Sure, but that’s still a small fraction of most trades most of the time. When companies sell stock (long after their IPO) the sales kind of have to be dripped out as a small percentage of the trading volume of the stock or it would negatively affect the price (more than considered acceptable). If a company or its insiders are most of the sellers by volume (again, if a company has been public a while), that’s a bad sign for the company.
> Not directly, but indirectly it does.
Also yes, but I would quibble that this is moving the goal posts from your original statement :). “The money goes to finance the business” seemed like a pretty direct declarative statement that didn’t touch on the nuance of “buying stock -> pushes price up -> makes debt cheaper for company/makes further stock sales attractive”.
I get the point you’re making and don’t entirely disagree. But in a proud HN tradition it read as a confident and straightforward declaration that describes the (IMHO) minority case, but not the more common case and sweeps important nuance aside.
Please don’t take that to mean I thought your thoughts or understanding were also lacking in nuance, I didn’t. But I figure there will always be people coming through these threads who don’t know the nuance, they’ll read the highly upvoted top comments and move on, thinking they’ve improved their understanding, and they will be led astray, so I was responding to the words as-written.