Issued capital stocks can also be referred to as outstanding shares, outstanding stock, or simply stocks. These terms all refer to the total number of shares a company has issued to investors, whether those shares are currently held by investors or repurchased by the company. Another synonym for issued capital stocks is equity capital, which refers to the ownership interest that shareholders have in a company. Another term often used in the context of share ownership is float, which describes the number of outstanding shares available for public trading. In essence, all of these terms describe the total number of shares in a company that are available for investment and represent a portion of the ownership of the company.