The face down card on social media

Have you ever sat through an Multi-level-marketing / pyramid scheme pitch? The person trying to get you on board spends a lot of time on convincing you how this is the best ‘business’ decision of your life. They show you charts and figures of how with a little work you can make 5% per month and when you upgrade to the pro-elite membership you will make about 15% and the people you bring on will make money for you and so on. They make it sound like a business better than selling tea outside a government office. Their motivation is simple; to get you on board and get the commission.

Many insurance and mutual fund distributors specifically push the schemes which pay them highest commissions rather than the one that is best suited for their clients. A car mechanic ‘finds’ several ‘critical’ problems in your car while doing ‘regular’ maintenance. An optician convinces you of how in this age of work from home you need lenses which cost 10 times the regular ones to ‘protect your eyes’. Stock brokers ‘train’ their clients to use leverage and trade in intraday and FnO.

Each of these ‘experts’ put their interest in front of their clients’. It is a good idea to have your car regularly serviced, but most of the parts don’t need very frequent replacing. While you can make good money taking leverage and trading FnO, brokers push it for much higher commissions they get on those products.

Certain ‘star’ traders on social media often claim their strategies as ‘best’ and sometimes the ‘only’ way to make money in the stock markets. You will find that they have their advisory or training link somewhere in their profile. Their primary goal in many cases will be to convince you that to be successful you will have to join their advisory service or take their training.

I will admit that there are some legit trainers out there who can really give you an insight into trading systems. But there are many more who make significantly more money from teaching other people than trading themselves. So every time you see a trader claiming how his is the only system that works in the market, try to figure out his/her motivations. When they show you one card, ask what’s under the card that is face down.