The world of publicly traded companies can be confusing. What does a particular stock skyrocket one day and plummet the next? How is the value of a company - particularly a multi-national one - really determined? Karen Blumenthal, a veteran reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, provides all of these questions and more in this riveting book. A grand business narrative in the tradition of Michael Lewis, Grande Expectations shows how money is made and lost by following one familiar stock, Starbucks, over the course of an entire year, demonstrating how all the players - big and small investors, company management, the media, and more - determine its performance. Blumenthal takes us behind the scenes at the company's annual stockholders meeting, into the inner sanctum of Starbucks's corporate headquarters, and introduces us to an array of colourful characters: the head of an investment club, a paranoid short seller, the manager of a huge investment portfolio, and more. What emerges is not only a demystification of the complex world of high finance, but a compelling biography of one of the world's most recognised brands.