You should definitely read the take linked by a sibling comment, it's a very good explanation. There's another angle from which to look at it, however, that I

You should definitely read the take linked by a sibling comment, it's a very good explanation. There's another angle from which to look at it, however, that I tend to prefer. It amounts to the same thing, just a different perspective. There are basically three ways to make money in the stock market: gambling (attempting to predict what other market participants will do, or other events that affect the market), exploiting liquidity issues (market making / arbitrage / other HFT activity), and value investing (finding investments that should to directly give money back on some time horizon, usually through dividend or stock buyback). When an external force (like principled noninvestment) forces the stock price down, not much changes for most of these. HFTs will generally find ways to make money either direction that the stock moves. Gamblers can also either make or lose money either way the stock moves, depending on whether they are long or short. Value investors, however, are the ones who will ultimately end up owning that asset you've just sold. They want this asset because it will give them money down the line; they don't care about the short-term stock price. The share of future dividend or buyback that the asset represents hasn't changed, but the price of that asset has. The asset costs less, but returns the same -- exactly the sort of thing that a value investor wants.