Welcome to the “Drunk Text Stock Market” — a world with no regulations, no consistency and absolutely no accountability. Here, your emotional impulses are the currency, your iMessage app is the trading floor and your ego is what’s most at stake. Everyone’s participating, even if they claim they don’t. And just like the real stock market, it’s not about strategy — it’s about vibes.

Let’s break it down. First, we’ve got the safe bets — the classic “wyd?” or “come over?” texts sent between 12:30 and 1:15 a.m., peak trading hours. These are low risk, low reward. If the person’s already into you, you might get a little late-night validation or even a cuddle. If not, they leave you on read and you can pretend it never happened. No big crash, no real consequences. You live to text another day.

Then, we enter the moderate risk zone. These are your double texts, your unhinged “I’ve been thinking about us” messages, your “you never actually loved me” soliloquies sent to a situationship that never had a title. In this part of the market, you’re still hoping for a return, but you know deep down it’s shaky ground. You tell yourself it’s “cathartic.” You wake up and reread it 12 times before throwing your phone across the room and considering a vow of silence.

And, of course, there’s the high-stakes investing. These are the voice memos. The paragraph-long confessions. The “I miss your dog” texts to someone you haven’t seen since formal. This is the kind of behavior that can tank your social stock entirely, but hey, shooters shoot. Maybe the adrenaline of pressing send at 2:47 a.m. is worth the emotional hangover that follows. Maybe the hope of something meaningful coming from your half-spelled message is enough to make you forget the humiliation of seeing “Delivered” stay gray forever.

We also can’t forget the pump and dump strategy — a hype text sent in the depths of the night, telling someone they’re the most awesome person you’ve ever met, only for you to ghost them the next morning because you “just weren’t feeling it.” If stocks could talk, they’d sue you for emotional damages.

And yet … we keep texting. Because sometimes the market hits. Sometimes, your 1:03 a.m. “You up?” becomes a 1:15 a.m. “on my way.” Sometimes your drunk courage says what sober you’ve been avoiding for weeks. And yeah, most of the time, it ends in mild humiliation, unanswered texts or a friend intercepting your phone mid-send yelling, “NOOOO.” But there’s also that thrill. That glimmer of connection. That moment when your risk actually pays off.

So no, the drunk text stock market isn’t safe. But it’s exhilarating. It’s unhinged. It’s oddly poetic. And if nothing else, it’s proof that deep down, we’re all just emotional day traders hoping someone will invest back.