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My point is that the businesses might, in fact, be creating something (though even when you look at that it becomes questionable), but that, as a stock owner, you don't actually get any of the company's profits, unless they pay dividends, which they largely don't do.

Well, whan buying stock you hope that at least one of these will happen:
- The company will pay dividends regularly (like in good old simple days)
- The company will one day pay large dividends (like Microsoft did recently)
- Somebody will want to acquire the company (because of some kind of its intrinsic value - market, manufacturing assets, IP...)
- There will be enough people believing one of above (thus willing to buy your stock for more than you paid for it)

Of course, the market is polluted by likes of "analysts" knowing zilch about the industry they are "following", big fat investors (e.g. banks) that at the same time "manage" other people's money (in funds) and directly invest in the same markets, "adjusting" their advice to small investors so to fit their interests etc. There is a lot of pure irrationality, of course, but the two are difficult to distinguish. For example, when an analysts yells "sell, sell, sell!" for Google or a few years ago Nokia because they performed only fantastically well, not unbelievably well (which the same analyst was promising), how do we know he is not trying to temporarily deflate the stock in order to make better profit from buying it himself ('himself' usually meaning his employer)? But that is besides the original point.
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