Market does not. CEOs are incentivized to please the markets and thus reduce investing at some point to prepare to exercise their stock options and sell. (There

Market does not. CEOs are incentivized to please the markets and thus reduce investing at some point to prepare to exercise their stock options and sell. (There is plenty of discussion on what the exercise date should be and some people are pushing beyond 4 years for that reason.) A lot of companies set a 4 year window for their CEOs. Funneling capital into research, displeases stock holders, as you show reduced earnings. Observe that markets care about steady earning growth; catching these things before they happen in general will not earn you points. That is a sad part of human psychology. Think as a metaphor that an average manager will ask how many bugs did this guy fix and not how many bugs and security issues did this guy caught or saved us from. (See freaking Equifax -- https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/efx https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/efx -- they should have been out of business [my personal opinion]. Their stock price is fine. The only mistake of the CEO as far as SEC is concerned is he used inside information and sold.)