[nv-vn]

This is something that confused me for a long time, but I think I've started to understand. A company obviously has some intrinsic value (e.g. through its assets), and that's part of what's reflected in the stock. But change over time is inevitable in a companies assets (and earnings), so the point of the stock market is literally just to bet on that. The end goal is kind of abstract, because most successful companies will never get to the point where they're giving out massive dividends or liquidating their assets, but you can definitely watch a company grow. Even if you gained no dividends from holding 100% of a private company, it still seems better than not holding one (obviously) but it's hard to pin that value down unless we think about it in an abstract way. You can think of the value of a company as the sum of its net assets over time (discounted by inflation, risk, and opportunity cost). So for example, when Apple earns $2.34/share in a quarter, everything that isn't given out in dividends is being reinvested for the future (being turned into assets and earnings growth). Even if the dividends never reach 100% of what you originally paid for the stock, they will rise as Apple continues to grow (in the long term, at least). As the growth continues, the stock becomes more valuable because of the potential for higher dividends. So while the "reason" to own stock is to share their future profits, what you're really betting on is the future profits past your lifetime. The same idea can be applied to bonds, too. Even if you don't hold a bond long enough for it to mature, the underlying value still exists and you are the owner of it. For a 100 year bond, if people think the interest rate will outpace inflation more than before, the value of it goes up, so by holding onto the bond you are still invested in its future "profits", just less directly than waiting for it to mature. One of the really interesting things about financial markets, though, is their ability to craft really abstract assets and assign values to them. Stocks are definitely one of these and they are certainly more complex than they were 100+ years ago.