I'm still missing something here. A stock is an instrument of potential income and control, but I've never seen a price that was anywhere close to correlated with that. In fact, if anything there seems to be a discount given to high-dividend stocks (for which I, as an income investor, am grateful to all you baseball card traders that I don't understand).

To put it another way: the actual value of a no-dividend no-vote stock is precisely zero. The price is whatever the buyer and seller agree on, right? So how can one price be more "accurate" than another?

In the event of liquidation, shareholders are on the list of those owed a portion of the proceeds. In fact they are last on the list, after creditors (those who have loaned the company money directly), bondholders (bonds are a form of debt), and holders of preferred stock.

That right is the ultimate determinant of the value of a no-dividend no-vote stock: fractional ownership of the right to proceeds in the event of liquidation, after those above have had theirs.

As a higher-risk asset, it produces greater returns, since otherwise there is an arbitrage: buy bonds issued by the same company instead. This arbitrage lasts until the bond becomes "expensive", and therefore produces worse returns (since its payout is independent of its price).