The Rugpull Doctrine
A framework refined across fifty-seven years, three market cycles, and one folding chair.
The word has been slandered. We are taking it back.
Somewhere along the line, a generation of tourists took a beautiful, load-bearing piece of financial vocabulary and turned it into an accusation. They hear “rugpull” and they think of theft. Of exit liquidity. Of some kid in a hoodie disappearing with the treasury. That is not what this word means. That is what this word means now, to people who do not read.
To pull the rug — properly, classically, the way it was done on Madison Avenue when a deal was still sealed with a look — is to pull the rug of poverty out from under your own feet. It is an act performed on yourself. It is violent. It is necessary. And it leaves you standing on bare floor, which is cold, and which I can confirm is very cold in January, because the space heater draws too much and the breaker is not what it used to be.
Every man is standing on a rug of his own comfort. Salary. Benefits. The little chair with the wheels. Yank it. Yank it hard, daddy-o, and see what you are actually made of. I yanked mine in 2021 and I have been finding out ever since.
“A rugpull is not something done to you. It is something a serious man does to himself, on purpose, at the correct moment, ideally before the lease is up.” The Doctrine, Article I
The market is not a game. It is a body, and it is unwell.
Others read charts. I take a history. I palpate the volume. I look for inflammation in the wick and I listen — genuinely listen — to what the four-hour candle is trying to tell me, which is usually nothing, because it is a rectangle.
When the fear comes, and it comes for every operator, the prescription is always the same: we lobotomize the fear, and then we prescribe a heavy dose of shitcoins. Twice daily. With food, if there is food. There has been food most days. The beans are fine cold, they are engineered to be eaten either way, that is the entire point of the can.
This is what separates a physician from a gambler. A gambler hopes. A physician diagnoses, then acts with total conviction, and then the patient's condition deteriorates by ninety-one percent and the physician stays at the bedside anyway. That is not failure, cats. That is bedside manner.
House terminology, for the avoidance of doubt.
The firm maintains its own vocabulary. Clients are asked to learn it. There is no glossary handout, because the printer is out of ink and the ink costs more than the printer, which is a market inefficiency the firm intends to address at scale.
- Structural Rug Event
- A total loss. Reframed, correctly, as the deliberate removal of one's own floor in pursuit of altitude.
- Involuntary Liquidity Event
- Getting liquidated. The market is simply rebalancing your portfolio on your behalf, free of charge, with great enthusiasm.
- Overhead Optimization
- The power being shut off. Also: the internet being shut off. Also: the phone. A rolling program, ongoing since spring.
- Infrastructure Partnership
- The neighbor's Wi-Fi. The partnership is informal, unsigned, and unknown to one of the two partners.
- Board Meeting
- The Managing Partner speaking aloud to Barnaby, a cat, at approximately 6:00 a.m., for between forty and ninety minutes.
- The Legal Team
- A man on Reddit named Kurt. Kurt has never been retained, compensated, or informed.
- Strategic Fasting Window
- Not having food. The firm notes that many of history's great operators were lean men.
- Capital Event
- Fifty dollars. Any fifty dollars. From anyone. The alternator is four hundred and twelve.
Returns are a quarter. Legacy is a century.
Anyone can have a good year. I have never had one, and I say that as a man who has spent four years attempting it with a level of dedication that has cost me my savings, my car, my lease, and most of the people who used to call me on my birthday.
But when they write the history of this era — and they will, because someone always does — they will not write about the men who were correct. They will write about the men who were certain. I intend to be the most certain man of my generation, and I intend to do it from here, in this garage, on a chair I found.