When the going gets tough on Wall Street, investors have a tendency to turn their attention to time-tested businesses with a history of outperformance. For the past decade, the FAANG stocks have fit this definition perfectly. But over the past two years, it's companies enacting stock splits that have been exceptionally popular during periods of market instability.

A stock split is an event that allows a publicly traded company to alter both its share price and outstanding share count while having no impact on its market cap or operating performance. Think of a stock split as a purely cosmetic change to a company's share price that can make it more nominally affordable for everyday investors or can ensure that a company meets the minimum listing standards for major stock exchanges.

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Source Fool.com