Attention flow > Cash flow
You don’t need profits if you have buyers
The line between “this company is worth $500 billion because it makes amazing products” and “this company is worth $500 billion because everyone else says so” has never been thinner.
There was a time when buying a stock meant believing something about a business. You’d think: This company makes things people want, and will therefore earn money that eventually flows to me.
That time is over.
The main reason people buy stocks now isn’t because of a revolutionary business idea that will generate cash flows. It’s “other people are going to buy this stock, so it will go up.”
When everyone has to buy something—because Twitter says so, or FOMO says so, or because their friend said “it’s up 8% today”—the only thing that matters is participation.
You can see this in the numbers: markets have record-high volumes, record-high retail participation, and record-high valuations. All at the same time corporate earnings growth is flat and debt is expensive.
But that’s fine. You don’t need profits if you have buyers.
You no longer need to convince people you have a brilliant product. You just need to convince them that other people think you have a brilliant product. The goal isn’t cash flow, it’s attention flow.
And attention is beautifully circular. People buy because it’s going up, and it goes up because people buy.
The Regulator Conundrum
Market manipulators used to have to wash-trade with offshore brokers; now they can just influencer-post to look hot.
Regulators are stuck in an awkward spot: the tools we have are designed to stop lies, not momentum. We can catch someone saying the wrong thing, but not everyone believing the wrong thing.
Regulators can’t stop people from chasing momentum any more than lifeguards can stop tides. Their job is to make sure the frenzy doesn’t turn into a feeding.
Because in 2025, the business of being a business is mostly about making sure people keep buying the stock.
And that, unlike profits, is surprisingly easy to do.