It isn't "money" it's "value." Theoretically, one share of Ford stock was worth $14 on Friday. If you had one share of Ford stock, odds are spectacular that someone would have given you at least $13.95 in exchange for that one share of stock. There's a lot of Ford stock and a lot of people want to own it. That doesn't mean your share of Ford stock is magically convertible to $14 - someone needs to trade cash for it.

Then China dropped 8% one fine Sunday night and now all the people who wanted to buy your stock for $13.95 are a lot more interested in keeping their cash in their pockets because they're afraid of the future. They'll still buy your Ford stock, but at a discount because people would rather have something other than Ford stock. So if you want to turn your Ford stock into cash, expect to get $12.95 or so. Other than that brief shining moment when it was trading at $11.36, anyway.

Here's the thing - it was never money. It was only ever the perception of money, which only becomes real money when you try to pull it out. Markets are like Schroedinger's Box - once you put money in them, it's neither alive nor dead but in a state of quantum superposition where everyone argues about it without really knowing until you open the box. So whenever you see pundits talking about "trillions of dollars lost" recognize that they're talking about weird shit going on inside the box, not anything of actual value being destroyed.

The thing that blows my mind is that people's opinions on the box matter far more than the cash in or the cash out. That's the stock market: it doesn't matter what actually happens. Oh, sure, people pay lip service to "fundamentals" but those are boring and nobody really cares. People aren't hyping the shit out of SnapChat because they think it's worth something, they're hyping the shit out of SnapChat because they think they can convince someone else it's worth something.

Here's the reality of the situation: an 8% drop in Shanghai is an aggregate opinion of everyone who trades in Shanghai that everything they own is actually worth 8% less than they thought it was worth on Friday. A bull market is literally a bunch of MBA jackholes sitting around thinking they're all that. And they all have opinions, and they all want you to know that everything you know is wrong, and your economy is their hostage, and that's why people hate capitalism.