Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

The Night My Daughter Didn’t Need Me (And Beetlejuice Showed Up)

This Halloween, my daughter went out with her friend.

For the first time, I wasn’t invited. The realization drifted in like a ghost. Quiet, inevitable, cold.

Every year until now, it was just us: dad and daughter, watching something spooky and ridiculous. The shift is subtle. But it stings. Growing up always does.

I’d started writing about those memories before. Never finished.

Tonight, watching the World Series and rooting for the Dodgers like it’s 1988, I came back to it.

Last year we saw Ghostbusters and both walked out disappointed. It took months to lure her back to a theater. Turns out fourteen-year-olds still love eccentric, offbeat films. Just like I did.

So I fired up the original Beetlejuice on Amazon Prime. She didn’t say a word the whole time. Her little sister watched too—disturbed, delighted, glued.

When I mentioned the sequel was in theaters, we made a plan.

My movie rule: would I walk 30 minutes to see it? Would she come at 10:45 p.m.?

That night, the answer was yes.

Just the two of us.

There’s something sacred about buying a ticket and surrendering. No rewinds. No refunds. Real entertainment demands presence.

We arrived to a swarm of teenagers outside the theater. You don’t see that much anymore. By the time we reached the counter, the good seats were gone. A great sign. People still show up when it matters.

The film delivered everything a ghost story should. Strange characters. Stylized sets. Comedy. Scares. Tim Burton packed it into 90 minutes like a haunted lunchbox.

I hadn’t paid attention to Burton since Sleepy Hollow. Not because I outgrew him. Someone in college told me to invest in my film taste. To grow up. So I did. But this reminded me that he’s still a craftsman.

Older now. Nothing to prove. No need for sequels unless he lost a bet with the devil. And yet here he is, reuniting the original cast—minus one who couldn’t return. It felt like a labor of love. The surreal magic intact. The cast, flawless.

Weird for weird’s sake doesn’t age well. You need a story. That’s what people forget.

So what’s the story here?

A mother, successful but adrift, has lost the life she once imagined. Her daughter, distant and confused, accidentally pulls her back to center. Everything else in the film serves that quiet emotional tug.

That’s the difference between a craftsman and a copycat. Burton makes it look effortless. Imitators cannot.

The same goes for markets.

You see a pundit on TV explain how obvious it all was. How inevitable. But when the cameras cut, the personality vanishes. They are just exhausted from chasing more. They forgot what they loved in the first place.

Winona Ryder’s character has a daughter who idolizes her, but doesn’t grasp the risks. She charges ahead, full of passion and innocence. Instead of buying a bad stock, she falls for a charming teen ghost who is not what he seems. Her life hangs in the balance.

It takes everything Winona has to save her. Including teaming up with the ultimate chaos agent.

Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice.

He is not evil. He is just gross. But somehow, he ends up doing the right thing. Even when he doesn’t mean to.

Beetlejuice is volatility with a smirk. You cannot tame him. But if you time it right, he will do your bidding. Like a meme stock. Irrational. Disgusting. Wildly effective.

He is the ghost that shows up every few years to rattle the cage. Unpredictable. A mess. But oddly sincere. He provides a service. He is a grave-digger, sure, but at least he is honest about it. He does not steal hearts.

You do not befriend Beetlejuice. You manage him. Like Winona’s character, you learn to use him. He is not a companion. He is a tool. A risk you assess. A resource you do not trust, but can sometimes control.

Let’s dig deeper into who this guy really is. Because understanding the ghost helps you understand the market.

Beetlejuice wasn’t always the striped-suited bio-exorcist. He started as Betel Geuse Jr., a seventeenth-century Italian grave robber working the plague pits during the 1629 outbreak. Picture a scrappy hustler, pockets full of stolen rings, dodging bodies in Milan’s charnel houses.

One day he pickpocketed the wrong plague doctor—Dolores, a black-clad poisoner in a beaked mask. He stole her ruby ring, proposed on the spot, and married her for the score.

She poisoned him on their wedding night.

He responded by grabbing an axe and chopping her into pieces.

Both died violently. Both became ghosts. But while most souls filed paperwork in the Neitherworld and waited, Beetlejuice went rogue. He briefly worked as Juno’s assistant, then quit to freelance as a bio-exorcist, scaring the living out of haunted houses for cash.

His chaos got him banished. Now he can only appear if you say his name three times, and he vanishes the same way. That curse is both his leash and his power.

Normal ghosts in this world are car crash victims. Polite. Stuck. Bureaucratic.

Beetlejuice is a plague-born trickster. Part demon. Part con man. Amplified by betrayal and black-market afterlife hustle.

He is not just dead. He is weaponized dead that can shake the living.

That is why he is the perfect market metaphor.

Most volatility is polite. Predictable. Bound by rules. Fed announcements. Earnings seasons. Slow grinds.

Then comes the Beetlejuice Event. A plague-level shock. A black swan. A three-name summon that turns calm into chaos. Think the COVID crash of 2020. Black Monday in 1987. The supernova of a meme-stock squeeze.

It is gross. Irrational. Briefly unstoppable.

But here’s the insight: you do not fight the Beetlejuice Event. You channel it.

Winona’s character doesn’t banish him immediately. She negotiates. She uses his chaos to save her daughter.

Same with markets.

When the headlines scream:

Interest rates
Interest rates
Interest rates

Inflation
Inflation
Inflation

That is your three-name summon.

Do not panic. Ask: What does this ghost want? How do I make him work for me?

Rate hikes crush growth stocks. But they juice banks and value plays. Inflation kills bonds. But it mints commodity kings.

Beetlejuice always leaves a trail of winners. If you are watching.

Some fear bear markets. Others fear ghosts.

This year, be like the Deetz family.

Embrace the crazy train.

P.S. I turned my Substack to paid.

Same vibe. Same stories. Same ghost logic. More stocks, more strategies, deeper dives.

Five dollars a month or fifty for the year.

One good idea pays for itself 10x over.

Seven-day free trial. Come poke around. No ghosts attached.