[WalterBright]

> Businesses have been moving further and further into short-termism; with the next quarter being the most important metric.

That's the conventional wisdom, I've heard it my whole life, and I see no evidence of it. AMZN, MSFT, etc.

I've known CEOs who believed it, and manipulated the books to make the short term look better at the expense of the long term. Investors weren't fooled and the stocks would tank.

[TuringNYC]

AMZN ist the stand-out example, but AMZN, FB, GOOG are exceptions. Think back to 2006/2007 when PE and activist investors would take board seats and force companies to over-lever and do stock buy-backs while stocks were all-time high. How many companies can survive short-term incented PE or activist investors?

[WalterBright]

A short term investor still has to sell the stock. Why would someone buy it at a high price if that high price was based on short term thinking that sacrificed long term results?

The only hope of the short term investor is that the buyer will be incompetent. How viable is that for people who devote their careers to stock analysis and trading?

[jshaqaw]

100 percent agree. Corporate management repeats that short term thinking is a disease so much media just parrots this without thinking that it serves powerful vested interests.