At the micro level, a stock is an ownership interest in a business. The earnings from the business belong to the stockholders. Theoretically, the employees of the business, including top management, work for the stockholders.
In practice, the employees are self-interested. Every employee, from the CEO to the janitorial crew, wants as large a piece of the earnings as possible, leaving as little for you as can be justified. You may have emotional difficulty with this built-in conflict of interest.
Elaborate schemes are routinely employed to siphon off your interests. In the old days, two-thirds of profits were paid out as dividends, giving you direct control of a large portion of earnings. Today, dividends are cut or eliminated so employees can use profits as they see fit. Fewer than half of today’s stocks pay any dividends at all. Every year the number of dividend payers declines. Even those that pay dividends pay only token amounts. Instead, employees grant themselves raises and bonuses without consulting shareholders. Insider boards of directors grant themselves profit-sharing plans, stock, and stock options, all to your deficit. Board remuneration committees offer excessive pay for executives in exchange for excessive pay for themselves.
The few profits that are left are often squandered on ill-advised acquisitions and other schemes. Hundreds of examples could be cited including the recent debacles at Enron, Lucent, Rite Aid, Millennium, Color Tile, Dow Chemical, Sunbeam, Trump Hotels & Casinos, Reliance Groups, and many Internet, tech, and telecom firms that crashed in 2000-2001.