The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael

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April 6, 2025

until history / rewritten resurrected

If you’re the kind of person who would be accurately described by the phrase “Extremely Online” (derogatory), then you’ve seen the memes about millennials decrying that this is at least the third financial markets upheaval of some persuasion which we’ve had to actively contend.

In a quirk of timing and life choices, I’ve been working in journalism for each of these so far — and for two of them, I will have been in a newsroom primarily focused on financial news.

We are not yet in full “brokers with their hands on their faces” territory, but it is still only Sunday night in New York. We are already fully in the mode of “people extrapolating whatever messages they think are being signaled by a sea of numbers flashing red”, though.

These are unusual times, but there are some things that were true for me the first time around that are still true. Including: don’t take financial advice from people who are prone to making sweeping declarations about things they didn’t know existed a mere 48 hours prior; mistrust charts that lack descriptive axes, captions, or date ranges (and mistrust the people who post them); remember that time horizons matter, as do relative (rather than absolute) changes.

Coverage of markets and coverage of economics is not quite the same, and there will be different areas of emphasis in each. And coverage with a political gloss will be another thing entirely.

Newspapers and online financial media are more likely to give you analysis and context that aims to be relevant for a longer period; TV will tell you what is happening right this very minute. Staring at live prices, unless and even if it is your job, will more likely lead to a headache than to real insight.

Sometimes, truly, no one will really know why a particular thing is happening. The most experienced people will concede that outright. And no matter how deep the sea of red, there is always someone making a killing on it — usually quietly.

Attribution

bequeath to me

the hoe the hope

ancestral rights

to turn the ground over

to shovel and sift

until history

rewritten resurrected

returns to its rightful owners

a past to claim

yet another stone lifted to

throw against the enemy

making way for new endings

— from 4. by bell hooks
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