It feels like we’re in a regime where how fast a story spreads matters more than how true it is. In prior cycles, price discovery was slower. Fundamentals had time to matter. Bad businesses eventually bled. Good ones eventually attracted capital. There was noise, but it decayed. Now, narratives propagate instantly, mutate rapidly, and persist longer than the underlying facts justify. A few things seem different: Capital moves before verification, not after Stories get priced before mechanisms are understood Reversals happen only when attention shifts, not when data disproves the thesis This isn’t just about meme stocks or crypto. You see it in: AI narratives detached from revenue timelines Macro trades built on vibes rather than balance sheets Stocks trading on “positioning” instead of outcomes The uncomfortable question is whether markets are still primarily information processors, or whether they’ve become belief coordination machines. If prices are increasingly driven by narrative velocity, then: Being early matters more than being right Timing belief shifts matters more than fundamentals Truth still wins, but on a much longer and more painful schedule That has implications for how anyone should approach investing. Do you spend your time: understanding businesses deeply and waiting, or studying where belief is likely to flow next And if the answer is “both,” how do you size conviction when the signal-to-noise ratio keeps degrading? Curious how others are thinking about this.