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You don't appear to understand how either stocks or CGT works.

Cloudflare does not issue dividends. Dividends are distributions of profit. If I bought Cloudflare stock at $30 and sold at $90, for example, the $60 profit I'm making isn't taken from Cloudflare, it's paid by the buyer on the other end of the stock trade, which is usually an institution or a retail buyer.

I'm not and are never "taking profit" from Cloudflare, in fact I provide them liquidity and also allow them to dilute my ownership in order to pay their employees in stock grants.

Selling shares doesn't really mean the company is hurt by it, especially since I'm a retail investor who doesn't have the capital to impact the price even a single cent.

Owning their stock when they aren't paying dividends is a bet that either growth of the company will inflate the price so I can profit, or it's a bet that they'll one day issue dividends (not anytime soon).



From the company POV the capital investment is the outstanding shares. The shares need to be kept happy with some combination of immediate profit and continuosly growing projection of future profit (i.e. investing into growth), or they start to lose value in the market and become even more unhappy. Eventually investing into growth runs into diminishing returns and immediate profit becomes the dominant component.

The profit you get from buying and selling on the market is either a result of the shares being kept happy, or taking advantage of market mechanics. The latter is mostly a form of gambling that doesn't produce value.




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