── ── Startups
Mr. Market
Mr. Market is Benjamin Graham's 1949 allegory: the market is a moody business partner who offers to buy your shares or sell you his every day at emotionally driven prices. His quote reflects his current mood, not intrinsic value. Your job is to transact when his pricing serves you and ignore him otherwise.
Run Mr. Market on a real problem
Bring something you're actually deciding — free, in the browser.
How it works
Step 1 — State quote and business reality: What is the market quoting? What has the underlying business actually done? Have they diverged?
Step 2 — Form an independent view of intrinsic value: Based on fundamentals, what is the long-term value? Confidence? Sensitivity? How far is the current quote from your estimate?
Step 3 — Diagnose Mr. Market's state: Sober (consistent with fundamentals) / manic (elevated by enthusiasm) / depressed (fear/panic) / disappeared (liquidity crisis, no quote).
When to use it
- user says 'the market is telling us X', 'valuation has dropped/risen so we should act', 'everyone is selling/buying so I should too', or is making an investment/fundraising decision based on a quoted price under emotional pressure
When not to use it
When the decision is routine and reversible, applying a formal method costs more than it returns.
Worked example
Graham 1949, Buffett 1987 + 2008
The allegory was first published in Benjamin Graham's 1949 The Intelligent Investor, the book that founded value investing as a distinct discipline. Graham had previously written the more technical Security Analysis (1934, with David Dodd) for professional investors; The Intelligent Investor was the popular treatment, and chapter 8 — "The Investor and Market Fluctuations" — is its most-cited chapter.
Install this skill (free, MIT)
npx skills add deciqAI/knowledge-skillsUseful? Star the repo — stars help other builders find it.
Related mental models
Every market — capital, talent, customers, ideas — prices the consensus view into its current state.
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