Assets Are Ephemeral

Debts are money good

Rudy Havenstein

Apr 05, 2025

∙ Paid

Today’s title is borrowed from Rick Rule.

“I get zero sense of panic, and trust me, I know what panic looks like.”

Alyosha, Friday afternoon, 4/4/2025

Sad Guys on Trading Floors is back!

My joke of the week:

Larry Summers is against tariffs because his pal Jeffrey Epstein was a minor importer.

That line led to several angry folks yelling at me about Trump and Epstein - as if this was somehow news to me (and as if I hadn’t mentioned their association many times over the years.)

I posted this a couple weeks ago:

And these, back in 2014:

The nonstop partisan tribalism is so tiresome.

Here’s a few other bad jokes I made this week:

The good thing about bear markets is that over time you go down fewer points on 4% drops.
I've converted my portfolio to private-equity so I don't have to mark-to-market.
Even if the Dow 30 index drops 4% every day, forever, it will never hit zero.

Not joking:

(On a day the SPX was down 5%) Today is that rare day when the top 10% feel like the other 90% do every day.
If margin calls cause you distress, maybe don't borrow money to gamble.

Gallows humor.

I got a lot of angry responses to this tweet below, mostly because my joke at the end went over the heads of many:

The anti-tariff rage on Fintwit is palpable. People are losing their minds worse than normal (I assume largely because they’re part of the 10% who own 93% of stocks.)

I really don’t know if what’s going on now policy-wise is horrific or wonderful (and I don’t think anyone else really does yet), but the hysteria is high.