In biology, there is a concept called apoptosis. It is the programmed death of a cell. The cell receives a signal, and it quietly dismantles itself from within. No drama. No inflammation. Just an orderly exit so the organism can keep functioning. It is one of the most elegant processes in nature, and it happens […]
From Cannibals to Zombies: Shorting Companies That Shouldn’t Exist Read More »
On Market Making, Beautiful Models, and the Mess of Reality There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from solving equations on a whiteboard. It is clean. It is elegant. The variables behave themselves. The assumptions hold. And then someone walks onto a trading floor, tries to apply what they learned, and watches reality
The Ivory Tower vs. The Trading Floor: Why Theory Fails in Practice Read More »
Every market generates its own folklore. Stories about indicators that supposedly crack the code, ratios that reveal hidden truths, formulas that turn chaos into clarity. Most of these stories are generous with promise and stingy with results. The put call ratio, though, is one of the few that actually delivers something worth paying attention to.
Put Call Ratio 101: From Market Noise to Tradeable Signal Read More »
There’s a peculiar gap in American finance that most people never think about. Banks love lending to massive corporations because the deals are huge and the risks are calculable. Venture capitalists chase technology startups with dreams of hundred-fold returns. But what about the company that makes industrial fasteners in Ohio? The regional logistics firm in
The Middle-Market Medic: How BDCs Keep Main Street Breathing Read More »
We’ve been here before, sort of. Remember when people thought a billion dollars was unfathomable wealth? Then we got used to billionaires. Then trillion dollar companies arrived and we shrugged. Now we’re staring at the possibility of a ten trillion dollar company, and the strange thing is how normal it already feels. But it shouldn’t
The Final Boss: What Happens to the Economy When a Company Hits $10 Trillion? Read More »
Your brain doesn’t care about your retirement account. It cares about what happened in the last three seconds. This fundamental mismatch explains why millions of rational, educated people with good jobs and solid futures find themselves refreshing their trading apps at 2 AM, watching a stock that represents 0.3% of their portfolio move by pennies.
Dopamine vs. Dividends: The Neurological Reason You Can’t Stop Day Trading Read More »
Most investors treat market capitalization like a number on a scoreboard. A company worth ten billion dollars is simply ten times bigger than one worth a billion. This arithmetic thinking makes intuitive sense until you actually try to double these companies and discover that the laws of finance behave more like the laws of physics
The Physics of Finance: Why Doubling a $10B Market Cap is 10x Harder Than a $1B Read More »
Everyone loves good economic news. Rising GDP, falling unemployment, consumer spending through the roof. Politicians celebrate it, financial commentators cheer it, and your neighbor won’t stop talking about how great business is at his company. The economy is humming, and naturally, your portfolio should be soaring too. Except it doesn’t work that way. Here’s the
Why a “Strong Economy” Can Actually Be Bad News for Your Portfolio Read More »
We live in an age where a picture of an eggplant can mean something other than produce and a skull doesn’t necessarily signal danger. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that investors are now parsing rocket ships and diamond hands for market signals. What was once the domain of teenagers texting has become a legitimate
Emoji Economics: Can a Rocket Ship Icon Actually Predict a Rally? Read More »
Your brain is a terrible financial advisor. Not because it lacks intelligence or processing power, but because it evolved to keep you alive on the African savanna, not to evaluate stock portfolios. The mental shortcuts that helped your ancestors avoid becoming lunch now sabotage your investment decisions in ways both predictable and profound. Consider this:
The Availability Heuristic: Why One Bad News Story Outweighs Ten Years of Growth Read More »