Fire People, Stock Goes Up. The market has created a permanent feedback loop where the single most profitable decision any CEO can make on any given day is to fire people. Not ship a product. Not grow revenue. Not innovate. Just delete headcount and watch the stock rip. Once Wall Street rewards that behavior with a 24% pop, every other CEO in the S&P sees it. And now the analysts start asking the ones who haven't cut yet why they haven't cut yet. The CEOs who keep people on become the contrarians. This is a problem.