Tomorrow's Marshmallows
Firms have long criticized the short-term focus of financial markets. It is hard not to empathize with Management teams faced with the tyranny of quarterly reporting.
Short-term thinking is deep-rooted. The ‘marshmallow experiment’ demonstrated that humans innately seek instant gratification. Besides, a 2020 European Securities and Market Authority survey shows that the financial markets are inherently biased. Specifically, the compensation of research analysts and asset managers is structurally driven by short-term considerations.
Short-termism will get worse. With its higher interest rates, the new monetary regime will further discount the long term. Furthermore, faced with questions about the planet’s boundaries, many societal actors are prone to post-apocalyptic fantasies and adopt a YOLO mindset, with dire implications for democracies’ ability to plan for the future – and secure their own.
In ‘The short-termism trap’ (2024), the authors argue that short-termism leads to a race to the bottom. Management teams pick projects with a short fuse to generate quick wins and satisfy earnings result junkies. Ultimately, each company is incentivized to implement increasingly shorter projects to win the race for investor attention. Contributing to the vicious circle, this corporate behavior attracts the most short-term-orientated shareholders. Indeed, investors select companies for their timeframe.
But there are no victims here. Issuing firms are sellers of securities to the financial markets. Investors are their customers. Complaining about clients has never been a winning strategy.
In the preamble to his new book, ‘On Leadership’ (2024), Tony Blair states that ‘[Political leadership] is not the same as giving [the people] what they want at any one moment in time, of chasing down each surge of opinion and trying to meet it, of scanning the polls and acting accordingly […]. The Leader sets out for the people what they need and not simply what they want. Otherwise, the Leader is just a follower.’
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The parallel with management, equity research recommendations, and share price movement is impeccable. So is the conclusion: It is incumbent upon firms to shape the markets they serve – including the stock market.
To assess a corporate profile along a short to long-term continuum, McKinsey developed a ‘Corporate Horizon Index’ based on revenue growth consistency (vs. profitability), investments (incl. R&D), qualify of earnings, and financial engineering (incl. share buybacks). Encouragingly, a longer horizon correlates with higher value creation.* There is no excuse for short-termism.
I could not possibly praise the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive without attracting opprobrium. But behind this burdensome regulation expanding the disclosure of non-financial data, there is a new management tool that provides a unique opportunity to achieve leadership and shape the equity market by focusing on what investors need and not simply what they want.
All market participants are competing for the same future. Not everyone will get marshmallows.
* In their analysis, McKinsey shows that companies with a longer-term horizon underperformed during the Great Financial Crisis. However, as they held their course, they outperformed in the following years.