Re: short termism
I am in tune with you on this.
back in the day the focus was on dividends, buying stock u were partial owner of the company and entitled to portion of profits in form of dividends. when that got into frequent sells based on all kinds of factors, then yes you are making money on the stock value .. of course people shorting things did not help.
Funds have huge power and I suspect that they can manipulate markets to some extent anyways.
I am not a huge proponent of regulation in general, but while we addressed this issue in a case study, our premise was of a minimum holding period for any stock which would really slow down speculation significantly. going to your point about not just long term view by ppl running businesses, but also investors.
and yes I agree buffet holding to a company and growing or maintaining it is diff than KKR or blackstone six sigma-ing it to death by some former GE folks, thats who it usually is :) seen it too many times..