How “profit” slips, why prices deceive without lying, and what traders actually encounter when they sell
1. A Strange Feeling Every Investor Has Felt
Imagine this situation.
You invest LKR 2,500,000 in the stock market.
A month or weeks later, your trading screen shows:
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Portfolio value: LKR 2,677,000
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Profit: +LKR 177,000
You feel good. You are good.
You believe you have made money.
Then you sell.
After settlement, your account shows:
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Cash received: LKR 2,596,850
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Actual profit: +LKR 96,850
More than LKR 80,000 has vanished.
Nothing illegal happened.
The broker didn’t cheat.
The market didn’t crash.
So what happened?
This moment — the gap between what appeared to be profit and what actually became money — is not a technical glitch. It is structural.
And this is where the stock market starts to resemble Lacanian theory of meaning in a surprisingly precise way.
2. A Simple Introduction to Lacan
Let’s begin with the key ideas, defined exactly where they are used.
What Is a Signifier?
In everyday language, we assume words refer directly to things.
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The word tree → a real tree
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The word money → actual wealth
But French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued something radical:
A word does not point directly to a thing.
It points to another word.
Meaning, according to Lacan, is never fixed.
It slides along a chain of references.
This sliding element — the word, symbol, or mark that seems meaningful but never fully delivers meaning — is called a signifier.
The Three Registers (Very Simply)
Lacan described human experience as operating in three layers:
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The Symbolic
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Language, numbers, rules, representations
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Examples: prices, charts, portfolio tables
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The Imaginary
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Images, beliefs, narratives we tell ourselves
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Examples: “I’m in profit”, “This stock is strong”
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The Real
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What resists representation
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What appears only when things break, fail, or are executed
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You don’t encounter the Real while imagining.
You encounter it when fantasy collapses.
3. Price as a Signifier (The Key Shift)
Now let’s translate this into markets.
What Is “Price,” Really?
We think price is objective.
But in reality, price is only the last traded number, not a guaranteed transaction.
Price is a symbol, not an event.
Just like a word.
That means:
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Price ≠ value
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Portfolio value ≠ money
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Profit ≠ cash
They are all signifiers — symbols that suggest something real but do not guarantee it.
4. The Portfolio Table as a Symbolic Structure
Consider this hypothetical (but realistic) portfolio snapshot:
| Item | Amount (LKR) |
|---|---|
| Invested Capital | 2,500,000 |
| Portfolio Value | 2,670,000 |
| Displayed Profit | +170,000 |
This table lives entirely in the Symbolic order:
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Numbers
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Columns
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Screens
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Representation
Nothing here is false — but nothing here is settled either.
The table does not show:
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Bid–ask spreads
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Liquidity depth
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Slippage
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Fees
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Market impact
Those belong to the Real.
5. The Moment of Sale: Encountering the Real
The instant you press SELL, the signifier is forced to confront reality.
Now the market asks:
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At what bid can you actually sell?
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How many shares exist at that price?
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How fast does price move when you hit the order book?
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What fees apply?
Suddenly, something appears that was never on the screen:
The Remainder
This is the missing LKR 80,000.
In Lacanian terms, this remainder is object a —
the leftover, the excess, the loss that emerges only at realization.
You never “lost” it.
You never had it.
It existed only as a circulating signifier.
6. Why the Market Feels Deceptive (But Isn’t)
Many investors say:
“The market fooled me.”
But the market did not lie.
It did exactly what language does:
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It promised meaning
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It withheld presence
Just like the word love never fully captures love,
the number 2,670,000 never fully captures money.
The market is a symbolic system, not a vault.
7. ASI: The Master Signifier of the Market
Let’s bring in the ASI (All Share Index).
When ASI reads 23,900, people say:
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“The market is strong”
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“Sentiment is positive”
ASI functions as what Lacan called a master signifier:
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A dominant symbol that organizes belief
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But has no substance of its own
The index going up does not mean:
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Your stock will go up
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Liquidity will be available
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You will exit profitably
It only means:
The symbolic structure currently supports optimism.
Again: signifier, not guarantee.
8. Why Prices “Slip”
In Lacanian language, signifiers slide — they never settle.
In markets, prices slip because:
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Meaning (profit) is deferred
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Execution introduces the Real
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A remainder is always extracted
This is not inefficiency.
It is how symbolic systems function.
9. The Mature Trader’s Shift
The inexperienced trader asks:
“How much am I up?”
The experienced trader asks:
“If I sell now, what will I actually receive?”
This is the shift from:
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Imaginary → Symbolic → Real awareness
From fantasy to structure.
10. One Sentence That Captures Everything
In the stock market, as in language, meaning exists only until you try to realize it — and then something slips away.
That slippage is not an error.
It is the structure itself.
11. Why This Insight Is Liberating
Once you understand this:
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You stop chasing numbers
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You respect liquidity
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You plan exits, not just entries
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You stop confusing representation with possession
You don’t become cynical.
You become structurally literate.
Closing Thought
The stock market is not a casino.
It is not a truth machine.
It is a symbolic economy that continuously produces meaning —
and just as continuously withdraws it at the moment of realization.
Lacan did not write about markets.
But markets behave exactly as his theory predicts.
Because both are systems built on signifiers, desire, delay, and remainder.