[adriancr]

> If the stock pays 0 dividends then the only value it can have must be that of finding a greater fool to sell it to.

A share is what it says, a 1/x stake in ownership of the company.

What are you actually saying?, that a share in tesla has no value because no dividents?

[afiori]

I am talking about what is a reasonable price for something vs its market price.

As far as I know a stock has three useful uses:

- you can sell it to someone

- you can collect dividends

- if the company is sold you get a fraction of the sale

- if it is a voting share you can influence the company

For a company like Tesla only the first one applies and a tiny bit of the last one (by selling it you influence the price).

I am not sure about this but there might be cases were because of financing/loans/internal politics someone might want to have X% of the shares regardless of other benefits.

What I am saying is that for almost every retail investor the only value of Tesla's stock is that probably in the future other might want to buy it for more as the only thing you can do it to exchange it back for the currency you bought it for[0]. So the only "rational"[1] price should be (close to) 0.

[0] There might also be fiscal benefits, but I do not think they matter here/

[1] The market if often "irrational" and that is not a bad thing per se. It just means that sometimes prices are more driven by hype.

[theturtletalks]

You’re completely right. The end goal of a company should be to provide some sort of dividend to the people that own the company. I understand if the company is new and still straddling R&D debt or getting market share. If the goal is to never provide dividends, the game is to pass the buck to another investor.

[afiori]

I actually believe that a company can and should have drives other than making money for the shareholders.

I would prefer if more companies had objectives like "make quality products affordable" or "cultivate and respect customer goodwill".

From this point of view I can imagine that some people bought Tesla stocks because they just want to help the company and I see no problem with that.

[thunky]

Yeah, this is it.

People get confused about dividends all the time, but they are essentially just a forced sale of your shares. Which is also a taxable event, and many try to avoid dividends for that reason.