Demand for a stock is generally linked to the value of its future discounted cash flows, which is as close to a definition of "intrinsic value" as one can reasonably realize in the world.

> Demand for a stock is generally linked to the value of its future discounted cash flows

Tautologically so, in the sense that the market’s notional consensus of the expected future cash flow is inferred by those who are convinced of it's simplistic financial rationality from the stock price and assumptions of the proper discounting mechanism. Factually...that's a bit harder to argue.

There's some a-step-more distant proxies that people hold up as touchstones for that like P/E ratio, but those aren't consistent across stocks or, marketwide, over time.

Wrong, the P/E ratio dramatically increased this year.