock was cut in half, and every share, no matter who owns it, doubled in qty.

Example: You own 100 stocks in a company each valued at $600 - A total value of $60,000
The stock splits 2:1
You now own 200 stocks in a company each valued at $300 - A total value of $60,000

This is to keep the stock price at a manageable level. So in the game, a stock split automatically happens at $1,000, bringing it down to $500, and doubling the total volume of tradable stocks.

If there was to ever be a high-score system. It would probably be keeping track of the number of times your stock spits. This is because the stock going up relies on your actions as a player.

The following is how the price movement is determined:

Build a building: +1.0
Build a power plant: +5.0
Build a lab: +10.0
Build a trade building: +5.0
Upgrade a building: +1.0
Demolish a building: -2.0
Hire a manager: +0.5
Fire a manager: -1.0
Sell goods: +0.1
Buy goods: -0.2
Create Export: +2.0
Delete Export: - 4.0

They are fairly simple, and there will likely be more to come, but you can see how positive actions increase your stock price.

With the story not yet implemented, this is where gameplay likely ends.
Happy Trading!

Upcoming:

DD24: Wrap Up