Betting against YouTube Financial Influencers beat the S&P 500 (risky though)?

GianFabien|7 months ago

Contrarians 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|7 months ago

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

antifa|7 months ago

Are they actually contrarians or are they people who were looking deeply into the topic and noticed both a bubble and an opportunity?

chistev|7 months ago

"Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy"???

Corgipower12|7 months ago

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).

Finnucane|7 months ago

how does that compare to betting against Jim Cramer?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF|7 months ago

Even just in name, "finance influencer" sounds very similar to "market manipulator".

rfarley04|7 months ago

Did it beat....doing literally nothing?

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/05/heres-why-dead-investors-out...

Corgipower12|7 months ago

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

Corgipower12|7 months ago

There is a lot of psychology in the reasons why.

Ekaros|7 months ago

When 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|7 months ago

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.

gtani|7 months ago

No 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|7 months ago

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

Corgipower12|7 months ago

YouTube video about the financial influencer research: https://youtu.be/A8TD6Oage4E?si=m3yuqIO0pvivSRa2

nullc|7 months ago

Betting against HN posters views has also been extremely lucrative.

Corgipower12|7 months ago

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

31 comments