Paraphrase Despite the best of intentions, stock-based compensation does not always work as planned. To give managers an incentive to focus on stock prices, stockholders (acting through boards of directors) awarded executives stock options that could be exercised on a specified future date. An executive could exercise the option on that date, receive stock, immediately sell it, and earn a profit. The profit was based on the stock price on the option exercise date, which led some managers to try to maximize the stock price on that specific date, not over the long run. That, in turn, led to some horrible abuses. Projects that looked good from a long-run perspective were turned down because they would penalize profits in the short run and thus lower the stock price on the option exercise day. Even worse, some managers deliberately overstated profits, temporarily boosted the stock price, exercised their options, sold the inflated stock, and left outside stockholders "holding the bag" when the true situation was revealed