Finance TikTok Reviews: Common Misconceptions and Pitfalls

Investment analyst reviews finance TikToks, debunking tax, index fund, precious metal, and real estate misconceptions.

### Analyzing Financial TikToks: Tax Avoidance, Index Funds, Day Trading, Precious Metals, and Real Estate
* 💰  TikTok videos promoting legal tax avoidance strategies for self-employed individuals, like **deducting business-related expenses**, need to be approached with caution as the IRS closely scrutinizes such claims.
* 📈  While index funds are a popular and diversified investment option, some TikToks highlight that a **significant portion of their returns can be driven by a few top-performing stocks**, challenging the perception of broad diversification.
* 🌙  The promotion of day trading strategies based on astrology or intuition, as seen in some TikToks, is not a reliable or sustainable approach to investing, emphasizing the importance of **long-term performance analysis**.
* 🪙  Claims about precious metal investments, such as silver, should be considered in the context of **historical price fluctuations and societal perceptions of value**, rather than just scarcity.
* 🏠  Encouraging young individuals, like 15-year-olds, to invest in real estate may not be **practical or advisable**, as it requires **significant capital** and may not align with their **developmental needs**.
* 📊  It's crucial to critically evaluate financial advice on social media platforms like TikTok, considering the **source's expertise, transparency, and long-term performance records**.
* 🧐  The video highlights the importance of seeking professional advice from **CPAs, financial advisors, or investment analysts**, rather than relying solely on **social media content** for financial decisions.
* 👍  Despite the presence of misinformation, there are valuable finance and investing insights to be found on TikTok, making it essential to **distinguish between noise and quality content**.

ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the plane Bagel. I'm your host, Richard Coffin. We are back once again. It's been a while, but coming back with another investment analyst reviews investing TikToks part six, part six. It's been a little while, in part because the online financial advice space is seemingly healing a bit. We've had some time to cool off, but with recent events in the market and perhaps retail interest coming back to the investing space, I figured I'd take some time to touch base and review again some finance TikToks. Now, if you're new to the channel, welcome. My name is Richard. I work as a registered portfolio manager with my CFA and CFP designations. And my goal today is to help clear up any misinformation that might be circulating on TikTok. Obviously, over time, TikTok and other social media sites have become more widely used by younger individuals to learn about finance and investing. And for sure, there's a lot of great information you can come across. But likewise, there's

also a lot of lower quality content that can either misrepresent or just misconstrue and important details about finance and how investing Works. Uh, so my goal is to review some of these bits of content and try to make it educational and productive. Uh, so that we can walk away learning more about financing and investing. And before hopping into it, I do want to give a big shout out to Tik Tok investors. In the past, I've gone and found a lot of these TikToks myself. This time around, a lot of them are coming from Tik Tok investors directly, which is a Twitter page directed to finding these uh tidbits of knowledge. So if you like this type of content, definitely go check them out. But without further Ado, let's get into it. Four ways to avoid taxes legally. We'll [Music] see love those TikToks. Oh man, the IRS is going to love that one. Uh, I don't know about the other videos, but but they're going to love this video. So let's dissect this for one.

yes, it's true that you can deduct certain expenses from your income. If you're self-employed, meaning you reduce your income taxes by lowering your total reported taxable income. That includes things like if you're running a home office, some of the expenses related to that, as well as if you travel, you can deduct your travel expenses, lodging, and even some of your meals. But for one, you can only do this if you're incorporated, not if you're a typically salaried employee. And two, there are criteria here. The expenses have to be, quote unquote, reasonable. The principle of this mechanism is to allow businesses to deduct expenses that are required or contribute to the generation of the revenue in some way. So, lodgings during a business trip can be covered, meals with potential clients might be covered, with some restrictions, and anything like that can, yes, allow for a deduction because it's helping you grow the business or again contributing to the revenue generation. But tax authorities do consider intent with expenses, and if you throw your wife

into a corporation when she's not actually doing any work there. Uh, and you go on a vacation, you expense every personal expense and all these lavish meals, and then you post a Tik Tok about how you legally avoid taxes. You and the IRS might have some words, especially if they see that these restaurant expenses and the like make up a significant portion of your company's expenses. So hopefully this goes to show that tax is a complicated matter, and if you want advice, uh, Tik Tok is not the place. You should reach out to a professional like a CPA, someone who knows what they're doing. This is what Index Fund gurus don't tell you about index funds that make me so angry. Yes, investing in index funds is better than not investing at all, and I think if you follow me, you probably understand the importance of investing, so that's not the issue. Right after I grew my Investment Portfolio from 500 bucks to millions of dollars, I decided to listen to one of the index fund gurus that popped onto my social

media and I'm like, you know what, let me add an index fund to my portfolio. Do you want to see the results and the difference between individual stocks and Index Fund? I'll show you. Understand that even index funds, the best of the best index funds, majority of their growth are basically carried by like a handful of stocks. Uh, that's actually true. Uh, I think I know where she's going with this, but, uh, it is true that especially with the S&P 500, which is one of the most popular, uh, US stock market indices that a bunch of people invest their money through. Um, it is true that a lot of its return, especially recently, has been sort of dominated by just a few positions. First half of 2024, there were five stocks, I think it was a top five biggest stocks in the index, made up two-thirds of the S&P 500's return year-to-date. So, it is true that at times the index's performance can be dominated by just a handful of positions, although that does have to do more with the

Waiting mechanism of the index and the fact that larger companies uh recently have seen some of the best performance. If you just spend a little bit more time, a little bit, we're talking about 1 hour per week, this is how your results can be different. Watch here's my $4 million portfolio. Look at the gains here on individual stocks starting from 200% until we finally get to VU here, which is way lower than my top-performing stocks that are basically carrying my entire $4.7 million portfolio. And I do it all in only 1 hour per month, even though I'm super busy and not a math W thought we were 1 hour a week. It's getting better. The deal is sounding pretty good following my simple five-step Diamond system. Comment Diamond, I'll send you my free master class on it. Sounds super fake, I bet. Let me see if I can. Let me see if I can find what this diamond process is. If you're a long-term value investor, all you need to know really is

have certain if this company or asset is going to be around in five or 10 years so we had Capital intentional fundamental Point number four. Wait, no, that's why I'm here. I thought this was a step-by-step process on how to analyze. You can't just put fundamental analysis as step three. So right away, a lot of red flags here that should really make you question or be critical of these claims here. For one, very strategically hiding a lot of the details while cherry-picking the figures. We see the gain percentage, for example. We don't know what time period that gain is showing over. It could be 2 days, it could be 10 years, which would obviously impact how impressive the performance is. And we're sorted by gain and starting at the top and very strategically again stopping at vo, refusing to go lower to show the negative performance in the portfolio, which would lead me to believe there's probably some very ugly performance figures that are being hidden under vo.

uh and obviously makes it impossible to gauge how well she's actually performed. And the point is that the idea that all you have to do is pick the best stocks is a really flawed way of thinking because well it sounds very easy or feasible when you frame it that way. To say hey all you have to do is pick the best 10 stocks to see great performance it's actually quite the opposite where because a lot of the indexes turn is is fueled by just a few positions it's incredibly difficult to find what those 10 or so positions are in the mass field or ocean of of positions that exist out there. To put a different way imagine it as probabilities. Imagine you want to to invest in the best 10% of the S&P 500. Picking just one of the top 50 stocks has a probability of 10% which is not bad but but clearly difficult. You have a 90% chance of picking a stock outside of that top 50 and building a portfolio. Or let's just say picking 10 of the best 50.

stocks has a pretty low probability, and you might think, well, yes, that's a flat probability, but let's say I have a strategy that gives me the advantage to go and find those top positions. Uh, but there's just nothing so simple that you could apply one hour a week or a month, um, and find those positions. It takes an hour just to read through a company's most recent filings and learn what they even do, let alone to use a five-step diamond system to analyze a portfolio of 20 to 30 stocks. Now, if you want a stock pick, all the power to you, but you do have to go into it with the proper expectations, uh, education, and understanding of how much effort will be required. Even the majority of mutual funds, where you have teams of analysts spending their workday researching stocks, the majority of them tend to underperform. The nice thing about index funds is they do broadly diversify your holding so that you limit your exposure to individual companies, um, and don't put your retirement savings or whatever.

at risk of just a handful of positions failing or, conversely, missing the performance of the top performers driving the index's total return. I definitely think that approach are going with another managed solution makes a lot more sense than the everyday Joe just picking stocks with 1 hour a week. All right, this is a red one. How much I made today using teret and intuition, uh, to day trade options after scanning the market from 8:30 to 9:00 a.m. till 9:00 a.m. and picking the stock I'll be trading that day. Today it was Amazon. I do a single card pull to confirm my decision or get guidance. Uh, today I pulled the ace of cups, which represents abundance. Uh, this gave me the needed Assurance to trust in my strategy. I'm just noticing the account name blonde Rich Witch. 21% return in 8 minutes by trusting my higher self. Yeah, the thing I said about nature healing, uh, might have been preemptive. What's interesting is there is actually a

research article. I think I've highlighted it before about how the stock market seemingly sees different returns under different phases of the moon, which might lead you to believe that there's something to this astrology thing, and that we should all start charting the moon for our investment portfolios, which quite frankly isn't that far off of what a lot of day traders do anyway. But, hopefully, it goes without saying that, no, it's just an example of data mining, right? If you look across enough numbers of data sets and correlate it or run the correlation numbers with the market, you're going to find something that has a rough statistically significant correlation to market performance, even though, of course, correlation does not equate causation. Just because two things occur or move in the same direction does not mean one thing is causing the other. And of course, like I mentioned, you have to be incredibly skeptical of any performance figures provided, especially just kind of one-hot screenshots. Really, the only thing that you should judge someone on.

is their comprehensive long-term performance figures. If you aren't seeing how all of their how their entire account has performed over a longer period of time, and you can't verify that figure, you really shouldn't even bother considering whatever numbers are being thrown at you, whether it be 2% or 2,000%. You need to have the full comprehensive view of things to really gauge someone's ability as a stock picker. You studi the wealthiest. I don't mean Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I mean if you study Goldman Sachs, that's where the real wealth is. Okay, study the wealthiest. Explain that. Why isn't it Gates and Buffett? Because they're only worth 80 million. 80, 80, 80 million. Okay, okay. You know Goldman Sachs will destroy 80 million in an hour as far as their income, their revenues. You're talking about um Vanguard controls $5 trillion dollar of ETFs. That's money. There's endless amounts of money. Like I don't know what the queen controls, but it's fre m

or the Putin money. You're not talking about all that dark money, all the black in the shadows money. Where is this going? What? I don't know what the takeaway was. Yeah, if you're trying to be like Bill Gates or Buffett, you're thinking too small. If you want to be big, you got to study the biggest of the big. I'm talking JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Black Rock. If you're not managing in 1 trillion in assets, under management by the time you're 25, what are you even doing? Come on, get a grip. Grant Cardone, treasure trove of uh, of this kind of content, just always one-upping the weird mental exercises, best investment of the world today. I'm not kidding you, better than real estate, better than oil, better than gas is silver because this is going down. When this goes down, the rupee goes down with. So, if you want to get rich, get silver today, best investment of all. This is $35, man. I don't know what happened to Robert Kiyosaki, but if you aren't familiar.

he used to be a very well-known author for some personal finance books. Uh, haven't actually read them myself, but Rich Dad Poor Dad the four quadrants, I think is the name of the other one. Uh, and these days just predicts a crash every every month or so, kind of like just the general movement of the influencer space as a whole. But silver, uh, to talk about precious metal investing quickly, I've kind of touched on it here and there. Yes, it is true that historically we've seen precious metals like silver, uh, have seen their price increase during times of turmoil. For example, back in 2008, we saw it shoot up 350% in price from a low in 2008 to a high in 2011, but it hasn't been without its issues, and the price of the metal has actually not been able to since reclaim that high. It's interesting that he's talking about silver here. Uh, silver and gold have actually long competed for dominance of the precious metal category, uh, and as a result, investor dollars

but gold has for the most part come out on top. And it's trading at a much higher price, and I've seen that much better return over the long term. And what's interesting with investing in Precious Metals is that obviously a lot of people will highlight how scarcity is what determines something's value, and that's why gold is hard money and why it's sure to continue increasing in value over time. What's interesting is that part of Gold's value, while it's sort of viewed as a sort of formulaic thing, it is in part a social phenomenon. There are actually other precious metals like Platinum, for example, that are rarer than gold and harder to come across with many of the same properties that actually have more industrial applications, and yet trade at a lower price, with Platinum trading at half the price per troy ounce of gold. And the reason why gold has dominated other precious metals is really just sort of social inertia and social phenomenon. There's actually a great book by Anthropologist David Graber called

debt. The first 5,000 years. It was actually suggested to me by Yuri over at Money and Macro, so thanks for that. But in this book, he argues that gold's societal value actually stems from its use in religion and how it was used to adorn temples and paid as tribute due to its shiny, non-corrosive properties. And that over time, that's just translated into its use for financial purposes, especially because historically temples were sort of de facto financial institutions for the societies built around them. We gain a little loss in the tangent here, but it just goes to argue that while some people might view the increase in value of these precious metals as formulaic and based entirely off of scarcity, you know, because something's limited in supply, therefore its price will increase. There's more to it and predicting the price of a precious metal is the same as trying to predict recessions and human behavior. It's near impossible to do. It's why I like to focus on producing.

assets where instead of just hoping that something will uh see its price increase uh I will invest in a company or something that I actually hope will improve over time. I generate more and more profits and grow its operations, which should lead to its price increasing as a result of that rather than just scarcity. Finishing off with another gr Cardone video, like I mentioned, Treasure Trove of content every 15-year-old kid should be doing this right now. If you're getting an allowance of 300 bucks a month, buy a piece of real estate that pays you 30 bucks a month. But how would a young normal person get money allowance sad jobs sad hustles? I was 14 years old, I was working every weekend, I was mowing lawns, I'm doing whatever I could to get some extra money. So, seemingly the lessons from Gran Cardone here are become a literal bank and buy real estate. When You're 15, easy enough. Now, obviously there's nothing wrong with kids trying their hand on entrepreneurship, uh, if say they want a bit of extra cash.

there's stuff they can learn by doing that, but assuming that a kid doesn't need to work to support themselves, I don't see a crazy amount of value in pushing 15-year-olds to work every weekend. There's stuff to be learned by doing that, but the money is not going to be significant compared to, say, your first career income that you're going to earn if you focus on schooling and say develop your skills. And you need to leave room for being a kid, right? These are formative years; there needs to be time to be a kid and develop your soft skills and your social skills. Skills, obviously, this can come down to difference of opinion, but I don't like videos that can convince a younger impressionable crowd that they should be spending every waking hour hustling on their weekends to make a little bit of extra cash. Oh, and I haven't even gone to the real estate part, telling kids to buy real estate. I don't know if you legally can, but I wouldn't recommend.

it's a lot of stress for a child, and a lot of money. We have people with careers struggling to purchase properties. I don't think a lawn mowing weekend practice is going to cut it. Maybe if you start investing your rich parent allowance as a baby, you'll have enough for a down payment by the time you're 15, but that's about it. Math doesn't really check out here. Anyway, just my two cents. A lot more to life, especially for kids, than just chasing dollars. Anyway, that's the video. Thank you for joining me today for another TikTok review. As I mention every time, there are great videos out there giving good information on finance and investing, but there's also a lot of noise you have to cut through. So, hopefully this video helped a bit with that. If you thought it did, please do make sure to like, subscribe, all that good stuff. It does help the channel tremendously. And let me know in the comments down below your thoughts on any of the bits of information covered today. Thanks again.

for joining, and as always, be safe out there.

Investment Analyst Reacts to Finance TikToks - Part 7

Investing and personal finance educational videos with a hint of economics, posted regularly.

I'm a CFA and CFP professional working as an analyst for an investment management company in Ottawa. I'm a huge finance nerd and am passionate about the field - I think people lack the resources they need to make educated financial decisions, and hopefully this channel helps with that!

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The videos on this channel are for education purposes only and do not constitute financial advice. Richard Coffin does not provide recommendations on The Plain Bagel - those looking for investment advice should seek out a registered professional. Richard is not responsible for investment actions taken by viewers and his content should not be used as a basis for investment trades.

The Plain Bagel

Analyzing Finance TikToks with Richard Coffin

Richard Coffin, a registered portfolio manager, reviews finance TikToks to clear up misinformation.

He emphasizes the importance of seeking professional advice for tax and investment matters.

Coffin also highlights the potential risks of misrepresenting information in TikTok videos, emphasizing the complexity of tax and the importance of consulting a CPA.

He also stresses the benefits of investing in index funds while cautioning against misleading claims about their performance.

Index funds' growth is mostly driven by a few stocks, especially in popular market indices like the S&P 500.

An individual stock portfolio showed significant gains, but the presenter's selective showcasing and the challenge of consistently picking the best-performing stocks make it difficult to replicate this success.

The probability of consistently selecting top-performing stocks, especially in a large pool of options, is low, making it challenging to outperform index funds.

The Complexity of Stock Picking and Trading

Picking individual stocks requires extensive research and effort, even for professional analysts, with the majority still underperforming.

Day trading based on intuition and astrology is not a reliable strategy and is considered a form of data mining.

Correlation in the stock market, such as with lunar phases, does not imply causation and should be viewed with skepticism.

It is crucial to be wary of performance claims and to approach stock trading with caution and skepticism.

The Importance of Comprehensive Long-Term Performance Analysis

Comprehensive long-term performance analysis is crucial for evaluating a stock picker's ability.

Studying major financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan is more beneficial than focusing on individual billionaires.

According to Grant Cardone, silver is currently presented as the best investment, outperforming real estate and oil.

Gold's high price and long-term return are driven by its scarcity and social value stemming from its historical use in religion.

Despite being rarer and having more industrial applications, platinum trades at a much lower price due to the social inertia favoring gold.

The societal value of gold, as argued by anthropologist David Graber, has translated into its financial use over time, making its price difficult to predict.

The Limited Value of Pushing Kids to Work

Pushing 15-year-olds to work every weekend may not provide significant financial value compared to focusing on schooling and skill development.

It's important to leave room for kids to be kids and develop their social skills, rather than constantly hustling for extra cash.

Encouraging kids to buy real estate and focus on making money can create unnecessary stress and may not be realistic for their age.