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The feds are coming for John Deere over the right to repair

(gizmodo.com)
568 points rntn | 2 comments | 18 Oct 24 16:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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chasil ◴[18 Oct 24 17:39 UTC] No.41881693[source]▶
There was also a fatality in the last workplace strike.

Deere seems to have bad relations with their employees, customers, and regulatory bodies.

The shareholders should remove the board of directors.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2021/...

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onlyrealcuzzo ◴[18 Oct 24 19:02 UTC] No.41882429[source]▶
The shareholders don't care about any of that if they think the board did a decent job of propping up the stock price.

Firing a board is generally risky, and the shareholders probably haven't fired them because even though the board has, almost objectively, not been good - firing them is likely even worse for the stock short term, and there aren't a lot of long-term, active investors left in the world.

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fny ◴[19 Oct 24 04:21 UTC] No.41885612[source]▶
The myth that shareholders largely care about short-term returns has been disproved empirically over the last 30 years. Every mammoth stock exploded due to assumptions about revenues far, far into the future (dotcom stocks, FATMANG stocks, crypto.) And this should come as no surprise: company valuations are the discounted value of future returns after all.

More often, companies shill bullshit, inestimable long-term growth (AI-bullshit for example) to pump price. Tesla is the poster-child of this strategy.

In contrast, short-term thinking/marketing is a sure fire way to annihilate a stock. Why would the next buyer pay a premium for a squeezed orange?

The dark reality is that most things we customers and employees complain about as “short-term thinking” are tremendously profitable over the long run.

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1. 7952 ◴[19 Oct 24 09:16 UTC] No.41886662[source]▶
But an assumption about long term gain can still deliver short term returns. Would shareholders behave the same if long term returns were the only returns available?
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2. DennisP ◴[19 Oct 24 16:05 UTC] No.41888606[source]▶
Based on your first sentence, it seems that by "returns" you mean increases in stock price. Given that, I don't think there's a clear dividing line, since investors are always forward-looking.

I could see only long-term earnings being available but that's something quite different. Shareholders are often willing to put up with that situation, as long as they believe the long-term story (and see that other investors believe it).

A situation that could make short-term share price increases unlikely is if the stock is just way overvalued for its likely earnings in any reasonable timeframe, in which case shareholders will happily take profits rather than try to make the company change anything.