[torlok]

The discussion from the beginning was about the value of stocks. Traditionally it's a share of profits in the form of dividends and voting rights. If the stock doesn't pay dividends and the founder has 51%, then you get none of that, so why does the stock have any value. That's the discussion here. Try to read and understand the question before engaging next time.

[vasco]

You're talking about old things. Its not common anymore for voting rights and dividends to be as intertwined as you say, and you keep ignoring all I said about fiscal differences while telling me to read. Anyway have a nice day was still good to type down our thoughts.

[StackRanker3000]

I think you can rephrase the question as “where is the value in owning stock? If it’s only that you hope to sell it to someone else at a higher price later, isn’t it just a pyramid scheme? At least with dividends and voting rights there are clear and tangible benefits apart from speculation”.

And the answer could then be that you’re investing in a company which allows them to grow, and your money with them. Or that you store your money in a medium that hopefully at least keeps up with inflation (especially if you’ve spread the risk). Or just that you’ve taken a gamble and hope that other people will think the stock is worth more at some later point than it was when you bought it.

[vasco]

It's as much a pyramid scheme as believing the government will buy back your government bonds or backup your dollar. End of the day you always need to believe any asset you own has its valued derived on other people wanting to buy it off of you, if you call that a pyramid scheme then the whole financial system is a pyramid scheme. You probably don't value your car or your laptop or your house as zero just because nobody might want to buy them off of you, while technically true.

You know other people can look at a balance sheet of a company and also judge it's value based on how much it produces and on the expectation of future buybacks that will increase your share's worth. I wouldn't call the absense of dividends the maker of a pyramid scheme.

[torlok]

When you buy bonds, the government guarantees it'll buy the bonds back. It's a loan with interest. When you buy a stock that doesn't have any inherent value, due to a lack of tangible benefits of ownership, then you're gambling that somebody in the future will buy it from you for no real reason other than a shared illusion that the piece of paper has a worth, and is somehow tied to comapny performance.

Again, it's the lack of dividends and the lack of any other tangible benefits of owning the stock like voting rights. I feel like you're so far down the "line goes up" rabbit hole of stock trading, that you can't even think clearly about what you're actually buying, and why would anybody buy it from you in the future.

[vasco]

Whoever reads this without knowledge will think voting rights have something to do with dividends and you keep making this wrong assertion.

So as a warning to whoever reads this, do a search for "dual class stocks", and see how many companies sell stock without voting rights as % of any index. Then see how many don't issue dividends. You'll see it's a completely separate subject.

[StackRanker3000]

I don’t think you’re fully getting what they’re trying to say. They’re not asserting that dividends and voting rights are somehow inextricably linked or that you can’t have one without the other.

They’re simply listing the two things they think actually provide any real value when owning stock, as opposed to ”line goes up”.

In other words, they’re asking why owning stock has actual value. They dismiss ”line goes up”, which only leaves dividends and voting rights. By that logic, if you aren’t paid any dividends and you don’t have voting rights, what is the point of owning the stock, except to gamble? That is what they want to know.

And then I think that what you have been saying, correctly in my opinion, is that ”line goes up” actually does have real value. But no one is trying to claim that dividends and voting rights aren’t separate things.

[StackRanker3000]

I agree with you, as indicated by the second paragraph I wrote. I was just paraphrasing and tried to answer what I believe the other person was asking (I’m happy to be corrected if it was not).

[torlok]

Thanks for taking the time to understand my question. It goes without saying that without any tangible value, you're just gambling that somebody will buy a stock from you in the future. I'm wondering if there's some other mechanism at work here that gives these tech stocks value, other than, as you said, basically a pyramid scheme mechanism of buying stocks because somebody with the same "line goes up" mentality will do that in the future and buy us out.