> If tomorrow ExxonMobil disappears from existence, you'd get half of the world paralysed. If Nvidia tomorrow gets replaced by a massive hole in the ground, you'd just shrug, go down the road a bit and buy AMD.
That's the wrong way to think about it, because the stock price is about all future profit over time, not the current moment. Over the next 50 years, which one do you think will have made more profit?
Imagine you're in the year 1900, and you're comparing a light bulb company with a steam engine company. Industry needs steam engines, you say! Half the world would paralyze if they stopped working! Meanwhile, who cares about a light bulb company?
But you can understand why light bulbs actually turned out to make much more money moving forwards.
That's the wrong way to think about it, because the stock price is about all future profit over time, not the current moment. Over the next 50 years, which one do you think will have made more profit?
Imagine you're in the year 1900, and you're comparing a light bulb company with a steam engine company. Industry needs steam engines, you say! Half the world would paralyze if they stopped working! Meanwhile, who cares about a light bulb company?
But you can understand why light bulbs actually turned out to make much more money moving forwards.