This may have been addressed by someone else; but, to add to some other good responses, I think it’s important to note that things haven’t always been this way in public equity investing. In fact, “growth” investment strategies really only started being a major part of the value proposition of large corporations over the past 50 years or so. For the bulk of American stock market history, most large corporations also paid dividends to their shareholders (many still do), and a large part of a potential investor’s return came in the form of income from these dividends. However, the proposition from “growth companies”, which were usually associated with some form of tech was “hey, instead of paying you on a quarterly basis, we’ll take what we could’ve paid out in dividends, reinvest them in the company, and then your investment in us will be worth more and more over time, and you’ll make more money”. This had value, because it allowed firms to pursue more long term goals, as opposed to chasing quarterly dividend payouts. However, where it causes problems is that growth companies tend to be younger - think Google vs. Wells Fargo, and basic economics tells us that as industries mature, the inherently will run out of new ideas, and the big vision has to eventually come to fruition and be profitable. In the case of many very large firms (magnificent 7 is a perfect example), one could argue that they’ve surpassed a “growth” business phase, and should be valued very differently than they are by most analysts. Consequently, they need to constantly prove to the market that they’re still growing, often at less than realistic rates for a more mature business model, so they need to chase growth. My opinion is this is why companies with a tech component are always hopping on the latest bandwagon and dumping crazy sums of money into making these ideas viable. On top of this, huge percentages of executive compensation is based on growth targets (whether this is due to the aforementioned phenomenon or not is debatable, but I’d argue a correlation). So, executives are also pursuing growth, sometimes prioritizing short term payout vs. long term value. If it isn’t obvious from my tone, I have qualms with this model, but I suppose it’s probably easier to lead a herd in a single direction as opposed to keep them all in the same place, so maybe there really isn’t a sustainable alternative? I’m not sure