Akamai's business barely changed between 2000 and 2002. The price still went from $27bn to $78mn. Amazon's 1997 buyers paid bookshop money and were gifted a cloud business nobody had imagined, including management. Same unknowability in both cases, opposite outcomes, and the difference was never foresight. It was what the entry price already assumed.
Radical uncertainty is symmetric about outcomes and asymmetric about price. Pay little and the unwritten chapters come free. Pay a lot and you've prepaid for chapters nobody can read, the author included. So dots only connect backwards, agreed. The practical question at any flotation is how many unconnected dots are already in the invoice.
That invoice has a tell in the present tense. The S&P and Nasdaq printed all-time highs on the same day private AI secondaries showed buyers walking, the public tape still paying for chapters nobody can read while the illiquid side does the counting. Prepaid optimism surfaces first in the market that can't lean on momentum to look away.
Great writing. Thank you for a morning gem.
10/10 for the Orb reference !!! 😃
Glad to see I'm not the only one.
Akamai's business barely changed between 2000 and 2002. The price still went from $27bn to $78mn. Amazon's 1997 buyers paid bookshop money and were gifted a cloud business nobody had imagined, including management. Same unknowability in both cases, opposite outcomes, and the difference was never foresight. It was what the entry price already assumed.
Radical uncertainty is symmetric about outcomes and asymmetric about price. Pay little and the unwritten chapters come free. Pay a lot and you've prepaid for chapters nobody can read, the author included. So dots only connect backwards, agreed. The practical question at any flotation is how many unconnected dots are already in the invoice.
That invoice has a tell in the present tense. The S&P and Nasdaq printed all-time highs on the same day private AI secondaries showed buyers walking, the public tape still paying for chapters nobody can read while the illiquid side does the counting. Prepaid optimism surfaces first in the market that can't lean on momentum to look away.
(Loving You)