Those of you interested in serious analysis that will help you become a more successful trader, kindly keep scrolling.
Otherwise, I have somewhat of an unrealistic question to pose to the community:
Owning stock has a few intrinsic benefits that I can think of as follows:
- Rights to receive dividend payments
- Rights to a share of the left over assets should the company terminate operations
- Rights to vote
I would like to consider the value of owning a non-dividend paying stock as a retail investor. Without a dividend, a stock should have intrinsic value due to the right to vote and the right to assets upon termination of the company. Yet, from my understanding, the average common stock owner gets next to nothing upon termination of a company, and the average retail investor owns such a miniscule share of a company as to render their vote meaningless.
So what is the value of owning a non-dividend paying stock that will likely never pay dividends such as
$GOOG or
$AAPL?
Obviously, in the real world, such stocks are valuable because others are willing to buy them. They are valuable because we all agree they are valuable just as we all agree the U.S. dollar has value even though it is a useless green piece of paper. I think it interesting though that we peg the value of such stocks to the performance of their company when the company's performance has no impact on the intrinsic value of the stock.
Is there something to this line of thought or am I missing something (or am I just crazy haha)?
