TrumpGrifts: A bunch of jumped-up monkeys who can be convinced to self-immolate because dulce et decorum pro patria mori can also be convinced to make a Donald Trump into a president—or a billionaire. Perhaps the really interesting thing is that there are so many people, many young, mostly male, who find it beside the point to try to assess the odds on their gambles—for whom it is enough that someone is willing to tell a story, and swear that this story is true:

Matt Levine: Trump Media’s Business Doesn’t Matter: ‘Three years ago… people realized that… while the value of a company’s cash flows probably does set a real floor under its stock price… it does not put a ceiling on the price…. There is no law of nature requiring that a stock’s price has to equal the present value of its future cash flows, or even that it has to equal the market’s collective estimate of its future cash flows. That’s just a matter of tradition, and the tradition is only like 80 years old…. Stocks… [could] be pure tokens in a psychological gambling game…. I said… “like three years ago,” because… GameStop… meme stocks, stocks that trade purely on sentiment and attention…. But really I think the third era started a bit earlier, with cryptocurrency…. With time, I have become more comfortable with the answer to “what are we all doing here?” The answer is “not fundamental analysis.” Maybe it is “having fun online.” Maybe it is “playing a complex game of mass psychology.” Maybe it is “using our investments as a form of self-expression, buying stocks and cryptocurrencies we identify with and feeling better about ourselves if they go up.”… Maybe there are mechanisms to discover; maybe in 10 years there will be textbooks on Meme Stock Analysis…. Again, I don’t think I’m all that serious about any of this, or at least I hope I’m not… <bloomberg.com/opinion/a…>