Why are we ignoring those factors? They are what gives the stock value in the secondary market.

Dividends are secondary, and my understanding is that they always have been. The fact that a business has value as an asset is the major factor in stock appreciation. The business reinvests its profits, becomes more valuable, and becomes more expensive for someone to purchase. The stock price is just the price tag of purchasing the business, with the cool idea that you can purchase part of it, so that groups can go in together to buy the whole thing.

Forget about stocks. Say you started a laundromat. You wanted to buy new washers and dryers but didn't have the cash. So you sold me half the business for $100k, and we bought all of this new capital with the proceeds. Let's say, because of our improvements, our business became TREMENDOUSLY profitable. So profitable, in fact, that it generated so much cash in excess of operating expenses that our company was able to build 10 more laudromats in the state. Clearly, the company is more valuable, and my half of it would be worth much more than $100k by now. In fact, maybe I trusted you so much as a manager, that I just bought half the interest and let you manage the business and you accomplished this great success all by yourself. If I wanted to sell my half of the business to someone else, I could, and I would expect to get more than $100k for it. This whole thing has NOTHING to do with dividends. You never paid a dividend. You made the business more valuable instead. The fact I could sell my half of our laundry business is about the appreciation of the business as an ASSET.

Now, just do that same thing, except instead of getting money from one investor, you get it from thousands. To keep track of it all, purely for administrative reasons, you issue stock certificates.

That's all that is going on. The motivation for stock appreciation independent of dividends is that the stock IS tied to the company and the company has intrinsic value.