Common or Preferred Shares

In the past, common shares were all that was available to the public. It could be you got a vote at a shareholders meeting and the more shares, the more votes. Then there was the fear of one person owning too many shares and controlling it all. To keep this from happening, companies would only allow 49% of shares to the public. But this didn’t work as the company could not generate that amount of money they needed.
This is where preferred shares began. This way more capitol could be raised without giving up voting rights. This are not voting shares and instead they get fixed dividends on a regular basis.
This could be describes as seeing bonds on one side, common shares on the other and preferred in the middle. So they are similar to bonds as they pay regularly and like stocks they are actual shares but that vote at the shareholders meeting is non existent. Investor interested in growth will typically go for common shares although they are riskier because they are last on the list when payouts come around.