I wish more big stocks (looking at you, tech giants) paid regular dividends instead of buybacks. It gives me a real, irrevocable return on my investment and benefits all shareholders equally (on a per share basis).

The stock market seems to have lost hold of its very basic premise:

  1) Companies need money, so they sell equity in public markets
  2) The people who buy the equity, if they are rational, value each share as some fraction of the net present value of all future cash flows
  3) As the company moves forward and realizes those cash flows, they pay back cash not needed for reinvestment to the investors as dividends.

So many stocks have such little dividend (or buyback) activity that it's a rounding error. That means the investors are more likely to be interested in pure speculation, hoping to buy before the peak and sell at highs. When you're only engaging in speculation, there's no reason the stock price has to stay tethered to reality. You end up with companies like TSLA that have insane multiples or TWTR that lose money for a decade without paying a penny back to shareholders and are still somehow "worth" billions.

A rational market would be a better market, and more dividends would, in my opinion, increase rationality.