Joint-Stock Capital, the capital of a joint-stock company, made up by pooling individual capitals and the savings of minor investors received as a result of the sale of stocks (shares) and bonds. Joint-stock capital is considered to be depersonalised, as it is the property of the joint-stock company as a whole and not of individual members. In fact, however, it is manipulated by the financial tycoons who hold the controlling block of shares. On the one hand, jointstock capital is real functioning productive capital (implements and objects of labour, production buildings and installations, etc.). On the other, it has a reflected existence in the securities of the joint-stock company—shares (stock) and bonds—which are a special "property title" and, as such, act as paper doubles of real capital. Shares, bonds, and other securities that yield a profit for their holders form fictitious capital and are circulated independently of the movement of the enterprise’s real capital. The capital represented by securities is usually considerably greater than the capital actually invested in the enterprises of a given joint-stock company. This can be explained both by the fact that, during a boom in capitalist production, stock is sold at a premium thanks to the growth of the dividends it yields, and by the tendency for the average loan rate to decrease. An increase in the number of shares and bonds and of their aggregate cost points to the growth of the group of rentiers, a parasitic stratum of capitalists who have lost all contact with production and live on the interest from the securities they hold. All this is a manifestation of the increasingly parasitic nature of modern capitalism. At the same time, the way jointstock capital is split in two is a striking example of how a fetish is made of capitalist production relations, since the income provided by securities gives rise to the illusion that profit can be created apart from production and independently of it.