> To list on LTSE in August, Twilio and Asana are agreeing to a slate of commitments such as aligning executive and board compensation with long-term performance; taking customers and employees into account; and explaining how the company’s board oversees its long-term strategy. These commitments must be concrete policies that can be monitored by LTSE.
If such agreements are broken what’s the punishment, other than presumably being dislisted? If there are none it seems like an empty platitude given that you can already buy both on the “regular” stock exchange.
Is daytrading prohibited? If not seems like it’s still bound by the same short term nonsense. I’d be impressed if you can only buy and sell on the LTSE once a year. Money being put where the mouth is and all that.
The requirements are embodied in the listing standards of the exchange, and have enforcement mechanisms equivalent to other listing standards. The SEC takes this stuff quite seriously - as they should - so instances of companies violating listing standards are thankfully pretty rare. I expect the same thing here.
In terms of the requirements on trading that you mention, a requirement like that would violate current SEC rules about trading. But remember that companies are the metaphorical "central bank" of their own currency and can do all kinds of things that would reward those investors who truly are committed for the long-term. We don't have anything to announce in this area at this time, but I hope to be able to say more some day.
It's not quite a simple as the word "lobbying" implies. But we are in active conversations with a lot of the other stakeholders on both the buy side and sell side to see if we can find ways to bring some flavor of this to the markets. But I really can't be more specific because we don't have anything concrete to report - yet.
I will say that I expect companies will also have opportunities to innovate in this area when it comes to their own stock, though I do think it will take a while as the industry is relatively conservative about things like this.
Still not clear though, why they need to dual list for this purpose. They can commit to the same actions without listing on exchange. I mean, you could have a service that monitors these commitments, but I am not clear as to why this service needs to be an exchange. It could be a product NYSE, NASDAQ just offer if there is demand. The fundamental purpose of an exchange is to facilitate trading.
agreed, but nothing stops any of the existing exchanges to have special listing classes, if there really is demand for that type of thing. Nothing stops any of the companies currently listed on any of the exchanges from committing to those same principles, etc. It just seems like a solution in search of a problem. Not that it can't make money for the investors, I am sure it can. But I don't see the point of this in terms of value proposition.
Do you have a simple guide for retail investers? For example will I be able to buy stocks via apps like Robinhood or Revolut?
I am intrigued by your offering, and for a retail trader holding LTSE stocks could be a better investment than aggressively day traded markets (especially if day trading were to be banned etc.), and might offer a strong alternative to regular retail stocks which are a bit too much of a rollercoaster ride, so I don't think I want to play that game much, but I also don't have a trading account at some huge institution.
Will you push to ensure retail investers are able casually join in?
We don't have such a guide yet, but it's a good idea. At the moment, all of our stocks are available through every legacy brokerage. Some brokers allow you to specify when you do a trade which venue the trade gets routed to, and you can specify LTSE today for that purpose.
I do expect over time listed companies will develop special rewards and benefits for long-term investors. Our rules are designed to make sure that any such programs are equally available to retail investors to casually join in, as you say
Last time I read up on LTSE I noticed that the exchange doesn’t operate differently than a traditional stock exchange. Instead the companies in LTSE adopt specific language in their bylaws that orients them toward the long-term. Is this a correct understanding?
If you aren’t implementing any exchange-level mechanisms, why does this need to be an exchange at all? Why not just create a template for corporate bylaws that you can certify, like a B-Corp? An LT-Corp, if you will.
We looked into this extensively before deciding to pursue an exchange, but found it just isn't workable. Investors simply don't believe a "certification" is especially binding, as companies can easily undo the certification at any time.
People today think of exchanges as just platforms to facilitate trading, but historically this is not how they used to be seen. Exchanges have always had a dual role, as avatars of corporate governance as well as sources of liquidity. We are trying to bring that balance back into the financial infrastructure of capital markets.
Yeah I came back today hoping this was going to be answered. I like the vision and concept of LTSE, but have yet to be convinced there are any substantial mechanisms in place that make this any different than the other exchanges.
It's probably strictly worse than other exchanges if we're considering what the point of an exchange actually is. I've tried optimistically viewing LTSE from multiple angles but an exchange just seems like the fundamentally incorrect business model for their supposed goals.
How would you make money of templates? With this model, you can profit on the value of every trade. I assume the exchange makes more when people invest more.
An exchange usually makes more when people trade more ("we're in the moving business, not the storage business") and stocks are more volatile, so from one angle it would seem like the very worst place possible to try to encourage long-termism.
You could pay for the template-producing company to monitor the template-using ones, like an auditing company or any sort of certificate-issuing one.
It seems the companies on LTSE are not bound to be traded only there so it doesn't seem like the trading would mostly go through it, since it's bound to have less liquidity than traditional exchanges.
Quick skim and comparing with the OP article, the only concrete takeaway I get is shareholders that hold shares longer potentially have more voting power in your system? Good for founders, potentially (and ironically) bad for the company in the longterm.
I don't have to labor the point on this site that a few successful exits had founder CEO's that needed to be removed by investors/shareholders.
Thanks for linking to the previous AMA from when our rules were originally approved. There's actually also one from last year when we began trading stocks, but I don't quite know how to look up the URL right now - while also typing these answers.
Although an earlier version of our proposal did have a voting-rights mechanism, as part of a one-size-fits-all prescription, we ultimately decided against it. Personally, I was hoping to offer "long-term voting" as a principled compromise between standard governance and dual-class shares. But in the interim, dual-class shares have basically won in the market. I'm still hopeful as an industry we will be able to find better solutions in the future
Some, but there are also some very successful startups still run by their founders, like Tesla and (until recently) Amazon. Then there's Apple, which did much better after bringing the founder back.
(I've read that on average, companies run by founders tend to do better over the long term. I'm having trouble pulling up the source though; best I can find right now is the book 100 Baggers, quoting a study saying "there was often a large shareholder or an entrepreneurial founder involved.")
Is there anything a shareholder can do to encourage the LTSE?
Or said another way, is there a mechanism for a shareholder to specify which exchange they are buying stock on? And would traffic on the LTSE help the LTSE?
Or is most of the support for the LTSE accomplished on the company side, and at listing time?
This is a great question. Let me take it in parts.
First off, you're right that the most important place for support is via companies. Ultimately, that's what matters. But you'd be surprised how much voice people have in influencing companies. For example, if you're an employee, I can tell you first hand how closely CEO's and executive teams monitor (for example) what gets asked about at all-hands meetings.
Shareholders matter too. Companies want to know what their investors think and many of them have whole "investor relations" departments whose job is, in part, to relay investor sentiment to the rest of the company.
In terms of trading, yes, you can specify what exchange your shares trade on. Almost every major broker is a member of LTSE and can route orders to the exchange. As the customer, you're in charge of where your orders get routed, and you're welcome to specify a specific venue. Not every broker supports this right in their web UI, although I've heard that Interactive Brokers (IBKR) does.
If you've been following the news about controversies such as "pay for order flow" and such, you might make a connection here. Most retail customers don't specify where their order should be routed and as a result, they lend their voice to many of these industry practices. Because LTSE is not focused on maximizing trading volume, things are a little different on our platform. If you route to LTSE, you can be sure that no intermediary is getting paid for your transaction, and LTSE does not take a trading fee either.
As to whether traffic on LTSE helps, I think it does lend a little bit of credibility. If you take the time to tell your broker this is what you want, they will probably notice.
If I specify a particular venue, does Reg NMS still require my order to only be filled if it's within the national best bid-offer (NBBO) range? If not, that would seem to be a big caveat that should be mentioned whenever mentioning that retail inventors can specify a specific venue.
(Disclosure: I work on the sell-side, but don't have a Series 7. Certainly, for vanilla orders, Reg NMS requires your broker to route your order for best price. If you're specifying the routing, though, I'll leave it to someone with a Series 7 to explain which Reg NMS protections still apply.)
The short answer is "yes" but there's a lot of nuance to it. Reg NMS does not require routing of anything - a very common misunderstanding. Reg NMS does not get you the "best price", it prevents the execution of trades at prices inferior to protected quotations displayed by other exchanges.
youre able to route orders to specific market trading venues. If you open up IBKR and look at the subwindow (forgot the name sorry) that shows realtime orders, you'll see stuff like ARCA and BATS and these are different venues basically. Similarly if you do a simple 10,000 share order for TWLO at 7.50 limit, the advanced order entry system will let you click (probably with a dropdown or something) which venue to route your order to.
Personally I'm not really sold on the idea of LTSE. I mean it sounds good I guess, but governance of a public company doesn't start with the venues it is able to be traded on. It starts with the company, or at least with our regulatory bodies (lol imagine that)
I actually agree with you. Exchanges are regulatory bodies (so-called SROs) in our capital markets system. We think there should be a new one with different incentives to do a good job for companies
The obvious way of ensuring long-term performance is to slow down the buy/sell process. For example, the company could offer a discount on its stock for anyone who agrees to hold it for six months. This seems like a more practical solution than a whole bunch of policy nods which, as far as I can tell, can't actually prevent someone from day trading the stock based on short-term performance. Am I totally off base?
Nope, that's a very good idea. I personally don't think long-term investors should have to pay the same price to buy stock as speculators. But in finance this is still considered a very radical notion, so I think it will be some time before we see this idea adopted
Both NYSE and Nasdaq rules require the record date to be announced at least 10 days in advance, so a mainstream U.S.-listed company can't backdate it. Whether it'd pass SEC muster if we take exchange rules out of the picture, I don't know.
Yes there is much research in this area. Personally, I first got interested in this as a philosophical matter from reading about Toyota and its history (which has been extensively researched)
I think it's interesting that you use the word "despite" here, since of course it's those very companies that provide the data for this area of research.
I don't have time to pull links to papers right now, but there are some referenced in our (rather old now) whitepaper:
Some of my favorite research shows what happens to pairwise-matched companies where one went public and one stayed private. The effects are totally predictable.
> Some of my favorite research shows what happens to pairwise-matched companies where one went public and one stayed private. The effects are totally predictable.
That sounds like an interesting read. How can I find it?
I don't have the citation handy, but I'll keep an eye out next time I go through my archives and see if I can dig up a link. It's a fascinating branch of research, imho
What specific benefit does listing on the LTSE bring for companies? Can't they just operate with a view for the long term and trade on a different exchange? (I'm thinking about Amazon/Berkshire Hathaway here)
What should consumer investors expect to be different when interacting with LTSE listed stocks? I am not asking about the LTSE restrictions on the companies, rather about how trading / etc works with these stocks?
As of today, investing in LTSE listed stocks is 100% backwards compatible with every existing stock trading platform and broker. You literally will not notice any difference.
Hi Eric - don’t know what AMA means (sorry), but I would like to talk about this with you / your team. I also sent you a note via your website and Twitter. Bottom line is that coverage of your recent announcement talks about dual listing. I’m wondering if you’d be equipped to do a primary. Thanks!
Do you see benefit corporations as being a natural fit for LTSE? If so, would LTSE ever require companies be organized as b-corps as a condition of listing on LTSE?
Yes, I think it's a very natural fit. The first wave of B-corps that went public had a very bad experience, and I think the problem was that they did not have the right financial infrastructure around them to support their vision. We hope to remedy that.
So far, we have taken the view that each company has to design its long-term program around its own philosophy and approach. I don't know if it would really work to adopt a one-size-fits-all rule like this, even if I personally liked it.
We will have to see how the concept of benefit corporations evolves. So far, it seems that a number of companies that truly exist for the benefit of humanity have chosen not to organize themselves under that framework. As long as this is true, I'd be wary of excluding them from LTSE.
The research is pretty clear that companies run in a long-term way are more profitable, resilient and lead to better returns for investors. I can't speak to which stocks will do better than others, but we built the listing standards to match the actions seen to drive long-term performance.
I'm curious as to specific differences wrt to other exchanges, your website doesn't really do a direct comparison. For example, do you require holders to hold a certain amount of time before being able to sell, are there limits around frequency of trading, how do you make money, etc.
Or is it more around including companies that think long term? In which case, I think that's also doable on normal exchanges (for example, Amazon is famous for long term thinking and has done well on normal exchanges too).
The SEC's rules around trading (today) really prohibit a lot of the "obvious" ideas people have had about how to slow down trading. We have some stuff in the works here, but it won't be public for a while.
That said, we have adopted a construct that we call the "Very Simple Market" that eliminates a number of trading "features" such as hidden liquidity. We think this makes it a more conducive environment for the longest-term investors to trade. We also have a business model that is much more aligned with the long-term investors and companies than most incumbents. We don't seek to maximize our trading volume, so that requires us to make money by helping our customers run their businesses better.
As we say in SV, if you're not the customer, you're the product. This applies to issuers as well.
On your latter point, you've got it right. We don't think we have an exclusive on good ideas, and there's definitely examples where talented founders have found ways to build for the long-term in spite of the existing market structures.
But when was the last time you heard a CEO say that they were able to think long-term _because_ of the markets in stead of in spite? That to me is a key difference
To which extend do you think market fragmentation (as a result of reg NMS) is part of the problem?
If i understand your reference to "hidden liquidity" correctly, you have simple order types and when compared to other venues.
Wouldn't it be better for price discovery, if all US equities were traded in one continuous limit order book instead of across a dozen venues, each with its own funky order types and quirks?
XKCD as usual quite prescient about the problems of standardization. I think pretty much everyone agrees with your solution -- so long as their platform is the one that everyone standardizes on!
The sad reality is that because of these issues (and, to be fair, others) most trading is moving off lit exchanges altogether. For some companies we are talking about 80% or more of the volume, and this would be even higher if not for the requirement that day-open and close auctions happen on the "home" exchange.
We have made a proposal to the SEC to bring this off-exchange activity back into the light of the protected quote, but nothing to report at this time about how, when, or if this will come to fruition:
https://longtermstockexchange.com/resources/docs/LTSE_Exempt...
What specific policies (not principles) will most people find to be the biggest difference between LTSE and NYSE? For example, if someone purchases shares through LTSE is there a minimum number of days that must elapse before the shares can be sold? Is there a policy regarding exactly how executive compensation should align with long-term success, or is the policy just that the company needs to publish such a document? Etc.
LTSE work through what are called "principles-based listing standards" which require every listed company to adopt (and publish) a concrete policy that shows how they are committing to each specific principle. LTSE has a regulatory team that acts as a certifying agency. So while we don't have a one-size-fits-all policy that every company must enact on, for example, executive comp, they do have to make real, concrete commitments in that area in order to be listed.
In terms of trading, we don't currently have any rules of the sort you mention. Under today's regulatory framework, this would be hard (but not impossible) to do. We hope to see more work in this area, but nothing to announce at this time.
I have seen that some exchanges like NASDAQ are considering adding social justice elements into their requirements for listed companies. For instance, NASDAQ had submitted a proposal to force diversity of boards on companies (https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nasdaq-to-advance-diver...). Personally I do not like the mission creep and politicization of institutions in general, and am wondering where/how you draw the line on what you will require of companies.
Your listing principles page (https://longtermstockexchange.com/listings/principles/) is interesting in that there's a lot I agree with (like compensation policy) but then some other principles (like "The company’s approach to diversity and inclusion" or "The company’s impact on the environment and its community") are vague enough that I am not sure what it implies. Is it fair to consider LTSE a "progressive" financial institution?
Our reforms are fundamentally market-based. We work with companies to develop policies that commit them to the values that they think ensure their ability to pursue their mission long-term. It's not one-size-fits-all and ultimately investors will judge the results. I think you'll see a diversity of companies and views on the exchange, just as you see a diversity of views among our own investors and employees.
What’s the deal with captable.io transitioning from “a public service for every startup to safeguard their equity from day one” to basically the same price model as carta?
Why weren’t legacy companies given grandfathered pricing?
I know you're probably here to more specifically talk about this news but I'm curious broadly what you've learned that's surprised you about running a stock exchange that outsiders may not know.
No question but I love the idea. I was just explaining to my wife about how I never want to work at a publicly traded company because their only goal is maximizing shareholder value in the short term.
Profit is not directly linked to shareholder value. E.g. an expanding business that is operating at a loss could end up benefiting the shareholders (through valuation) if there is an expectation of future profitability.
>> their only goal is maximizing shareholder value in the short term
and mentioned Amazon making a loss. You're right that Amazon could credibly be described as "maximizing shareholder value", but I think the question of whether they maximize shareholder value in the short term is more subtle.
You could do some jiujitsu and say "long-term value maximization is equivalent to short-term value maximization under reasonable assumptions", but I think the discussion upthread was about a more prosaic concept of short-termism that is related to profits. They wouldn't have qualified their statement with "in the short term" if they'd meant "expected NPV" :-).
The change the parent is probably thinking of is that you could offer up to $5 million as a Reg Crowdfunding round (vs the previous cap of $1 million) if you wanted to offer non-accredited investors a way to invest while you are still a private company.
Wefunder or Republic or another such service would create a special purpose LLC to be the shareholder of record (or SAFE/noteholder or whatever) on your cap table.
That's not exactly how it works, but close in spirit. When you invest in Republic, you are entering into a contract called a CrowdSAFE. It's a convertible instrument much like a SAFE, but instead of converting into the next priced funding round into stock, it converts in a liquidity event directly into stock (or the cash equivalent if an acquisition for cash). There is no intermediary SPV.
What you're describing however is the way AngelList works.
The reason for this is mainly because the Reg CF terms prohibit crowdfunding investment vehicles (such as funds or SPVs).
Interesting. I've purchased a CrowdSAFE with Republic and I think that aligns with what I remember about the CrowdSAFE.
Recently though I bought shares in a private company through wefunder and the docs specify I'll be a unitholder in an SPV LLC set up by wefunder that will own the stock, so I wonder if this prohibition changed with the $5m cap change?
The main problem with the normal stock exchanges in my opinion is the lack of meaningful long term shorts. Betting up and down are highly asymmetric in cost. Meaningful long term shorts are needed to prevent bubbles.
Is there such mechanism in the LTSE?
> The CEOs of both companies, which also are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, were early investors in LTSE with financial stakes of less than 1.5%.
So the CEOs of Twilio and Asana invested in this exchange then convinced their board to list on it. I'm sure they're not just interested for personal gain though.
> To list on LTSE in August, Twilio and Asana are agreeing to a slate of commitments such as aligning executive and board compensation with long-term performance; taking customers and employees into account; and explaining how the company’s board oversees its long-term strategy. These commitments must be concrete policies that can be monitored by LTSE.
It’s hard to make the claim that public markets overly prioritise the short term with the last weeks’ string of EV start-ups IPOs / SPAC mergers and ExxonMobile Board manoeuvre.
At the same time, founder supervoting is falling out of favor. This neatly backdoors to the same result—founders (and institutional investors, who can invest through a long-holding front end and then allocate exposure to that on the back end) gaining outsized influence over individual investors (who aren’t coördinated) and hedge funds. Seems like a lot of collateral damage.
LTSE is a sorely needed financial innovation but all the stuff around social impact is a new burden I think... Not everyone's going to be interested in that, oh well.
Oh man. Wish I had known this earlier. Maybe I would’ve jumped on the bandwagon. Moskovitz has to be worth between $10-30B with Facebook nearing a trillion market cap. $7.5-$10M daily stock purchases is nothing for him. He could do it for 60 total days without affecting him financially at all.
I have to check the comps, but Monday.com was valued more than Asana just like two weeks ago and far more before the pumping began. How much better could Monday.com’s financials be
I find the name Asana for a company, to be offensive as cultural appropriation. Secondly, I am absolutely opposed to the Surveillance Capitalism model, which these people have driven relentlessly. This combination feels dystopian.
> To list on LTSE in August, Twilio and Asana are agreeing to a slate of commitments such as aligning executive and board compensation with long-term performance; taking customers and employees into account; and explaining how the company’s board oversees its long-term strategy. These commitments must be concrete policies that can be monitored by LTSE.
i remember reading about asana on here years ago. wasn't it supposed to be the thing that saved us from JIRA but ended up turning into the very thing everyone hated about JIRA?
Twilio’s great but what does everyone think of their long term prospects? Pretty much every automatically sent text message / WhatsApp is probably sent from Twillo already. What is next for them?
Sending SMSes is their core offering, for sure, but I think that's selling them short. They also offer programmable text+voice, chat rooms, video chat etc. Lots of useful stuff for building/bootstrapping your own platforms. Their other product (through acquisition) is SendGrid, for transactional emails.
I imagine what's next is more of the same: solutions to do with different ways of communicating. Perhaps no-code/low-code variants to many of their offerings, much like what Stripe is doing (powerful technical layer, but also very business friendly introductory solutions)
Asana has been an incredible upgrade from JIRA. We switched two weeks ago and it's the best project management solution I've used by miles, nothing even begins to compare.
Their peak stock price was like 20% higher than right now. With a lot of similar cloud companies hitting all time highs, Twilio’s market cap would exceed $75B if they hit all time high again. Acquisitions can do quite a bit. That’s how Salesforce runs :). Twilio bought Segment for $3.2 in stock.
I get that you're just being snarky here, but I've often wondered about comments like this. When did being virtuous become an insult? I actually think the ancient view of virtue is due for a bit of a comeback. Increasingly, investors and employees both want to know which companies are actually purpose- and mission-driven and which ones are not. I don't see the harm in giving them a way to signal that, as long as it's real.
I also don't understand the "liquidity" part of your comment either. LTSE is a participant in something called the National Market System which guarantees that every stock listed on every National Securities Exchange has the exact same level of access to liquidity.
Because pretending to be virtuous for personal gain is not in fact virtuous. Companies will push social issues while its in vogue and convenient and when its not they will abruptly stop - or at least that's what many seem to believe.
Investing in green energy for your corp is virtuous(some would argue).
Running ads about how you support BLM/LGBT/etc(no real cost to this) while pretending not to know about the environmental destruction and human rights abuses your products create around the world(would require actual action) is virtue signaling.
From what I’ve been able to gather, Liquidity just means being able to get out of a bad decision at little to no cost.
Basically no one wants to hold risk anymore, but still have growth… which is the fundamental flaw in the markets that continues to rear its ugly head in exotic derivatives
Liquidity only eliminates the type of risk that is associated with liquidity. Having less liquidity risk does not in any way mean you're more likely to lose money in general.
Less liquidity means there's a larger bid-ask spread: if you're in a rush to either buy or sell, there's a chance you'll pay a premium for a quick trade. If you're not in a rush, you probably won't pay this premium at all.
Saying that liquidity reduces is a fallacy that was believed quite heavily pre-2007.
Liquidity does not reduce risk, it has no effect on risk because it has no effect on outcomes. If you invest in a stock that goes bankrupt, there is no way to get out of that decision with no cost.
Equally, someone is only willing to supply that liquidity if they get something in return. So in those worst cases, you will usually not have the liquidity that you think because someone needs a return for taking the elevated risk in those situations (and again, that risk doesn't go anywhere, liquidity just shifts that risk to someone else).
Look at the market, is there really a deficit of risk-taking? I think there is a deficit of understanding of the risks but there is a massive excess of risk-taking in pretty much every asset class.
I also wouldn't associate illiquidity with return either, that is quite wrong. The decentralized market-making model that we have minimises costs and maximises liquidity but this is just a net gain for investors (due to the clear demarcation of types of risk-taking within the system). There is no real illiquidity premium, and the societal gain from higher liquidity is just a pure gain for the system (again, I am not saying it reduces risk, it does not but it does reduce costs, increase transparency, and produces a system that is robust relative to bank-led financing systems common in Europe, for example).
> Look at the market, is there really a deficit of risk-taking? I think there is a deficit of understanding of the risks but there is a massive excess of risk-taking in pretty much every asset class.
There's a deficit of risk-taking in a crisis (and maybe an excess of risk-taking in "normal" times). In the old days crises would be softened by market makers who were willing to act as de facto prop traders and buy at the bottom for their own account - an extremely risky trade ("falling knife") but an extremely lucrative one if you get it right. Nowadays the algorithmic herd just exits the market when times go bad, and if you did do the trade and make a killing then you'd get your trades broken ("clearly erroneous") and have to fight a lawsuit and it just wouldn't be worth it.
Shifting risk is not productive — it may be in some “economic” model, but by the hand of the market it is waste heat - and only compounds the probability of edge cases.
People shave off a return for holding the hot potato! Not one factory is built, not one wage increases, and not one investment made save for the HFT yacht.
This gets at my problem with the secondary market in general and why I believe dividends should be the only repayment terms for equity… it would align with the tax favors bestowed in our current market
Pretending you have virtue is not being virtuous. It is the opposite of virtuous. The "ancient view of virtue" was concerned with the internal, not external. Whether you say something is true, whether you say are virtuous has no bearing on reality. The ancients did not know about performativity.
And the suspicion here is well earned. Being purpose and mission driven is usually just code for: the CEO likes to take big piles of your money, set it on fire, and then hop on CNBC and tell people how setting fire to your money makes them virtuous. Anyone who feels they need to signal their virtue, to me and use that as a pretext for getting my money, is likely someone who I should not trust with my money (so far, as someone who saw this over and over working in the investment business, this suspicion has never been unfounded). It is far easier to work with someone who says they will act in their own self-interest than someone who claims they have no interests at all (and btw, this is where things mostly go wrong: managers who say and believe there are disinterested whilst only following their own self-interest...something like LTSE sounds very much another mechanism for managers to shed accountability).
