ABSTRACT
The conclusion summarizes the argument made about the return of the cash nexus to the US stock market. For most of the past two decades, being a dividend investor in a stock market has constituted a distinctly minority pursuit. That will change. Even more important will be the broader changes resulting from the end of the global neoliberal order. The entire enterprise of stock market investing in the United States has had a nearly 100-year period of generally benign regulation and environmental circumstances. The American Century was well represented by and partly generated by our prosperous capital markets. If that ease of operation and growth continues into another century, we shall be quite fortunate. If it is to do so, it is the assertion here that investors and companies will need to shift away from the paradigm that has dominated the past several decades — the often-hollow “financialization” of stock market activity — toward a more traditional, and transparent cash basis for capital deployment, measurement, and valuation.
