/biz/ - Business & Finance

I am new to stock stuff. What I am having a hard time understanding is what exactly is a stock doing once you have purchased it? In my head, the only reason you would buy stocks is to use the dividends and if a stock doesn't give dividends, then what is the point? As an experiment, in 2020, I invested 1000 USD on Robin hood, I bought a few stocks and 2 stocks of that SPDR ETF 500 thing. At that time, my portfolio thing was like 1000 USD and then today it is 1500 USD. That is without me adding more money and using the dividend stuff to buy small stocks here and there. I guess what I am confused about is how do people become "wealthy" off stocks given that some stocks have such low dividends and require that you have many of them to even equal what you might make in a regular job in a week? I don't understand what to do with stocks that have no dividend. Or low dividend.