Because that’s how the stock market works, the price of a stock is the current value of assets (including cash) + expected earnings (with some correction factors for risk and time). If the company pays out $x of cash it’s $x worth less. You might not always see it it the stock price because expected future dividend payments are also already priced in.
There are plenty of companies that never pay dividends, yet people buy them.
II struggled with this as well for a while. You can look at it this way, they are worth money because they could pay dividends, but they don’t actually have to. Your bar of gold is worth a certain amount of money equal to the money you could sell it for, and your money is worth something because you could buy something with it.
(Most) stocks represent partial ownership (read: control) of a company and most of their value is derived from that.
For an extreme example: if the stock price were to drop below the amount of money that could be made by just selling off all of the assets, then someone would (in principle) just buy all the shares, sell the assets and make a profit.
Each share represents a small bit of control over the company and their assets.
Do people not understand the concept of a dividend?
The more you learn about the stock market, the more you realize it’s shit.
Well, the good news is, is that you can short it
You should definitely try shorting Tesla, nobody has ever lost money doing that.
Many companies and investors laugh at the idea of dividends, believing that stock price is the only thing that matters
Many of those companies buy back stock in order to drive the share price up, Apple is famous for this. They also pay a dividend as well.
A dividend is just a forced sale of your stock
What?
Imagine you have 10 stocks worth $10 each.
Scenario 1: There is $1 dividend per stock. You now have 10 stocks worth $9 each for a total of $90 in stocks and $10 in cash.
Scenario 2: There is no dividend but you decide to sell 1 stock, you now have 9 stocks of $10 for a total of 90$ in stocks and $10 in cash.
These scenario’s are equivalent unless the stock wasn’t priced correctly.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve read in a very long time.
Why do you think it works like that?
Because that’s how the stock market works, the price of a stock is the current value of assets (including cash) + expected earnings (with some correction factors for risk and time). If the company pays out $x of cash it’s $x worth less. You might not always see it it the stock price because expected future dividend payments are also already priced in.
How do you think it works?
Why would anyone buy a stock that will never pay a dividend? The company is worth money because they pay a dividend, not despite it.
There are plenty of companies that never pay dividends, yet people buy them.
II struggled with this as well for a while. You can look at it this way, they are worth money because they could pay dividends, but they don’t actually have to. Your bar of gold is worth a certain amount of money equal to the money you could sell it for, and your money is worth something because you could buy something with it.
(Most) stocks represent partial ownership (read: control) of a company and most of their value is derived from that.
For an extreme example: if the stock price were to drop below the amount of money that could be made by just selling off all of the assets, then someone would (in principle) just buy all the shares, sell the assets and make a profit.
Each share represents a small bit of control over the company and their assets.