
The Long-Term Stock Exchange Comes to Life - kawera
https://blog.ltse.com/the-long-term-stock-exchange-comes-to-life-c497f29bbc73
======
whack
_" Tenured shareholder voting power, meaning that a shareholder’s votes would
be proportionately weighted by the length of time the shares have been held"_

I wonder if we're going to see the rise of holding companies just to get
around this rule. _" Our holding company owns shares in XYZ, and will never
sell those shares ever. Instead of buying/selling XYZ directly, you can
instead buy/sell shares in our holding company. We will confer voting power in
XYZ, proportional to how many shares of our holding company you own,
regardless of how long you've held them."_

I suppose one way to prevent this loophole is to grant voting power only to
individuals, and not entities, but that would screw over index-funds, mutual-
funds, foundations, non-profit-endowments etc etc.

~~~
phkahler
Your concern is only the tip of the iceberg. Any set of rules will be gamed.
The only way I can think of (and it can probably be gamed) that would really
put the long term into the executives mind is to have most of their
compensation based on the value of the company a few years after they're done.
But given the existence of options and shorting stocks and any number of ways
to mitigate risk or make money that don't depend on positive outcome for the
average investor, anything can be gamed.

With a shift to long term outcomes, one could do any number of things that are
short term bad to line their pockets and claim the benefit is further down the
road. The problem isn't really about short or long term goals - does Amazon or
Tesla give a rats ass about profit next quarter? No, and IMHO one of those is
a solid company while both have high valuations.

In some cases I think the answer is to strip investors of control. They are
the ones allegedly pushing short term profits at the expense of the long term.
But what is ownership if not a form of control?

Another thought I keep coming back to is dividends. A proper investment gives
returns without having to sell your stake. Lets provide incentives for
companies to share profit rather than pump stock prices, then everyone can get
excited about the right things. This has its downside too in cases where
growth may require reinvestment. Perhaps forcing dividend payments for all
cash equivalents above some threshold? I dunno, there are a lot of ways to
approach this and none of them are good for all companies.

~~~
roenxi
> In some cases I think the answer is to strip investors of control. They are
> the ones allegedly pushing short term profits at the expense of the long
> term.

Hopefully this was a very fleeting thought; when it comes to ideas about
changing corporate structure you couldn't really come up with a worse one. It
is a complete violation of the skin-in-the-game principle that has so
successfully propelled capitalist society for more than 200 years.

If management aren't accountable to the wishes of people who have proven they
can preserve or grow piles of money, there will be economic waste on a
colossal scale compared to what we have now. Corporate management would be
overwhelmed by fast talking con men.

Turn your attention instead to the forces that are making short term decisions
the better ones. I'm no expert, but if short-term thinking has been going on
for a long-term time then something is more fundamentally wrong than "gee,
people with money must just be stupid!". People don't seem to like accepting
quite how rationally intelligent markets are - the only thing markets have
been shown not to do well is make sacrifices for moral reasons.

~~~
chii
But when does 'short-term' become 'long-term'?

If i make good (short-term) decisions each quarter, then won't that just add
up to be a good decision after 4 quarters? If it turns out that the 'good'
decision last quarter turned out to be bad _this_ quarter, then you'd make a
change to fix it for _this_ quarter_.

Rather than plan out a 10 year plan, which you can't possibly predict in
advance what may happen.

~~~
vidarh
Commodore is a wonderful example of how a number of "good" short term
decisions turned into long term disasters.

E.g. one (of many) factor in Commodores decline and failure was that they at
one point made a "brilliant" move of undercutting the competition in a way
that drove massive sales while costing them dis-proportionally little in lost
revenues from all of the hardware already in their channel.

Unfortunately it did that by cutting the feet under their dealer network by
going mass market retailers and cutting the RRP in public, without giving
retailers advance warning, and without giving their dealers rebates on product
in their channel that had not yet been sold.

As a result their results looked good for a little while, but they bred so
much resentment in their dealer network that it still haunted them years later
when they suddenly badly needed that dealer network to push out the Amiga,
which was released at a price point where the mass market discount retailers
weren't suitable.

It took years for the total cost of that stunt to be visible, and even then
it's hard to account for the total impact to the company even now, decades
later.

It's not an easy problem.

------
WalterBright
"short-term pressures were driving their decision-making, often at the
sacrifice of the long-term potential of the business."

This is a popular opinion, but I find it difficult to believe. It relies on
the notion that stockholders are fools and unable to recognize when a company
destroys its long term prospects for short term gain.

The trouble is, once the short term gain is there, who are the short termers
going to sell to? A bunch of suckers?

And Wall Street richly rewards companies for long term behavior - there's no
other explanation for Amazon's high P/E.

Lastly, the stock market returns for the last 50 years are excellent. If the
corporations were all sacrificing long term for the short term, how has such
sustained growth been possible?

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I have experienced short-term thinking, driven by stock market expectations,
very directly.

Working on a game, we had a build ready two weeks before the end of a quarter,
but we weren't _quite_ done. We had just a few minor tweaks that needed just
two more weeks to complete, and we in fact delivered a complete game two weeks
later...that was ignored, because it was more important to make their
quarterly goal than to release a better product.

Turns out there were several games being developed that quarter, and ours was
the _only_ one to make it even close to under the deadline. But because they
were doing quarterly reports, they were under tremendous pressure to release
_something_ , and so an inferior product was released.

Oh, and this was the era of physical cartridges. No updates possible. We put
in a ton of extra work to make it perfect and they _didn 't care._

The international versions were shipped later and included the improved
changes. If anyone is interested in seeing the difference, you can probably
find the ROMs and a Game Boy Advance emulator: Check out the US release of
"Tetris Worlds" and any of the international releases (all include English,
but the three different international releases each included other languages
as well).

~~~
WalterBright
> We put in a ton of extra work to make it perfect and they didn't care.

The question is whether the game would have made more money for the company if
it was perfect and shipped later. It is not necessarily true that making a
product better and delaying shipping is long term better for the company.

~~~
chii
> It is not necessarily true that making a product better and delaying
> shipping is long term better for the company.

a perfect game released later may either become a classic that has huge long
tail potential. A early-to-market game may produce a short hit/fad that
passes.

It's almost random which will happen - as those doing these sorts of
judgements prior to actually releasing have their own personal biases which
can cloud their judgement one way or another.

~~~
WalterBright
Of course people can misjudge the details. But that doesn't mean they are
deliberately sacrificing the long term for the short term. It just means they
are mistaken.

~~~
gfody
rushing a product out, putting extra pressure on your engineers, squeezing
them, is always a sacrifice and a risk. and it's always a long-term loser. you
can get away with it a few times, if you do it every single time your
engineers will burn out or revolt if the product failure doesn't do it for
them.

------
trothamel
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-vs-wall-
street-c...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-vs-wall-street-can-
the-new-long-term-stock-exchange-disrupt-capitalism-1508151600)

In the linked WSJ article, that explains this quite a bit better than the
medium blogpost. Basically, it appears that the main thing is that the voting
power of shares win increase with the time the shares are owen. (Though
there's talk of opting in to this process.) There's also going to be a
prohibition on companies giving quarterly earnings guidance.

It seems like it's intended to reward founders and long-term employees of
startups by privileging them over the more retail class of investor, and
people with short-term goals, like activist investors. (But this is a mixed
thing - it's more accountable than a setup with multiple stock classes where
the founders retain all control.)

EDIT: Random thought: I wonder how this exchange would handle shorting stock,
when it comes to the tenure requirement.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _it 's intended to reward founders and long-term employees of startups by
> privileging them over the more retail class of investor_

It will just prioritize investors with the sense to stick their shares in an
SPV ( _e.g._ an LLC or trust) and then sell the SPV with the premium voting
rights attached. (Also amplify the benefits of intergenerational wealth
transfer.)

~~~
TheRealPomax
There is no "just". If someone can come up with that exploit in an HN comment,
it would be incredible if there were no provisions to explicitly forbid this
kind of share from being used in this fashion.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
It’s an NP hard problem. Tracing beneficial ownership is tough to scale.
That’s why our system does it sparingly, _e.g._ when investigating
malfeasance. Every past attempt at systematising this trace function has run
into hurdles which are now predictable. They aren’t easy to solve without
creating unacceptable side effects, and it’s easier for the beneficial owner
to adapt than for an exchange to re-write its rules.

------
eries
Hey everyone, Eric Ries here. I’m the founder and CEO of the LTSE (and also
the Lean Startup guy). Happy to see the discussion here and will try and
answer a few questions. Unfortunately, a lot of the details of how the LTSE
works are subject to regulatory approval, so I can’t share too much while we
are working out the details with them. Still, I’ll do my best to answer.

Thanks for the comments and happy new year

~~~
bsaul
I had a similar idea (x) a few years ago, but leading this kind of project is
way beyond my capabilities. I'm thrilled to see people try to accomplish this,
and you seem to have a fantastic team, congrats.

(x) My first idea was to create a market where you couldn't resell a stock
until some (long) time has passed. Pretty much the exact opposite of
algorithmic trading trying to pass orders at light speed. Another was to
forbid any kind of option (not stock options, options) or any other indirect
way of speculating over a stock. The idea was to try to ensure the stock
owners that someone wouldn't be able to crash the stock of a company he
doesn't have any interest in, just for profit.

All of those considerations stemmed from the 2008 crash of course, and all the
irrational behaviors that followed. But i still think there should be a way to
provide a "safer" place for business owners to attract new shareholders.

~~~
yellow_postit
Shorting a stock still does show interest though. That you believe the stock
is over valued.

------
crazygringo
> _The LTSE is designed to remove the short-term pressures that plague today’s
> public markets and reorient companies and investors around long-term
> thinking._

While it's certainly a _popular_ belief... from my understanding it's not at
all _proven_ , or even obvious, that stock markets encourage short-term
thinking over long-term.

Indeed, theory would suggest the contrary: the value of a stock is the
discounted entire future cash flow, which means the stock market should be
focused on the long-term more than anybody else.

While managers, on the other hand, may only be around for a few years, and one
could argue they have every incentive to pump the price of the stock as high
as it can go in the short term, to maximize the value of their options -- to
the detriment of long-term value.

Anecdotes are easy to find on both sides. But ask yourself which is more
likely -- that investors are dumb and managers are smart and investors should
just trust managers to do the right thing? Or that investors are smart and
need to hold managers accountable because it's the investors' own money at
stake, while managers are smart too but always want a longer leash to do their
own thing regardless of whether it's good for the company as a whole (e.g.
spend more resources on cool side projects)?

E.g. see
[https://www.ft.com/content/23fd921e-3b75-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f5...](https://www.ft.com/content/23fd921e-3b75-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f590c)

~~~
rsync
"Anecdotes are easy to find on both sides. But ask yourself which is more
likely -- that investors are dumb and managers are smart and investors should
just trust managers to do the right thing? Or that investors are smart and
need to hold managers accountable because it's the investors' own money at
stake, while managers are smart too but always want a longer leash to do their
own thing regardless of whether it's good for the company as a whole (e.g.
spend more resources on cool side projects)?"

Given that most equity investors no longer make investment decisions and
instead blindly buy indexes, there is an enormous opportunity for managers to
make decisions that benefit them to the detriment of the investors.

~~~
WalterBright
If that is true, why do S&P500 index values continue to rise, decade after
decade?

~~~
zero_intp
Hi Walter, this line of questions is not going to lead to a proof of your
position. The S&P index removes failures, so your question fails to address
survivor bias. Also, you argue the perfect over the good as a reason for
status quo.

~~~
WalterBright
Proof, no but strong evidence. Yes, companies fail all the time. Is that due
to short term thinking - or simply making too many mistakes? Sure, there are
companies that sacrifice long term for short term. Their market caps tank
because investors aren't fooled.

But the overall growth in the economy and strong long term growth of much of
the S&P 500 is ample evidence that investment is not dominated by short term
thinking, and that the S&P 500 is not a massive pump & dump scheme.

------
ChuckMcM
I like it conceptually but I'm not sure how different it is from schemes where
the founders have 10x voting rights to big chunks of stock (like Facebook and
Google). These companies, from a voting perspective, can't get bullied by
activist share holders but it doesn't help.

The pressure on stock price and its desirability comes in part from using it
as compensation (it goes up and your employees with ISOs stick around, it goes
down and that 'stock offer' has no drawing power) and using stock to buy other
companies (virtual capital). These pressures exist _outside_ the function of
voting and are just as prone to creating 'short term thinking' effects. After
all gaming the stock price is a universal executive sport and to get rid of
that, you have to get rid of the association between high stock price and
tangible short term benefit.

~~~
eries
That’s a good observation. Today’s Dual class systems only protect the
founders from a specific kind of short-term pressure. But there are still
thousands of employees overreacting to volatility and jumping at shadows. Our
rules are designed to address the full “user experience” of being an employee
in a public company, with the goal of aligning the whole enterprise towards
more Long-Term goals.

~~~
chii
employees should not be compensated with stock. Stock based compensation
creates incentives for such employees to increase just the stock price without
increasing the underlying value generation mechanism. Paying in stock also
means you're forcing the employee to 'invest'. While it's true that paying
with stock is a form of hand-cuffing to make sure the employee's incentive
aligns with the company, i feel it's just too easy to 'game' this stock
metric.

~~~
jnordwick
How does someone "increase just the stock price without increasing the
underlying value generation mechanism"?

So they have to fool an army of analysts that are generally very very good at
predicting growth and profits? They have to fool institutional investors who
are literally pros at filtering through BS filing gimmicks.

I've worked on trying trade automatically trade earnings reports
(professionally) and the biggest problem was always the numbers didn't tell
the complete story and investors caught on in literally seconds.

------
pavel_lishin
It would be nice if they explained what it actually was. This paragraph has
zero informational calories:

> _The LTSE is designed to remove the short-term pressures that plague today’s
> public markets and reorient companies and investors around long-term
> thinking. Through brand new listing standards, software tools, and advocacy,
> we’re reinventing the public company experience with novel approaches to
> executive compensation, shareholder voting, disclosure practices, board and
> stakeholder policies, and community governance._

~~~
qubex
Thanks for posting that.

Have you found any reference to how they would handle short selling or
derivatives? What if my ownership is of negative duration (naked short), how
would that affect the average against which the seniority is measured (clearly
I would have no title to voting). It has to be a relative measure since
otherwise if everybody just bought the stock everybody’s rights would be 0 and
nobody could vote to control the company.

How would they handle options? How would they handle ownership by means of
intermediate vehicles ( _e.g._ trust funds) that have themselves changed
hands?

~~~
eries
See above - our rules do handle derivatives and options elegantly (imho), but
I can’t say too much about how it works yet.

------
untangle
I applaud efforts to improve corporate governance and rationalize public
market function. But I believe that this initiative to "...realign investors
and companies around long-term value creation (LTVC)..." is a suboptimal
approach.

First, who in the game really favors LTVC? As a generalization, I would say
passive investors and/or those seeking income. For these parties, guaranteed
dividends might be a more effective alignment tool than titration of voting
power. The dividends would also provide more incentive for them to invest.

Second, the folks who actually run the companies – CEOs and Boards – often
favor the current setup. Short term metrics mean near term personal wealth. In
a world where CEO tenure can be measured in quarters, why wouldn't I want to
take money off the table ASAP? And lots of it. I would offer that greed (big
bonuses) overcomes fear (shareholder votes) for these players. Thus, the more
powerful lever is to reduce (alter) the incentives, not dilute the fear.

So perhaps a market that limits both retained earnings and executive
compensation would seem a better mechanism for alignment around LTVC.

~~~
roguecoder
There's also two other groups here: employees are very likely to value long-
term value creation, since it would provide job security, an incentive to
invest in employees, and a better chance of bonuses and raises. Second,
communities where these companies are located: handing out tax incentives and
cheap loans make more sense if the company isn't going to leave the community
high and dry in a couple years. The advantages of long-term value creation
aren't just fear-oriented: it's possible such a company will be able to hire
people and rent office space more cheaply because it has that label.

If that ends up being the case, boards could easily start looking for CEOs
willing to make the commitment to qualifying as a long-term company.

------
wyldfire
This article is short on details.

I found this one [1] with good details like, "what is different about this
exchange?"

* Tenured shareholder voting power, meaning that a shareholder’s votes would be proportionately weighted by the length of time the shares have been held

* Mandated ties at listed companies between executive pay and long-term business performance

* Additional disclosure requirements that allow companies to know who their long-term shareholders are and investors to know what investments the company is making

[1] [https://qz.com/704657/eric-ries-ltse-long-term-stock-
exchang...](https://qz.com/704657/eric-ries-ltse-long-term-stock-exchange/)

------
kharms
Why not just add friction to selling stocks soon after purchase, perhaps a fee
% that shrinks for X years. I feel that be simpler to implement and would lead
to a healthier market long-term.

The weighted votes method seems like it would have a more negative effect on
liquidity and would disproportionately reward large institutional investors
that can afford to stick around regardless of the financial outlook of the
company, just to hedge their bets.

Another problem I see is that weighted voting would make older shares more
valuable. By purchasing old shares you reduce the number of votes it would
take to do anything. This is sort of similar to having a continuous rather
than discreet set of share classes. What's interesting about this is that the
vast majority of non-institutional investors never vote on anything. This
means that, depending on the weighting function, individuals would actually be
incentivized to sell their old stock and buy young stock. This would result in
consolidation of more voting power in the hands of institutional investors and
founders.

The biggest benefit I see of the weighted voting method against other
alternatives is a bitcoin-like FOMO buy-in in the beginning.

~~~
WoodenChair
Isn’t that the same as how the capital gains tax currently works? The rate of
tax you pay on a winning stock goes down over time until you hit the long term
rate at a year.

~~~
brucephillips
No, there's just a single discontinuous tax discount at 1 year.

------
hago1234
The "blind" focus on quarterly reports is real.

It had me wonder what the opposite would be...

Imagine we forged a formula for 1000+ year projects. They would require more
money periodically and the availability of new funds would have a strong
influance on the value of previous cash injections. One could buy the
"failing" project cheap then simply do the new cash injection yourself OR in
case of success one could obtain the shares for less than their value.

We have so many papper driven games like this already. I see no reason why
this one wouldnt work.

The fun questuon to ask...

What could we build that would take 1000 years?

~~~
tbak
You might be interested in the wonderful book series "The Three-Body Problem"
by Liu Cixin. It explores (among countless other things) how huge expensive
projects that last multiple generations could be implemented.

~~~
eries
This book is wonderful even apart from its interest in Long-Term thinking

------
qubex
Most people seem to be concerned about ”gaming the rules” but are positing
scenarios that can be modelled as acyclical directed graphs (ADG). I’m
wondering if who framed the rules even _thought_ of general directed graphs
with potential cycles (company A owns shares of company B that owns shares of
company C that owns shares of companies B and A). It would seem that most
manners of computing seniority would fail in such situations because of the
lack of unique, non-ambiguous ancestry (but I might be wrong).

------
grwthckrmstr
Can't comment on the "long-term" success of LTSE, but I LOVE the philosophy.

Optimising for long-term benefits could help our civilisation become aware,
and actively take steps towards the oncoming ecological disaster (because
capitalism says if we're destroying the Earth, the solution isn't to stop
"growth" and save Earth... Find another Earth instead!)

~~~
eries
Thanks

------
deepGem
I was initially very skeptical of this idea and I still am. Like many threads
have pointed below, long term strategy is super easy to game. Oh 'we haven't
made any money this quarter because we are debating and finalizing our long
term goals'. This could become the anathema of rapid iteration.

NVidia and FB are perfect examples of consistent performance Q over Q. That
doesn't mean they don't have a long term vision. I'm sure there are many such
companies that I haven't heard of.

Companies not going public has little or nothing to do with the focus on short
term earnings. Companies are not going public because 1\. There are
alternative sources of cheap cash PE funds etc. 2\. The cost of doing an IPO
is incredibly high (in terms of time). 3\. Associated processes Sarbanes-Ox
etc are a pain to manage.

CEOs are willing to sacrifice some equity to avoid all these hassles and
remain private.

~~~
roguecoder
How is that gaming long-term strategy? That sounds like not having a long-term
strategy, which would be terrible under any philosophy. If anything it's
easier to coast by now, when no one bothers asking if you've thought past next
quarter.

Facebook is a very long-term company, with a consistent mission, moonshot
projects and "wasteful" spending all over the place. It gets to do that,
though, because it's already dual class and not subject to the whims of the
market.

------
vadimberman
An incredibly important initiative, although I'm wondering how it will catch
up.

The current public trading framework has so many issues, it defeats the
original purpose.

* amazing number of parasite intermediaries that create absolutely no value. Someone sells a day after they bought, how did it contribute to the economy or the company that tries to create the value?

* opacity required to keep the system "fair", and used to avoid responsibility

* populist decisions harmful in long-term because the management will be long gone after the effects emerge

and much more.

~~~
eries
I guess we’ll see. Thanks for the kind words

------
choxi
Can someone tell me if this idea is crazy?

I've noticed that fundraising and liquidity are common problems for startup
founders, and it seems to me that the public stock market could solve many of
those problems. What if all startups were publicly traded entities right after
incorporation?

Some of the benefits you would gain as a founder:

\- A larger pool of potential investors. You would have access to investment
from anyone instead of just accredited investors. For example, it would be
interesting if early adopters could invest in startups that they support just
as easily as they can buy stock in Apple because they love Apple products.

\- Liquidity. You could buy and sell your shares of the company at any point.
If you're a startup founder investing 100% of your time and capital into a
business, it makes sense for you to diversify your assets at some point and
not put all of your eggs into one basket.

\- Better incentives. If your company was publicly traded from Day 1, you
would still be incentivized to raise the value of your business because you
still own shares. Better yet, now you don't have to worry about building a
billion dollar business to satisfy the economics of your investors, you can
sell shares of your $20M business so you're not worrying about your exit
strategy all the time.

There's been a lot of activity in this space with the new crowdfunding bill,
the SEC loosening up requirements for small companies, and things like ICOs.
Has anyone else ever considered doing this with their startups? Just curious
to hear what others think.

~~~
toast0
There is a market for this, the OTC or pink sheets. At initial listing and if
the company itself or its insiders or affiliates are selling, there are
required financial disclosures.

I think there's resistance to public trading however because it generally
requires more structured accounting (GAAP vs cash accounting), and invites
external scrutiny and pressure.

~~~
chii
> requires more structured accounting (GAAP vs cash accounting), and invites
> external scrutiny and pressure.

aren't all these good things? Prevents both scamming, as well as ensuring that
the founders take a careful look at their business, and that it isn't purely
fueled by stock/investment, but is generating profit?

~~~
toast0
If I'm an investor, I want comparable accounting which means GAAP; if I'm a
founder, maybe I just want to know what's in the bank account and don't want
to deal with deferring recognition of income for long term contracts.

External scrutiny and pressure is a mixed bag. It probably reduces the chances
of doing something stupid that destroys the company, but it also reduces the
chances of doing something stupid that changes the world.

~~~
jnordwick
Non GAAP tends to be more informative though when looking for specifics on
cash flow for example. I see more people using pro forma figures instead.

------
marcrosoft
This is terrible.

> Through brand new listing standards, software tools, and advocacy, we’re
> reinventing the public company experience with novel approaches to executive
> compensation, shareholder voting, disclosure practices, board and
> stakeholder policies, and community governance.

None of this reduces short term trading. Even if it did, reducing short term
trading would make for a less efficient market and prolong bubbles.

~~~
eries
Our goal is not to reduce trading

------
sytelus
TLDR;

 _Currently, an investor who owns one share for a month, or even a day, has
the same voting power as someone who has owned a share for years. Mr. Ries
wants what he calls “tourists” — short-term shareholders — to have less voting
power than long-term shareholders, whom he calls “citizens of the republic.”
Over time, shareholders of companies on the LTSE would gain more votes based
on their length of ownership.

Mr. Ries also takes aim at compensation plans. He wants companies that list on
his exchange to have stock vesting programs of at least five years and
recommends 10 years, even for executives who leave the company._

This is from: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/business/dealbook/ipo-
cha...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/business/dealbook/ipo-chamath-
palihapitiya.html?ref=dealbook)

------
jgh
Their about page is kinda weird. Unless there are a bunch of people not
listed, it seems like there are only 3 people in the company who aren't a
manager of some kind. For example there are 2 software engineers, a software
engineering manager, a VP of technical operations, and a vp of engineering.

~~~
eries
Indeed. We don’t list most of or employees to protect their privacy. This is a
pretty controversial project.

------
yalogin
So if I understands correctly it’s intended to be a place where one can only
go long on shares? Why would some company list here? Why would investors use
it? That post was 2 paragraphs long and explains nothing.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> it’s intended to be a place where one can only go long on shares? Why would
> some company list here?

The obvious theory would be "they think they're a scam, and they don't want
other people to realize that".

------
JepZ
I hope they have a long breath.

Actually, I expect them to give birth to a few amazing unicorns (not value
wise but in terms of innovation), but at the same time it will take some time
before there will be any visible results.

------
dude01
Well, I like the general idea, but am not sure about their implementation.
Obviously have to wait for details, like SPV vs. real-person ownership.

But I wonder about their approach -- couldn't any public corporation, any time
it wants, put long-term goals into its "constitution" or whatever you want to
call corporate goals? Though perhaps their exchange will eventually put
pressure on corporations to do so.

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thrill
I find some irony in that the frequently stated mission of the LTSE is, well,
long term thinking, and yet the most recent Dec 7 medium post is about how
excited they are to be accelerating their launch by pairing with an existent
platform.

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eries
It’s a paradox of startup life that the best way to sustain a long-Term vision
is via rapid experimentation. Amazon is a great example of this, if you want
to see it at scale, but there are many others. So I don’t see any irony here.

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joubert
Is the intent to compete for listings against NYSE, LSE, SEHK, NASDAQ, etc.?

~~~
eries
Yes, although companies can dual list too

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juanmirocks
Very much looking forward to this idea coming into fruition. The post doesn’t
give much information though. I‘d so wished, that a service like Robinhood and
this too were available in Europe.

~~~
eries
Thanks

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hendzen
Another question - how does the exchange make money if the rules seemingly
discourage trading?

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eries
Even incumbent Exchanges make money a lot of other ways today

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hendzen
Trading fees? Market data costs? Colocation fees? All things that suffer if
you discourage active trading.

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twobyfour
To be successful, it doesn't have to make as much money as the other
exchanges. Just enough to continue to operate.

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husamia
when I saw the title I thought this would be a decentralized exchange since it
seems to be a hot topic nowdays. I am still trying to find more information.

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monkeydust
Will the exchange support debt instruments?

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eries
Unlikely

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known
To counter HFT?

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ringaroundthetx
Unless this was launched by State Street or Vanguard how would anyone think
this was a good idea or effective idea

More like Zero Liquidity Stock Exchange am I right?

~~~
eries
The way the LTSE is designed allows it to participate in the same level of
liquidity as conventional exchanges. There’s absolutely no difference from
that POV

