exploring the new generation of investment gurus in Telegram

Over the past month, economics professors beloved by students from Moscow State University, the Higher School of Economics and other prominent educational institutions have rushed to Telegram en masse to share recipes for surviving the crisis with people. In this article, we understand what these professors are famous for, and how their advice helps even a fifth-grader to make money on the stock exchange.

I am subscribed to at least several dozen Telegram channels about investments and finance. Recently, I regularly see touching advertisements about talented professors from the leading universities of the country, who explain the economy so clearly (and most importantly – with humor!) That students stand in line to get to their lecture.

And then, it means that these wonderful teachers finally succumbed to the pressure of the all-consuming love of students, and created their own channels! All this sounds so sincere and mi-mi-bear that I want to immediately support the cheerful teachers with a subscription and cling, so to speak, to the wisdom they have accumulated.

I myself studied economics in Yekaterinburg – therefore, unfortunately, I don’t know these popular Moscow professors by sight. But I became interested, and I decided to google in more detail – what are these luminaries of science, what are they famous for? Let’s figure it out together.

The kind professor is one of the most frequently seen ads only in the stock video buying service. Hmmm, did the students persuade their favorite professor to sign up for Shutterstock as well? (I’m afraid that they would drag the naive grandfather on top of everything and on OnlyFans …)

In addition to the “Favorite Professors”, another frequently encountered subspecies of the new generation of Telegram gurus is the “Carbon Teachers”.

This Carbon Monoxide Teacher lives under sanctions for his own pleasure, but for some reason he also earns money by selling his photos on stocks. He literally explains to his students on his fingers how not to suck his paw before the salary (but what he offers to suck in return is, unfortunately, not clear from the text of the advertisement).

A couple more Carbon Teachers from the RANEPA and Moscow State Law Academy with almost the same texts. Their obsession with communication with five-graders is somewhat annoying – at their age, let’s say, this may raise some questions …

However, the Carbon Lecturer in Law turns out to be the late prime minister from Australia. Personally, I am bursting with pride in the Moscow Law Academy: it is so powerful that foreign specialists strive to find a job there even after death!

Another professor of economics from Moscow State University unexpectedly shares his name right in the text of the advertisement. True, for some reason it is impossible to find Denis Yurkov among the professors on the Moscow State University website. But on the other hand, from the photo it is possible to understand that this is actually the pseudonym of the former Minister of Labor of the Russian Federation (also now deceased).

I am glad that Russia has found an unexpected solution in case of a zombie apocalypse: all the figures of science and culture who have risen from the graves, in which case, will be able to go to work as university teachers. Or, at worst, Telegram bloggers!

Here we are already seeing some deflation of scientific degrees: financial advice is given by an ordinary HSE graduate, not even a professor (or at least a seedy master). If you thought that it was impossible to break through the bottom below, then right next to it is an advertisement for a fluffy cat that is successfully engaged in dividend investments.

Judging by the same design of the splash screen and the identical advertising manager in the description, the cat and the student live in the same hostel. Perhaps, at breakfast, they share the latest trading signals with each other (and on the days of market drawdowns, the cat, out of annoyance, shits on the student’s slippers).

Neural network infogypsies

In fact, we are witnessing the emergence of a new phenomenon – “neural network infogypsy”. Being a real person in order to make money on subscribers is no longer necessary – they will listen to you, even if your “persona” is completely invented.

Oddly enough, this does not bother people at all: anonymous trash channels have an audience of hundreds of thousands of subscribers (yes, of course, some of them are bots – but there are plenty of real people there).

Last year we discussed loud The Bell investigation, during which it turned out that such channels regularly feed their subscribers with literally the famous brown substance right from the shovel. In any of them, for a modest 150 thousand rubles (140 thousand if you pay on the card of an individual!) You can place any custom-made jeans that you want, under the guise of “author’s analytics”.

For anyone running their own non-anonymous finance channel, all this riff-raff makes a serious ethical choice. On the one hand, these SMM geniuses are ready to spend quite a lot of money on promotion (this kind of advertising managers knock on the door literally every day). On the other hand, in the process of cooperation there is a risk of throwing up directly on the professor’s round bald head (or at least in the dividend cat) …

When I launched my Telegram channel as a hobby four years ago, I decided as a matter of principle not to advertise anything about finance and investment in order to avoid a conflict of interest. As a result, however, it turned out that if you make content about investments, then (surprise!) almost all solvent people who want to place ads on your site are either representatives of banks / brokers or SMMs of other large channels on the topic “here they will teach you how to get rich in a week” .

So now my TG channel with 37k+ subscribers brings me, well, somewhere around zero money. Although I could give at least 150 thousand rubles a month – of course, provided that all kinds of Beloved Professors and Carbon Monoxide Teachers are launched into the feed.

And what about the most popular non-anonymous investment gurus?

If you think that as part of information hygiene it is enough to bypass only anonymous channels, then I have bad news for you. For example, let’s see what “insights” a couple of non-anonymous Telegram channels from the top most popular in the “Economy” category share with grateful readers.

Last week, I wrote about a high-profile event in the crypto world: one of the largest “stable” cryptocurrencies, UST, with a capitalization of almost two dozen billion dollars, suddenly turned out to be not so stable and quickly went to zero. Just in case: for everyone who is at least a little in the subject and understands how finance works, this did not come as a surprise.

When I was doing research for my article on stablecoins, I noticed that almost all adequate experts from the world of crypto regard the risk of the collapse of UST / Luna as at least a completely possible scenario. That is, it’s not that I “predicted” the collapse of the UST (as some are now writing in the comments) – I just wrote about the risk that was obvious to everyonewho understands what is at stake.

Let’s now see what the respected authors of the channels wrote on this topic. Bitkogan and Lemon for tea (both have about 250k subscribers each). (By the way, both of these channels appear in The Bell investigation about corrupt bloggers. Coincidence? I don’t think!!)

The main investment banker of all Russia, Evgeny Kogan, managed to almost perfectly time the collapse of UST – he recommended to its subscribers this crypt as “the most secure” on May 5 – just four days before the moment when it began its victorious path to zero on May 9 (see chart above).

I am glad that such trifles did not shake Mr. Kogan’s confidence in his expertise in the world of cryptocurrencies: on May 11, he continued to invite new students to his two-month course “Cryptostart”, where for only 25 thousand rubles he promised to “teach a beginner who knows nothing about cryptocurrencies to use them safely and wisely in his investment portfolio.”

If anything, I’m not kidding. About “safe and reasonable” – this is a quote from Kogan’s channel. He himself wrote this: by this moment, the “most secure” stablecoin UST recommended by him had been trying to determine itself for two days already – is it worth at least 50 cents per dollar, or is it already completely zero? Well, that is, absolutely nothing bothers, yes.

The baton of crypto expertise from the weakening hands of Yevgeny Kogan on May 12 was picked up by Yevgeny Kovalenko, who manages the Lemon for Tea channel. Mr. Kovalenko published his analytical analysis the collapse of the UST. Moreover, according to the phrase “the ratio 1 UST = 1 USD was supported by the Anchor protocol”, it is obvious that he does not understand anything about the topic at all, just not a belmes!

This, however, did not stop Evgeny from sharing his valuable advice with 250k subscribers: he expressed confidence that it was impossible to sell the cryptofantik UST rushing straight to hell at a price of $0.64 in any case – you have to wait until it inevitably grows to at least $0, 90 (and maybe even higher).

As you may have guessed, this Evgeny also managed to give an almost perfect anti-advice: selling UST on the evening of May 12 at ~$0.60 was the last chance for unlucky crypto investors to save at least some remnants of capital. After this point, only an inexorable slide into the abyss awaited UST (now the token is hanging on its last legs at the level of ~$0.10).

I think you will not be surprised by the fact that Evgeny Kovalenko holds webinars about how to “earn more than 400% per annum on cryptocurrencies.” I’m sure he doesn’t mind at all either.

Moral: The number of subscribers says very little about the quality of the content on the channel (but a lot about the amount of effort and money spent on its promotion). Personally, I love niche little-known channels that the authors run primarily for the soul: for example, Andrei Bolkisev writes very well about investments (onfin1 thousand subscribers), Dmitry Nikitenko (Capital-Gain.ru2 thousand subscribers), and finsay (3 thousand subscribers) – but only a rather narrow group of “their own” knows about their existence.

If the article seemed interesting to you, then I will be grateful for subscribing to my TG channel RationalAnswerwhere I try to find reasonable approaches to personal finance and investments (remember: without any Carbon Monoxide Teachers there!).