I have a love/hate relationship with the stock exchange feature. It's great for getting started quickly in the game - my biggest problem with the X series was always in getting enough seed money together to start building complexes and getting multiple ships decked out.
On the other hand it does sort of feel like cheating. I very quickly racked up my first 50 million credits just by buying at company stock at 98-100 and selling once it hit 90. I then started to hold onto stock until it hit the 60s and fairly quickly brought my cash up to 250 million. At this point all I owned was my starting Nova Prototype, a fairly well charted galaxy map (I had to do something) and one well used SETA.
So I'm torn - it's great to have a new, easier way to get started (as it's complex management, fleet building and sector invasion that I've always found to be the real fun) but it does feel a bit too easy. I'm glad there's a limit on the number of company shares available as that at least caps the amount of exploitation. I think I'd rather have it than not have it though.
(fyi, first time posting, but a very long time fan of the site, Mr R)