If you're not going to bother reading what I wrote, why post?

Some people would say that anything that trades on a stock exchange is worth something. A larger group would say that anything that has current or anticipated revenue is worth something. Some would say that anything with a positive net current asset value is worth something. But from my perspective, a business is worth its current liquid assets (or liquidatable assets at realistic values) plus the conservatively projected future unrestricted cash flows discounted by conservatively projected inflation rates back to present value. From this definition, it follows that a business with zero net worth and zero or negative present/ anticipated unrestricted cash flows is worth zero or less. Such venerable businesses as MSFT, KO, and IBM have negative unrestricted cash flow after dividends and buybacks, and hence I consider them to have negative intrinsic value (adjusted for current shareholder equity). This doesn't mean the businesses would have no value to a private owner - it just means that their manager-owners are operating them in a way that is destroying shareholder value. But from this way of thinking, one realizes that even the best businesses will shift from value-creation to value-destruction over time. So to the contrary - I would argue a great many (perhaps >1/3) of Fortune 500 companies are worth zero or less to a passive owner. Of course, many may be better managed down the road - but the passive investor can't bet on that.