It is unfortunate we can’t buy many business executives for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth.

The joke turns on the gap between intrinsic worth (what an executive actually contributes) and perceived worth (what the executive believes they deserve). By framing it as an arbitrage opportunity—buy low, sell high—Forbes satirizes inflated ego and overcompensation while invoking the language of markets to judge performance. The implication is that organizations and investors often pay for confidence, image, or status rather than measurable value, and that self-valuation can be wildly optimistic. The line also functions as a caution to leaders: credibility and compensation should track demonstrated outcomes, not self-regard. Its sting comes from treating vanity as a mispricing problem.