I hate meaningless jargon as much as the next person, but I think the analogy here is pretty clear and useful.
Dry gun powder is ready to use, allowing you to fire whenever. Much like liquid assets, ready whenever.
If your powder gets wet, it'll take you a good amount of drying before it's of any use. Much like illiquid assets, would take some time to be useful, but still useful nonetheless.
I first heard it a few months ago when Chrystia Freeland, then Canada's Finance Minister, resigned and used it in her resignation letter. The meaning was immediately clear to me.
> "That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war," Freeland wrote.
No, is financialism, which is basically the same thing but I digress.
> Dry powder is a slang term referring to marketable securities that are highly liquid and considered cash-like - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/drypowder.asp
Finance seems particularly filled with terms with no real connection attached to the concepts at hand, not sure why. Sounds cool I suppose?