I think others would for the reason described in sentence directly before it. Which, as "so" indicates, is the logical predecessor.
I used to write code for financial traders. I promise you that there are a lot of people who do not give half a shit what a company's up to as long as they can buy it for $100 and sell it later for $101. And based on infinite news reports, we can all see there are plenty of CEOs who will do pretty much anything that will boost the stock price in the short term so that they get to keep their jobs longer.
> I promise you that there are a lot of people who do not give half a shit what a company's up to as long as they can buy it for $100 and sell it later for $101.
I'm sure there are. But you gotta fool the investors to make this work. The presumption that investors are stupid doesn't sound that plausible.
Depends on which proposition. Remember that that once they've sold it, they have no further exposure. So if what's happening is looting a company, then as long as they get out before the rot becomes obvious, they don't care.
And no investor has to be stupid for this to work. You just need some investors who are smarter, better informed, better prepared, or more experienced than others. And that's no presumption at all. If you talk to experienced people in the industry, they know that their living comes out of the pockets of other people's pockets. Literal billions of dollars are invested every year in being the winner in zero-sum games in finance.
That said, plenty of investors are stupid and/or naive enough. Boeing's a fine example here. As it WeWork. Or DJT. Or literally any pump and dump or Ponzi scheme. Or nearly all of crypto.
If you're really struggling to understand this, I suggest Dan Davies' "Lying for Money". Because parasitical actors assuming that investors are stupid enough is a huge, multi-century activity.
I used to write code for financial traders. I promise you that there are a lot of people who do not give half a shit what a company's up to as long as they can buy it for $100 and sell it later for $101. And based on infinite news reports, we can all see there are plenty of CEOs who will do pretty much anything that will boost the stock price in the short term so that they get to keep their jobs longer.