Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon call for an end to quarterly profit forecasts

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Warren Buffett, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon and almost 200 other CEOs are calling for companies to stop offering quarterly profit forecasts.

“In our experience, quarterly earnings guidance often leads to an unhealthy focus on short-term profits at the expense of long-term strategy, growth and sustainability,” Buffett and Dimon wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published late Wednesday.

The piece, titled “Short-Termism Is Harming the Economy,” also featured this criticism of today’s markets:

“The financial markets have become too focused on the short term. Quarterly earnings-per-share guidance is a major driver of this trend and contributes to a shift away from long-term investments.”

The Berkshire and J.P. Morgan bosses said their call to action this week with the Business Roundtable, an association of nearly 200 CEOs, is building on 2016 recommendations that were dubbed “Commonsense Corporate Governance Principles” and released by a group of well-known chief executives that included Buffett and Dimon.

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“The pressure to meet short-term earnings estimates has contributed to the decline in the number of public companies in America over the past two decades,” Buffett and Dimon also wrote in their Journal column.

The duo was appearing in a CNBC broadcast on Thursday morning to talk about their push against short-termism.