Re:Flock Hardcoded the Password for America's Surveillance I...
by turtlesdown11 on Monday January 12, 2026 @12:41PM
(#46591703)
No money reaches a company when you purchase shares on the secondary market. Unlike a purchase of bacon, where some amount of that money is passed along to the farmers.
People buy into IPOs partially because they know a lively secondary market exists, where they can offload the shares later. Index funds are part of that secondary market.
Just to be clear, I don't think investors in IPOs are thieves. I'm just saying that you can legitimately say that the secondary market financies companies just as much as the primary market does. Perhaps a better example might be farmers selling to food factories selling to retailers selling to me. I never hand money directly to the farmers, but you can still say with a straight face that my purchase of bacon funds the pig farm.