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I really don’t get why people keep calling the stock market a ponzi. Companies (successful companies) generate cash flow in a way that gold and bitcoin do not.

I really don’t get why people keep calling the stock market a ponzi. Companies (successful companies) generate cash flow in a way that gold and bitcoin do not. Absent any other buyers or new money flowing into equities, those businesses will still have to return capital to shareholders either through dividends or buybacks. So the equity market can still appreciate without any new capital as companies buyback their own stock.

tinco 5y ago
That argument only makes sense when you don't mention any numbers. We try to see this as a black and white, Ponzi or not Ponzi. 1 or 0. You look at the original Ponzi scheme, earnings over market value is clearly zero. For a regular stock earnings over market value might be some small but reasonable number like 1/10 of even 1/20. Then you look at TSLA and it's under 1/300, and that's not even an accounting trick where they're underreporting their earnings, they're literally are posting their best earnings ever. So yeah, it's not 0 like the original Ponzi, but it's approaching a limit of 0 and no one knows how close it's supposed to get.