So a company decides to raise money by selling shares of its stock. The stock is offered at an initial price of their determination. The stock is then traded in a market where forces of supply and demand, as well as speculation, affect its price.
When a company performs well (or makes decisions that will likely increase the company's earnings in the future), more people want to buy that stock than do people wanting to sell it. This creates demand for that stock which causes its sell/bid prices rise. When a company performs poorly, the opposite occurs; more people want to sell the stock than want to buy. This creates a surplus that causes sell/bid prices to fall. Understanding this, people speculate over company performance to determine the future behavior of a stock, and attempt to "buy low, sell high" or "borrow high, return low" in order to make a profit.
But my question is regarding the first part of that process. What is it about company performance that causes the perceived value of its stock to rise? This is especially perplexing since I would guess that most people don't exercise their voting rights, and many stocks don't pay dividends. It's not like a shareholder has any direct financial gains from increased company earnings (speculative stock pricing notwithstanding). What is the intrinsic value of the stock?
It seems to me that all participants in a stock market tacitly agree that stock price will have a direct correlation with company performance. So another way of asking the question is, would an opposite agreement hold? What financially (this isn't a question about logistics, communication, or feasibility) stops all participants in a market from agreeing to value a particular company's stock inversely with respect to the company's performance?
Since I feel like I can't quite nail down my question, another form of it would be, why is stock market behavior driven by company performance?