They keep raising prices, stating that it’s due to inflation, but then they keep having record profits.
Meanwhile, the average American can barely afford rent or food nowadays.
What are we to do? Vote? I have been but that doesn’t seem to do much since I’m just voting for a representative that makes the actual decisions.
That’s not really true.
If it were, why would a company care about their share price, post-IPO?
Although people generally conceptualize shares as an ownership of the company, there are a ton of mechanisms at play that make that notion essentially a farce.
It’s better to think of shares as a currency for which the company owns the printer. The reason companies want to keep their stock value high is that they can at-will conjure more shares from the ether and sell them. It’s not JUST during an IPO.
So, in a fractionally insignificant way, as a retail investor, every purchase adds buy pressure and shifts the order book towards a higher market price. The higher the market price, the more money the company can raise by issuing new shares while minimizing the dilution effect of the issuing of new shares.