Another Stock Split. Congrats, Your Pizza Still Costs the Same.

Stock splits are the financial equivalent of slicing a pizza into twelve pieces instead of eight and calling it more pizza. Yet here we are, watching Wall Street celebrate a fresh wave of split announcements like someone invented free money. The market’s been lifted to new heights, sure—mostly by AI euphoria—but the crowd has decided stock-split stocks are the second coming. Let’s do the math these headlines conveniently skip.

A stock split changes nothing about the underlying business. You own the same fraction of the same cash flows. If you hold 10 shares at $1,000 and the company executes a 10-for-1 split, you now hold 100 shares at $100. Your net worth moved by exactly zero dollars. The balance sheet is unchanged. Earnings per share shrink proportionally with the share count. Any spreadsheet jockey who thinks otherwise should hand their calculator to someone who