B Stock
Sometimes you’ll notice a company has two types of shares available for purchase on the market that appear nearly identical in every way – often called class A stock and class B stock. Usually they are identical in every way except voting rights and number of shares outstanding. These shares are usually made for founding members of the company to maintain a higher share of the voting right while selling more of the corporation’s equity.
The most famous example is Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.A and BRK.B) Class A and B stock. Class A has full voting rights, the standard common share while Class B shares have 1/30th the value but only 1/200th the voting right.
These types of situations make a popular form of arbitrage in the stock market where the two classes of stock shift apart from each other to the point where it’s worth selling one class of shares to buy the other. However, do remember that the voting rights and other differences may have a small amount of value to them and pricing those in can be difficult, but if you manage you could make some money swapping shares.
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