1) You do have a say in the business (for most companies). Stockholders elect the board of directors and the board installs the managers of the company. 2) The

1) You do have a say in the business (for most companies). Stockholders elect the board of directors and the board installs the managers of the company. 2) The company's money and you are, in fact, legally related when you buy a share of their stock. That is a legal contract. 3) Of course the timing of dividends are factored into the stock price around the time they are being paid. If I know that I own something at 12:00:00PM I'll get a $1 dividend, but if I don't own it until 12:00:01 I get nothing it makes perfect sense for the price to change by $1 at exactly that time. This actually support the argument that stock prices are related the the profitability of a company (and hence their ability to pay dividends). 4) A company cannot, in fact, decide at any time that you don't own your share anymore. It can decide to offer you money for that share and you can choose to sell it or not. 5) Most of the rules around buybacks, mergers, etc have to do with information disclosure and exist to help prevent company employees from stealing from shareholders. That's not pretending that there is a relationship it's protecting the legal rights of the owners of the company. ---------- I will tell a parable. Scientists have an understanding of gravity. Masses are attracted to each other and behave in certain ways based on certain mathematical rules. One could come along and say "That's hooey, it's all just witchcraft! It's only because we all think that we're attracted to the Earth that we can't fly." I wouldn't really know how to respond to that other than to say that there are logical reasons to accept the laws of gravity and further there are mountains of evidence to support the hypothesis. It's the same way with the stock market. A share is, legally speaking, fractional ownership of a company. It has certain legal and financial rights. Hence we would expect the value of shares to move in relation to the success or failure of companies. This is, in fact, what we have witnessed in reality over and over and over again. You can keep on believing it's witchcraft all you want and I don't know how to prove you wrong. But it just means you are ignoring both a logical line of reasoning and all available evidence.