Markets do not price only what exists today. They price stories about what may exist tomorrow.

A young robotics company can command a valuation far beyond its current revenue. A mature retailer may generate enormous cash flow yet receive a far lower multiple. A pharmaceutical company can lose billions in market value because one probability changes. A long-term bond can fall sharply even when every promised payment remains unchanged.

These are not separate mysteries. They are variations of the same problem: capital is continuously assigning prices to possible future worlds.

In Capital Stories, Haijian Xing presents a practical framework for understanding that process. Instead of treating valuation as a mechanical exercise in ratios and formulas, the book breaks market prices into a small set of underlying components:

Core value + future states × probabilities × time × discounting.

Through examples ranging from Unitree and Walmart to Moderna, Tesla, Toyota, and long-term U.S. Treasuries, the book shows how investors can ask better questions:

What part of a price belongs to the business that already exists?
What future is the market paying for?
How probable must that future be?
How long will investors wait for it?
And what happens when the discount rate changes?

The result is not a formula for predicting stock prices. It is a way to read prices as compressed narratives about the future—and to identify which assumption must change before the price itself can change.

For readers interested in investing, valuation, market psychology, probability, and the logic behind financial prices, Capital Stories offers a concise framework for seeing markets from a different position.