Why you should never read anything by a “financial analyst”

Confession: in my entire life, I’ve never followed any financial analyst’s advice.

Why? Three reasons:

  1. These people are, for the most part, complete fucking idiots.
  2. Those who aren’t idiots aren’t going to share their insights and discoveries with you.
  3. I’d never trust anyone in finance anyway

Analysts are completely clueless and everything they spout is at best a wild guess, at worst complete bullshit (the latter being true 90% of the time). When they get it right, which is less than 50% of the time, they strut around and boast about how skilled they are and how they “nailed it perfectly.” When they get it wrong, they simply act as if they have never recommended the stock in the first place.

Financial analysts are professional scammers who, for the most part, don’t know anything about finance anyway. Today, everyone can be a “financial analyst.” As long as he can wear a suit and look confident, you can go and pass for a “pro.” And don’t believe that simply because someone graduated from some university somewhere, he suddenly knows what he’s talking about. I’ve went to school and I can tell you the people who became CFAs are some of the biggest idiots I’ve met in my life. I can honestly tell you that, out of the dozens of people who graduated with me, none of those with any kind of intellectual skills ended up being financial analysts.

Smart people do not become financial analysts, period. They become financial programmer, risk manager, financial engineer, numerial analysts, researchers, professors, et cetera. Of all the future CFAs I went to school with, I can tell you that every single one of them cheated their way through every homework, exam and group project that was put in their way.

Financial analysts have no idea how the stock market works. You know why? Because, to be truthful, nobody really has an idea how the stock market works. People act like they know, they act like they are experienced and knowledgeable and knowledge, but they don’t know shit. You think the financial crisis happened because these guys knew what they were doing? Obviously not.

If at least analysts were honest enough to admit that they were clueless, I’d give them a break - but no, of course not. These people present themselves as pros; you are the uninitiated sheep, they are the expert shepherds and they will show you the light. Stock analysts might be the priests of our generation. “Have faith! My models will show you the way!” The day an analyst will come to me saying that they have no idea what they are doing, I will reevaluate my view on them, but until then, let me repeat that these people are just smooth talkers - not actually intelligent people.

Financial analysts, certified or not, spend most of their time practicing how to lie, manipulate people and play with facts. It’s not a 20% drop, it’s a temporary readjustment of sub-optimal values in the open market - you get the idea. I’ve worked even with so-called “certified professionals” and I can tell you that the 20-year-old me was way smarter than the so-called pro whose only use is going to cocktails and falsifying documents optimizing the content of our reports. I’m not even joking: the real money, in finance, is not obtained through analysis and hard work, but rather through fucking private parties and insider information.

In my last job, my boss, who had more professional titles than every other person in the building, couldn’t use the sumproduct function in Excel. I’m not even joking, and this was the guy telling people how to invest their money. Someone too stupid to use a three-argument function in Excel was managing hundreds of millions of dollars. If the population knew how dumb the people who manage their money are, I like to believe they would riot - but probably not.

I’m not saying there aren’t any smart analysts, I’m saying that those who are skilled are never going to share their “insights” with you. And why would they? Why would those people supposedly help you achieve a bigger return? Why would these people give two shit about you? Hint: they don’t.

When an analyst recommends a stock, it means he personally bought it two months ago. Then, he recommended it to his “private clients” a month after that. Period. Financial analysts are professional scammers and their advice is completely worthless.

 

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