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If you buy a share of a publicly-traded company you are not "investing" in the company, "contributing capital", whatever. The company does not use your money to

If you buy a share of a publicly-traded company you are not "investing" in the company, "contributing capital", whatever. The company does not use your money to build out its infrastructure; generally they don't see a dime of it. There are a few exceptions like with Tesla who issue new shares to cash in on their inflated stock price, but this is generally rare. Most companies are doing the opposite: buying more of their stock, not selling it.

chii 6y ago
> If you buy a share of a publicly-traded company you are not "investing" in the company no you are - because it's a chain of capital investment that is linked all the way to IPO (or private investment pre-IPO). You purchase a share publicly from _someone_ who has purchased it from someone else. This chain of purchases leads all the way back to the initial share offering. Just because your dollar doesn't go directly to the company doesn't mean this form of funding structure isn't "contributing capital". Your public share purchase allows an existing share holder to exit - without which they would not have purchased the initial share in the first place.
- pksebben 6y ago
  that all sounds like an incredibly roundabout way of inflating ownership structures rather than contributing meaningfully to value. how much fidelity can be assumed by this, over time? Unless you assume that value traded in a market is perfectly efficient (which it's not) the value signal is going to degrade over time. so, how long can you trust that the "chain of investment" faithfully represents value added? a year? ten years? how about investments in companies that have been around for 50, 75, 100 years? Why is it that we take as a given that ownership of value necessarily connotes the owner is themselves valuable?