Yes it is true that leverage means to finance by debt but that is just one of the definitions. And there are many reasons why stock prices vary and it does not always truly reflect the performance of the business. If you go to finance.yahoo.com under key statistics you will find the beta value. This number gives you the riskiness of the stock. The more risky the more fluctuation there is in the stock price, which implies that there is high probability that you will either win a lot of money or lose a lot of money. When buying people always tend to buy stocks that they here about. Companies that do a lot of advertising to be precise.However, there are other firms which have cheap stock price and better performance means their eps is really good. There is lot of things that goes onto buying a stock as I said before. you need to do a lot of research and choose the right time to buy stocks. There are a lot of big player in the stock than buy huge amounts and sell huge amounts of shares which makes the stock price rise rapidly or makes the stock price decline rapidly. People need to get a feel about how the stock moves in correlation with the market. Some Stocks move positively and some move negatively. Some stocks are not effected by the movement of the market where are some affects the stock price. A good portfolio includes a lot of stocks so that the unsystematic risk is declined to zero. What do u think guys? How much you earn in the stock market is proportionate to how much risk you are willing to take. The more risk you take the higher the return. p.s Do not try this at home if you don't have spare money in your pocket.heheheh