

Ask YC:  How close can you (legally) get to a stock market for most web sites? - amichail

Why not allow people to buy and sell shares in most web sites with minimum fuss?  Which laws stand in the way of making this possible?<p>Assuming this is not legal, is there something close to it that is legal?
======
tlrobinson
On a related note, you've probably heard of oneshare.com which sells single
shares of a stock for gifts, but what about high priced stocks like GOOG or
Berkshire Hathaway...

Why not have shareshare.com, which sells you a share of a share, say 1/10th of
a GOOG share for ~$50, or 1/1000th of a BRKA share for $140?

I guess this would end up being like a mutual fund consisting of a single
stock...

------
cperciva
This isn't an Ask YC question; this is an Ask Your Lawyer question.

------
NonEUCitizen
Can someone from UK explain how AIM works? or someone from Singapore explain
how Catalist works?

------
rms
The SEC stands in the way

------
mercurio
There already is one. Its called NASDAQ.

~~~
amichail
I'm talking about a no fuss system where you can have people buying and
selling shares of your web site in minutes without starting a company
officially or going through any legal process.

~~~
mercurio
My comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek. To answer your question though, the law
and legal procedures are there to protect investors. Otherwise, whats to
prevent you from running away with their money?

~~~
amichail
One can limit the use of the money to online advertising and servers say --
something that is easily enforced in an automated way. Moreover, one can
enforce the payment of dividends from advertising.

~~~
rrival
If you limited it to accredited investors it might be possible, but that'd be
extremely low volume/traffic - this is definitely something for lawyers to
figure out.

