Stock issues may also refer to the offering of stock

Stock

The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...

 in finance.

In the formal speech competition genre known as policy debate

Policy debate

Policy debate is a form of speech competition in which teams of two advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government or security discourse...

, a widely-accepted doctrine or "debate theory" divides the deliberative elements of proving the resolution as affirmative affirmative

Affirmative (policy debate)

In policy debate, the affirmative is the team which affirms the resolution.The Affirmative side negates the negative.The affirmative team speaks first and last. They give four speeches:*First affirmative constructive...

 into four logical issues, called the stock issues. The first three issues must be present in the affirmative case and are the building blocks of logically choosing to take any action (in policy debate or in everyday life). They ask: what are we doing now (inherency)? what could we be doing differently (solvency)? what are the results of what we are doing now versus what we could be doing (significance)? The last issue, topicality, is procedural and unique to debate as it concerns the resolution (which is not always present in everyday decision making).

The stock issues are:

• Inherency
  Inherency (policy debate)
  Inherency is a stock issue in policy debate that refers to a barrier that keeps a harm from being solved in the status quo.There are three main types of inherency:*Structural inherency: Laws or other barriers to the implementation of the plan...
  
  : The actual situation and causes of the status quo. A case is "non-inherent" when the status quo is already implementing the plan or solving the harms. Clearly, no solution is warranted in such a case. Three common types of inherency are:
• Structural inherency: Laws or other barriers to the implementation of the plan or causes of harms
• Attitudinal inherency: Beliefs or attitudes which prevent the implementation of the plan or causing harms
• Existential inherency: The harms exist and res ipsa loquitur
  Res ipsa loquitur
  In the common law of negligence, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur states that the elements of duty of care and breach can be sometimes inferred from the very nature of an accident or other outcome, even without direct evidence of how any defendant behaved...
  
  , the status quo must not be able to solve the problem. It just is.
• Significance
  Significance (policy debate)
  Significance is a stock issue in policy debate which establishes the importance of the harms in the status quo. As a stock issue has fallen out of favor with the debate community almost all debaters and judges now believe that any plan which is preferable to the status quo is...
  
  : The "why" of debate. All advantages and disadvantages to the status quo (resulting from inherency) and of the plan (resulting from solvency) are evaluated under significance. A common equivocation is to confuse "significance" with the word "significantly" that appears in many resolutions. Significance is derived from calculating between advantages and disadvantages, whereas significant policy changes are determined by how much the policy itself changed (rather than how good or bad the effects are).
• Solvency
  Solvency (policy debate)
  Solvency is a stock issue in policy debate, referring to the effectiveness of the affirmative plan or the negative counterplan in solving the harms or problems of the status quo. A good solvency mechanism will have a solvency advocate: a qualified professional specifically advocating the proposed...
  
  : The mechanics of the plan itself are defined in solvency. What does it cause and why? Here the harms are often demonstrated to be solved by the plan, or the link to new advantages are shown. Without solvency, a plan is useless. Thus, the affirmative loses a debate without solvency, no matter how well it described problems of the status quo.
• Topicality
  Topicality (policy debate)
  Topicality is a stock issue in policy debate which pertains to whether or not the plan affirms the resolution as worded . To contest the topicality of the affirmative, the negative interprets a word or words in the resolution and argues that the affirmative does not meet that definition, that the...
  
  : The affirmative case must affirm the resolution
  Resolution (policy debate)
  In policy debate, a resolution or topic is a normative statement which the affirmative team affirms and the negative team negates. Resolutions are selected annually by affiliated schools....
  
  , since that is the job of the affirmative in a debate round. The affirmative case often is shown to be within the bounds of the resolution as defined by appropriate definition
  Definition
  A definition is a passage that explains the meaning of a term , or a type of thing. The term to be defined is the definiendum. A term may have many different senses or meanings...
  
  s. When the resolution appears vague, the probable intent of the resolution is often considered and upheld. In modern usage, most paradigms and regions do not consider topicality to be a "stock issue" per se; instead, it being a procedural one brought up by the negative.

While logically these issues are distinguishable, in practice they may not be addressed individually or in any particular order.

Common misconceived stock issues

• Harms
  Harms (policy debate)
  Harms are a stock issue in policy debate which refer to problems inherent in the status quo. These problems may be either actual or potential...
  
  : Harms are merely a way of quantifying the problems of the status quo. Since they prove a "why not" have the status quo, harms are properly evaluated under significance.