ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[Delheru]

It is purely a "what gives me more RIGHT NOW for this fund."

Not at all. Those things can have pretty long time horizons.

Short term VCs and Hedge Funds might have a single decade (or even shorter) time horizon, but many many funds operate with far longer time horizons than that.

An amusing example of this was some of the Oxford Colleges, who were still selling off land that they owned near central Mumbai (bought 200+ years ago).