Is trading on America’s stockmarket fair?

In everyday parlance equity means fairness. To an investor or a stockbroker, though, it is an ownership stake. The word means both things thanks to the English Court of Chancery, which operated from around the 15th to the 19th centuries and handed out rulings based on “equity”, or fairness, rather than common law. Under common law a borrower who missed a mortgage payment would forfeit their land, but in Chancery they could reclaim it by repaying the debt. Over time, “equity” came to mean the ownership stake in property itself.