> If you want to discourage short-term thinking, make the vesting period longer on executive stock

Give them no stock, pay them 100k a year and if they fuck up fire them rather than saying they left to "spend more time with their family" - kinda like the rest of the working joes out there.

Pay me 100mil this year and I might as well spend the rest of my time on the job gambling with shareholders money or trying to shag everyone in HR, there are no longer any consequences to my actions.

You get paid for what it costs to keep you in the seat and valuable. They get paid $100M because they're making decisions affecting >$1B.

The exec's bosses are the board, the people who represent the stock holders, so the exec's compensation is a direct reflection of the incentive the board is giving them. Stock options ensure they look out for that ticker. If the board didn't want short term gains they can always change their mind on the structure of exec compensations.

> Give them no stock, pay them 100k a year

That used to be the case, though more like millions a year. Clinton ended it.

Agree and make it two years for long term capital gains.

The problem isn't the executives, it's the boards.

But board members are largely just a proxy for the large shareholders anyway. E.g., short-term investment strategies are not going away.

Working C-levels would almost always much rather take the longer view against the wishes of their boards.

Yeah, it always surprises me when people on HN of all places who should have some modicum of critical thinking assume that, say, Bobby Kotick, Stephen Elop or a string of recent Intel's CEOs are some kind of rogue actors who just scammed their shareholders when in reality they were doing what they were hired to do by the board which represents (big) shareholders.

A pretty large percentage of the population believes in some pretty strange falsehoods about how business works, capital, economics, etc.

Could also price in negative externalities of short term trading with higher taxes for that behavior, nudging the markets to focus on value driving investments rather than speculation

Like short term vs long term capital gains tax rates?

Either that or implement it at the exchange level. Eg. if accredited investors sell a stock in <3 months, you pay X% as a tax at the moment of sale - or maybe different fees for <1 hour, <1 month, <1 year

> If you want to discourage short-term thinking, make the vesting period longer on executive stock

It’s 3 to 4 years on average. This isn’t relevant to quarterly filing requirements.

Harder to attract talent though (not saying you’re wrong)