for the week ending March 14, 2025
Note: Signal & Noise is tucked away behind an exclusive velvet rope, accessible only to the enlightened few (a.k.a. paid subscribers). But, because I am full of altruism (take that Ayn Rand and John Galt)—I'm letting everyone in. So go ahead, share it with your friends, your family, or that one coworker who confidently regurgitates headlines as if they personally briefed the Fed this morning. It’s free for now, so enjoy it before I come to my senses.
About Signal & Noise
Cutting Through Market Chatter to What Really Matters.
No fluff, no wasted words—just the market trends, hot investment topics, and key financial chatter your clients actually care about. Quick insights, smart talking points, and a little edge to keep you ahead of the conversation. Read it, use it, and maybe even surprise your clients by beating them to their own questions.
I’m not an advisor, and I don’t work for advisors—but I think like a client. That means I cut through the jargon and get to what actually matters in the real world.
On This Day in 1942 Penicillin Told Bacteria to Sit Down and Shut Up
On this day in 1942, humanity got its first real taste of modern medical miracles when Orvan Hess and John Bumstead used penicillin to snatch a dying patient back from the abyss. Before this, bacterial infections were basically the grim reaper’s most reliable assistant, turning minor scrapes into death sentences and making pneumonia a one-way ticket to the afterlife. But with penicillin, suddenly the rules changed—medicine had a new secret weapon, and disease was no longer an automatic death knell. While the Oxford trials laid the groundwork, this was the moment that proved antibiotics weren’t just a scientific curiosity but a revolution. Fast forward to today, and we take it for granted that a round of pills can save us from infections that once wiped out entire populations. So here’s to modern medicine—without it, we’d all still be living in a world where a paper cut could take you out like a Shakespearean tragedy.
"Value investing is at its core the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator.” -Seth Klarman
Extreme Fear and Loathing in the World of Investing
If the stock market were a theme park ride, it would be the kind that’s shut down every few months due to unfortunate incidents. Last week was no exception, as panicked investors strapped themselves in, screamed through a stomach-churning drop, and promptly forgot they had ever experienced a similar plummet before.
The S&P 500 officially entered correction territory, which sounds dramatic until you remember that correction is just a euphemism for “we got ahead of ourselves, and now reality has shown up like an angry landlord demanding rent.” Meanwhile, the Dow Jones dropped over 500 points in a single session, which—if you listen closely—was accompanied by the sound of thousands of retail investors simultaneously hyperventilating into paper bags. Tech stocks took an even bigger beating, with Tesla and Apple leading the charge off the proverbial cliff.
Of course, the selloff had a buffet of excuses. Trump threatened tariffs on EU alcohol (which, if enacted, would be the real crisis because have you seen the state of American wine?), whispers of a government shutdown floated through the air like the ghost of common sense, and general economic anxieties got stirred into the panic soup. CNN’s Fear and Greed Index labeled investor sentiment as "extreme fear," proving once again that the market is run by people who would not survive five minutes in an actual horror movie.
But here’s the thing: this entire episode is just another loop on the rollercoaster. Investors have the memory span of a goldfish on Adderall when it comes to volatility. Every single time the market dips, they clutch their pearls, forget that it has literally done this countless times before, and then proceed to make impulsive trades they will regret within a week. The stock market is a ride that goes up and down—usually in ways that make you want to vomit—but ultimately, the ride ends, and the cycle begins anew.
The only real winners here? The algorithmic traders, who don’t have emotions, don’t panic, and don’t spend their evenings doom-scrolling. They just vacuum up profits while human investors lose their collective minds.
So, the moral of the story: take a deep breath, remember that the market fluctuates, and resist the urge to jump ship the second things look scary. Otherwise, you’ll be that person who throws up on the rollercoaster and then immediately gets back in line, swearing it will be different this time. It won’t.
Skittles, Unicorns, Tariffs and the Stock Market: Why Long-Term Investors Always Win
Investing is not, despite what certain stock market influencers on TikTok might have you believe, a magical journey through Candy Land where rivers flow with Skittles and we all ride unicorns up Magic Investor Mountain to claim our risk-free riches.
No, investing is more like spelunking in an active volcano while blindfolded. Every so often, a market correction arrives, and investors shriek as if they’ve just seen a ghost, conveniently forgetting that these spooky market dips happen with a regularity that we forget and care to admit. Right now, everyone is clutching their pearls over trade tensions—again—as if this is some once-in-a-lifetime, apocalyptic event.
But let’s take a step back. Ronald Reagan had to slap tariffs on Japanese cars and motorcycles to protect American industries. Bill Clinton, the guy who signed NAFTA, still waged a trade war with the EU over bananas and pecorino cheese. George W. Bush raised steel tariffs, Barack Obama hit Chinese tires with a hefty tax, and Donald Trump decided to turn tariffs into a full-contact sport, waging economic battle with China and throwing in a few friendly fire shots at Canada and Europe just for fun. Even Joe Biden, who was supposed to be a return to normalcy, kept most of Trump’s tariffs in place and even added some new ones. And yet, despite all this, despite decades of economic skirmishes, guess what? The market still went up.
The long-term investor, the one who ignores the screaming headlines and remembers that panic is temporary while compounding is forever, is the one who wins. The financial press, of course, will always make every trade dispute sound like the end of days because fear sells better than patience.
For those who resist the urge to flee, who understand that volatility is just the price of admission, the market has historically rewarded them with returns that far exceed the drama. Investing isn’t for the weak, the faint of heart, or those who expect every trade to come with a participation trophy. But for those who can keep their cool while the rest of the world loses its mind, the long-term rewards are more than worth it.
Agentic Search: Finally, Search Engines That Don’t Suck
Remember when you could type a simple question into Google and actually get a useful answer? Before the dark times—before SEO-stuffed nonsense articles, AI-generated clickbait, and ad-infested search results turned the internet into a glorified junk drawer? These days, searching for anything online is like trying to find a decent movie on Netflix—sure, there’s a lot of content, but 90% of it is garbage, and you’ll waste an hour just scrolling before giving up and rewatching The Office for the twentieth time.
Enter agentic search, the first real effort to fix what’s been broken for years. Unlike traditional search engines that flood you with keyword-stuffed drivel, agentic search actually thinks before it dumps results in your lap. Instead of handing you a shovel and telling you to start digging, it sorts, filters, and refines your results like an overqualified personal assistant who doesn’t roll their eyes when you ask dumb questions.
Why Traditional Search Is a Dumpster Fire
Let’s be real—Google Search quality has nosedived in recent years. Why? Three big culprits:
SEO Spam – Every blog post now sounds like it was written by a robot because, well, a lot of them are. Sites cram in as many keywords as possible to rank higher, even if the content is about as useful as an instruction manual written by IKEA’s marketing department.
Ads, Ads Everywhere – Google makes its money from ads, and it shows. The first page of search results is now a minefield of sponsored content, with actual, organic results shoved so far down that you might as well be browsing the Dark Web to find them.
AI-Generated Nonsense – With cheap AI tools churning out keyword-heavy content at breakneck speed, search engines are struggling to tell the difference between actual expertise and some chatbot-generated fluff copy-pasted onto a website.
How Agentic Search Fixes This Mess
Agentic search isn’t just another search engine—it’s an intelligent digital assistant that refines your queries in real time. Instead of dumping thousands of search results in your lap, it:
Understands context – It knows if you're looking for reviews, facts, expert opinions, or just a simple answer.
Asks smart follow-ups – Searching for “best laptops”? It’ll clarify: Gaming or work? Budget or premium? Instead of generic lists, you get exactly what you need.
Filters out nonsense – No more Reddit fights about whether Florence is overrated. No more AI-generated fluff. Just useful, relevant info.
Synthesizes insights – It pulls from multiple sources, cross-checks them, and presents an actually useful summary—because you shouldn’t have to read 15 blog posts to figure out which travel backpack doesn’t suck.
Who’s Building This Future?
Tech giants and startups alike are racing to own the next evolution of search:
OpenAI is rolling out its Operator product, which doesn’t just search—it completes tasks for you, like booking flights or ordering groceries.
Google DeepMind is pushing AI-driven search improvements, but Google’s ad-driven business model remains a problem.
Perplexity AI is redefining search with real-time contextual answers, making traditional search engines look like outdated phone books. I personally use this search engine and am quite pleased.
Amazon Alexa is evolving beyond voice commands, moving into a world where AI-powered agents handle complex queries and actions.
Even businesses are getting in on the action, with companies like NVIDIA, Orby AI, and Relevance AI developing specialized agentic search tools for industries like finance, healthcare, and research.
Why You Should Care
Right now, the internet is an information wasteland, littered with low-effort content designed to game search engine algorithms rather than provide real answers. Traditional search engines make you do all the heavy lifting—agentic search is here to change that. Instead of making you sift through endless pages of SEO-stuffed nonsense, it delivers exactly what you need, faster and with actual intelligence.
The future of search isn’t just about finding information—it’s about understanding it. And given the state of the internet today, that can’t happen soon enough.
So, if you’re tired of scavenging through the digital junkyard that is modern search, it’s time to start exploring agentic search. Because life’s too short to spend it clicking through useless links.
Sorry to Bring It Up Again, But Covid Taught Us More About Investing Than Handwashing
Remember those stupid Covid lockdowns? The dystopian collective fever dream with toilet paper shortages, sourdough starters, and the creeping existential dread of watching government officials fumble their way through daily briefings like one of those weird theme park animatronics. It was a time when logic took a vacation, and we were all encouraged to panic-sell our stocks, hoard pet food as a backup dinner plan, and avoid our spouses as if they were radioactive. Of course the financial press played its part screaming economic apocalypse. And yet, if you’d tuned out the hysteria, refused to let fear dictate your financial decisions, and simply stayed the course, you would have emerged not just intact, but richer. A $10,000 investment on March 1, 2020, would have turned into $14,270 by March 31, 2023, a cool 42.7% cumulative return. The benchmark? An even better 45.62%. So while the doomsday prophets were busy declaring the end of capitalism, those who ignored them and stuck with their investments saw annualized returns of over 12%. Meanwhile, the panic-sellers—those who fled to cash like doomsday preppers hunkering in bunkers—learned the hard way that fear is expensive. Sure, the market had its tantrums, and 2022 was a brutal year (-19.51%), but long-term investors know the drill: corrections are temporary, growth is permanent.
I know I continue to pound away on this drum, but I do so as encouragement because ignoring the madness of crowds is the single most important investing skill you can develop. The market loves to test your patience, and the financial media thrives on making you question every decision you make. But history is clear—those who stay invested, who resist the urge to flee at the first sign of chaos, and who embrace the temporary pain of downturns are the ones who come out ahead.
Please note the investment referenced here is VTI (a total stock market ETF) and does not include any transaction cost, management fees, etc. This is for illustration purposes only. So, I am not recommending anything here. For the record, this is not investment advice. I am not a financial advisor. I’m just a die-hard, low-cost index investor who somehow has the emotional coldness to do the opposite when the financial press is screaming nonsense at investors.
That’s a Wrap
Well, that’s it for this week’s 🚦Signal & Noise—if you’ve made it this far, congratulations on surviving yet another round of market hysteria, economic doomsaying, and my relentless insistence that long-term investing wins every time. If you enjoyed it (or at least found yourself nodding along while muttering, “Well, he’s not wrong”), do me a favor: share it with your friends, your family, or even that one coworker who panic-sold everything in 2020 and still hasn’t emotionally recovered. Here is the link.
More importantly, turn off the TV, stop doom-scrolling financial news, and go outside this weekend. The weather is finally warming up across the U.S., and we can all agree on one universal truth—thank the good and gracious God that February is over. What a miserable month. If your birthday is in February, don’t take it personally. It’s not you—it’s the month itself.
And if you’re looking for something a little more enriching than stock market volatility and trade war drama, do yourself a favor and check out the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz. A little perspective never hurt anyone.
See you next week! Have a great weekend—Lawain.
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