I would call it 'Liquidity'. And there are instruments where you are locked in for certain period of time e.g. 10 year treasury bonds. Luckily, there is an afte

I would call it 'Liquidity'. And there are instruments where you are locked in for certain period of time e.g. 10 year treasury bonds. Luckily, there is an after market for treasury bonds where you can sell them after buying well before the 10 years are over. And what you are proposing is that we should only allow Investing and restrict/remove trading. The problem with this approach is that you lose your ability to find 'market value' for your investment on an everyday basis. Let's say we force everyone to hold stock for at least a month. What if I had bought BP stock just before the gulf oil spill news came out? I will be stuck and would have to incur a huge loss by the time I am allowed to sell my stock. Also, there are thousands of investors and they may need to liquidate their position at any time based on their own circumstances. And finally, stock market does achieve their goal of allowing company to raise capital. Theoretically, it doesn't matter what happens to the stock price after company has issued their common stock. They got their capital and can do what they want with it. On practical basis, company do care about their stock price for numerous reasons which I won't get into right now.