Corgipower12

That is so interesting! I wish you would write something up about it :) I guess that is why big companies mine social media data

Yep! Markets are theoretically efficient.

Studies have been done that show that. Of course, if it is an old study, results need to be run on new data.

Your thought is that monetization often depends more on visibility than performance and that getting views on any platform these days also requires marketing? Fair point.

Like anything, I am sure there is good work out there. The keys is properly identifying which are good and which are bad.

Influencers often market things and make money off things other than being good at [name a skill or thing they are influencing]. For finance previous work has shown that financial influencers are are worse advice givers are actually the more popular ones.

I know that is probably sarcasm, but betting against things people are sharing might be interesting.

My 2 cents TLDR: seize opportunity but based on sound analysis and caution, not blind optimism. I think they are saying something of the effect of:

1. The short trade (The Big Short or similar trades during the housing bubble) happened during a period of market euphoria. I.e. when most investors were irrationally confident and greedy.

2. Instead of sitting out or being fearful (as Buffett's original advice would suggest), the people who shorted the market took an aggressive position. They were indeed "greedy" in the sense of seeking profit, but they did so with deep awareness of the systemic risk that others were ignoring.

I wonder if it is because we hear about people who are successful betting against the herd.

There is a lot of psychology in the reasons why.

Investing in the QQQ or S&P 500 can often be a better idea than doing literally nothing.

We analyzed hundreds of stock recommendation videos from finance YouTubers (aka finfluencers) and backtested the results. Turns out, doing the opposite of what they say—literally inverting the advice—beat the S&P 500 by over +6.8% in annual returns (but with higher volatility).