But someone, ultimately, must be able to. You can't exchange your 1% of shares against 1% of the company assets, unless you have enough share to control the com

But someone, ultimately, must be able to. You can't exchange your 1% of shares against 1% of the company assets, unless you have enough share to control the company. Let's take Facebook, where I think Mark Zuckerberg has ~60% of the shares, and only 40% are on the market, thus even if you buy them all you cannot gain control of the company. You can't extract value from the company from this avenue. Again, what gives inherent value to a stock is that you, or someone else, will be able at some point to get value from the company itself, not from someone else. In a rational market, a price rise should mean the market will eventually be able to extract more value from the company then thought.