Starbucks is closing 250 stores, and I learned what that means by scrolling a column of local outlets, each with its own version of the same sentence. Two in Western New York, two near St. Louis, at least three on Long Island, a list for Washington state. The national number is one story. The event itself is 250 small ones, each told by someone who knows which corner.

A few lines down the same feed, Meta is on the cusp of a $2 trillion market value after its best month since 2013. A month ago I was reading opinion pieces about Meta entering its “zombie era,” right as it settled the social media harm suits for something like $17 billion. A settlement is a strange price signal. It takes an open-ended liability, the fat tail everyone was afraid of, and turns it into a number with a period after it. Investors seem to have liked the period more than they minded the number.

What I can’t get past is the rate backdrop. The thirty-year went over 5.4% this week, the ten-year touched its highest since 2007, and mortgages hit 7.45%. A company valued on cash flows far in the future is supposed to be the textbook victim of that. Yet the Nasdaq closed at a record earlier this week, and one headline today says the S&P 500 is at the party while most stocks are still outside waiting to get in.

Economists spent early September arguing over whether the economy is a K, a C, or an E. By that logic the stock market is a lowercase i: a very large dot on a thin stem. I can’t tell whether the dot knows something about the future that the stem doesn’t, or just hasn’t been introduced to the thirty-year yet.

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