[joe_the_user]

I suppose I shouldn't necessarily imply "truly sophisticated" but one group of depositors would just say "of course the Fed will support the depositors, there's no reason to worry" your argument about insolvency is correct.

[tripletao]

That's fair--to the extent truly sophisticated depositors believed "there's no need for a bank run, since the FDIC would take extraordinary measures to back the uninsured deposits even if the SVB collapses while economically insolvent", they were exactly right. The cost of moving money out is so small that you'd have to believe that very strongly not to though, or to get a big auxiliary benefit (access to future credit, etc.) from the continued existence of the SVB.

[joe_the_user]

Yeah, I only really wanted to say there were different levels to how might approach this stuff, not try to rank their smartness.

On the one hand, the news reports seemed to vaguely imply that some pretty wealthy people were standing in line for quite a while and I assume that was time they could use to make money other ways.

On the other hand, maybe everyone withdrawing money knew things were safe but also "knew the drill", knew the Fed needed their complaints to bolster it's actions.