It is not certain that we become aware of the pain of others with the lightning speed at which we recognise their happiness, although that recognition is probably for the most part an exaggeration or imaginative projection. The faculty which accomplishes this feat is our own promesse de bonheur, our near-ontological sense of entitlement to the good, what analysts might call primary narcissism. It is not alienated in the other, not in the first moment, what we see is ours, and only in a contingent second moment might it be inflected as lost, or missed, or stolen. So, what we recognise is not the other's happiness but the sign of our own in the future tense, we see our future happiness, not as realised, but as a promise, as the sign of a promise, and thus as something like money, but more like a forward contract or option. The next step, the felt emotion, is the immediate valuation of this contract, its pricing in the market, indeed its convertibility into some more immediate currency. We make the valuation ourselves, but it is imposed upon us, the market is too serious for subjective manipulation, it is the nearest we get to reality. This is meant as an explanation of emotion and of its volatility, in comparison to the feelings that anchor it but do not determine it. Emotion is valuation of the promise of future happiness, and it is tradeable and exists in the context of a market, sensitive the tiniest flows of information, to fads, to every kind of superstitious nonsense. The analogy can be pushed quite a bit further. For example, what would short-selling correspond to?