The Valuation : Value Investing Through Valuation

The Overflow of Investment Content

These days, investment-related content is everywhere—YouTube, blogs, Twitter, even private chat groups.

Countless people present themselves as “investment influencers,” offering their own analyses.

In this flood of information, investors must make choices: which to accept and which to ignore.

In my view, one of the most effective ways to protect your portfolio is learning how to filter out influencers.

The “Told-You-So” Style: Empty, After-the-Fact Commentary

The most common type is what I call the “told-you-so” influencer.

After a stock rallies, they say things like, “See? I told you this would happen,” but rarely provide any forward-looking analysis or actionable strategy beforehand.

Anyone can explain why a stock went up after the fact.

What matters is the reasoning and criteria that led to a buy or sell decision before the move happened.

Investors should focus on process consistency, not retrospective commentary.

The “told-you-so” style adds nothing to informed decision-making.

Bragging About Individual Stock Gains: Misleading Signals

The second type overemphasizes individual stock returns.

They boast about making 100% or 200% gains on certain trades, trying to project extraordinary insight.

But in most cases,

It was the result of short-term luck, or Just one-off gains irrelevant to their overall portfolio.

What truly matters in investing is portfolio-wide performance.

Influencers who highlight one or two lucky picks only stir emotions and distract investors from sound principles. The more you get swayed by their bragging, the more unstable your own account becomes.

Reckless Leverage ETF Recommendations: Feeding Greed

Another red flag is influencers who casually recommend leveraged or inverse ETFs.

By design, leveraged products are short-term trading tools.

Yet many influencers present them as long-term strategies, appealing to those chasing quick profits.

The problem: unless you time the trend perfectly, structural decay erodes returns over time.

In effect, they’re encouraging retail investors to play a game most cannot win.

Real investing isn’t about “one big hit”—it’s about steady compounding.

These influencers hide that truth.

Recycled News: No Real Value

Another type to avoid are those who simply repost headlines from Bloomberg, Reuters, or The Wall Street Journal.

Sharing news isn’t inherently bad. The problem is when it comes with no personal analysis or actionable insights.

Everyone has access to news.

What matters is how you interpret it and apply it to your portfolio.

If an influencer only translates headlines without adding value, there’s nothing worth learning from them.

Conclusion: Judge by Portfolio Performance

The most reliable way to evaluate an investment influencer is simple:

Look at their overall portfolio performance.

Stock-picking boasts, leveraged ETF hype, after-the-fact commentary, or recycled news add no value to your investing journey.

In the end, what matters is not words but numbers.

If there’s no consistent track record across their portfolio, the best filter is to tune them out.

Protecting your account starts with filtering influencers effectively.