Did you read the article? Because that’s pretty tangential to most of what it brings up. It’s also not an accurate description of reality. Different investors have different horizons, and different companies operate with different horizons for their missions. If there’s any myth here it’s that all investors are singularly focussed on the next quarters profits, or even that most of them are. Most of the people on this board have probably worked at a company with a cap that’s 20x it’s revenue, or at least know somebody who has. There’s a whole sector of investors who are willing to invest in companies that lose money year after year on the premise that they may one day make a profit.

The irony of the theory that American companies are all focused on short term profits at the cost of long term profits is that it is refuted by simply looking at graphs of the S&P 500 over the decades.

The theory also requires that the aggregate of investors are fools.