If I buy one single share of a company, can I actually turn up at the annual meeting and vote?

For ordinary shares in a listed company, generally yes — one share, one vote, and a right to attend. That is what an ordinary share is.

The caveats are real though:

• Some share classes carry no vote. Companies with dual-class structures issue one class with votes and one without, and retail buyers frequently end up with the second. Worth checking which one you hold before turning up.
• A vote is not influence. One vote against tens of millions changes nothing arithmetically, and that is the point of the system rather than a flaw in it.

So the right is real and the power is not. Those are different things and it is fine for both to be true.

Question 3 is the one that actually decides whether you can walk in, and the answer surprises people.

Most app and broker holdings are held in a nominee or street name arrangement: the broker is the registered legal owner, and you are the beneficial owner. The company's register has the broker's name on it, not yours. So from the company's point of view you are not a shareholder at all.

That does not mean you lose the rights — it means you exercise them through the broker. Decent brokers pass on voting instructions and will, if asked, get you a letter of representation so you can attend in person. Cheaper apps often do neither, and some quietly do not pass on votes at all.

If attending matters to you, that is a question to ask the broker before buying, and it is one of the few real differences between platforms that look identical otherwise.

On why nobody does it: mostly because the meeting is not what people imagine.

A large company's annual meeting is a formal, scripted event lasting under an hour. The outcome of every vote is already known before anyone sits down, because the large institutional holders have voted their blocks by proxy weeks in advance. What happens in the room is the reading of results.

There is usually a question session, and that is the part with any value — it is a rare setting where the board has to answer an ordinary holder out loud, in front of the press. People who attend seriously go for that, not for the vote.

Also worth knowing: many are now hybrid or online-only, which removes most of the reason to go and most of the discomfort a difficult question used to create.

Adding the one that is genuinely worth doing even if you never attend: actually cast the proxy vote.

It takes a couple of minutes in most apps, it happens once a year, and unlike attending it costs you nothing. Turnout among small holders is very low, which means the blocks that do vote decide everything — including remuneration reports and board appointments.

One vote still will not swing anything. But "nobody small votes, so only large holders matter" is partly a self-inflicted arrangement, and the cost of not participating in it is zero.