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Betting against YouTube Financial Influencers beat the S&P 500 (risky though)?
- Corgipower12 1y agoWe 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).
- Finnucane 1y agohow does that compare to betting against Jim Cramer?
- Corgipower12 1y agoI haven't benchmarked inverse Cramer recently, but last I heard not too well: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/187612o/inverse_jim_cramer_etf_vs_sp_500/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/187612o/inv... Anyone know how it is doing recently?
- extraduder_ire 1y agoI've thought inverse-Cramer was doomed ever since he shouted it out on twitter. Kind of short-circuits the whole thing.
- Corgipower12 1y agoYep! Markets are theoretically efficient.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoEven just in name, "finance influencer" sounds very similar to "market manipulator".
- Corgipower12 1y agoInfluencers 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.
- Ekaros 1y agoNot necessarily... Depends on what they peddle, but could be just your motivational speaker, self-help or course grifter.
- Corgipower12 1y agoStudies have been done that show that. Of course, if it is an old study, results need to be run on new data.
- rfarley04 1y agoDid it beat....doing literally nothing? https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/05/heres-why-dead-investors-outperform-the-living.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/05/heres-why-dead-investors-out...
- Corgipower12 1y agoInvesting in the QQQ or S&P 500 can often be a better idea than doing literally nothing.
- Corgipower12 1y agoThere is a lot of psychology in the reasons why.
- GianFabien 1y agoContrarians betting against the herd have often been very successful. For example, John Paulson and Michael Burry made billions by shorting CDOs that lead to the 2008 crisis. The movie "The Big Short" is an Ok dramatization of how it all unfolded. Same herd mentality, different soapbox.
- Corgipower12 1y agoI wonder if it is because we hear about people who are successful betting against the herd.
- chistev 1y ago"Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy"???
- nullc 1y agoBetting against HN posters views has also been extremely lucrative.
- Corgipower12 1y agoI know that is probably sarcasm, but betting against things people are sharing might be interesting.
- nullc 1y agoIt was my investment thesis that HN comments reflected the trading activities of a meaningfully large cohort of non-toxic trades-- people with disposable income and opinions that exceeded their actual knowledge. Bored know it all googlers day trading from their desks, and as a result there might be profit to be had trading against it because not only were they frequently just wrong when they were right the market prices exaggerated things. I consistently made good profits from it, but I had no real basis for setting trade sizes which I was never happy with-- if I could actually see commenters orderflow I could clone their sizes with scaling, but obviously I can't. I didn't resume the activity after the 2020 market turmoil particularly as I had a lot less time available and didn't have a good way to fully automate the practice.
- Corgipower12 1y agoThat is so interesting! I wish you would write something up about it :) I guess that is why big companies mine social media data
- gtani 1y agoNo idea about any of these channels but there are some on YT that give good global macro coverage: - Vix, IV vs realized/historical - option flows - market makers gex, skews, (1st 3 probably best src of edge) - /NQ and /ES trading volume, - bond yld curve, credit spreads, how much prim dealers hold after long auctions, PBC holdings - metals - geopolitical: Europe / middle East / China/ South America - energy - currency - commodity prompt spreads, contangos
- Corgipower12 1y agoLike anything, I am sure there is good work out there. The keys is properly identifying which are good and which are bad.
- Ekaros 1y agoWhen you really think about it. If these people were really good, would they need to be influencers? Wouldn't they actually be spending all of their time managing either their own money or some other big money fund? So on average they probably are not that good as they really need to do all the marketing. Which is actually quite big time commitment.
- Corgipower12 1y agoYour 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.
- Corgipower12 1y agoYouTube video about the financial influencer research: https://youtu.be/A8TD6Oage4E?si=m3yuqIO0pvivSRa2 https://youtu.be/A8TD6Oage4E?si=m3yuqIO0pvivSRa2