I'm not a finance guy, but from what I've heard, much of this is driven by the risk-free rate of return going up due to interest rate hikes. As the risk-free ra

I'm not a finance guy, but from what I've heard, much of this is driven by the risk-free rate of return going up due to interest rate hikes. As the risk-free rate increases, business performance has to change on two fronts: 1. The value of dollars today / next year increase while the value of dollars in 5-10 years decreases, incentivizing less R&D and preferring short term operations (and cutting staff) 2. Profitability needs to increase overall in order to make sense owning stock vs a guaranteed return from the government, otherwise the risk of holding a stock doesn't make sense. Basically the opposite of what happened when interest rates dropped, where "cash is trash" became the mantra. So it is driven by investors, but it doesn't require any broad coordination, only shared beliefs and self interest.