Exactly this. People assume I own a private island somewhere because I've been at my publicly-traded company for 20yrs and have the accumulated wealth from all that stock growth.

But when the stock first grew, we all sold b/c it was worth a lot back then. Then it grew again and we sold more. And again and again.

The only people still holding original stock were those who didn't need it (e.g. already wealthy), and were willing to gamble on continued growth, because they could afford to watch the stock drop in value and not miss it.