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It seems that the primary reason for owning stock is almost never the voting rifbts or the dividends (obvious considering there are nonvoting stocks and nondiv

• dllthomas 14y ago
  The primary reason for owning stock is voting rights only when you're talking about owning enough of the stock that your vote makes a significant difference, which in a publicly traded stock is difficult-to-impossible for a small investor, which is most investors. The primary reason for owning stock is absolutely voting rights during hostile takeover where the acquiring company buys enough of the stock to vote out the current management in favor of management that will approve the merger. On the other hand, dividends are actually quite often the primary reason for owning stocks, just not typically the stocks we talk about a lot here. Stocks in large, well established companies are often pretty stable, growing only with the market at large, to the point that the dividend can certainly be the bulk of the payout for owning the stock.