Thread by @YMehta_

Why #Financial #Influencer community is being hated so much?

What went wrong with them?

Let's answer all these questions in this #Thread🧵.

Tag your favorite influencers so that they can also learn from the mistake.

Like❤️ and Retweet🔄this tweet for the benefit of others.

Let's start with an analogy now.

Just imagine you are in a school and you are 6 years old. You don't have much knowledge of what is right or wrong.

Your teacher says that throwing garbage in open is bad.

So what's the probability that you will do this?

Least Likely, right?

If the teacher says that smoking and eating tobacco is not good for your health, then again you will prefer not to do this, even if your favourite actor/actress or any celebrity promotes this.

You will follow what the teacher says.

Now let's reverse this case.

Teacher is saying that smoking is healthy and the teacher also smokes in class in front of students. So will you read the danger notice on a cigarette box or you will trust what the teacher and start smoking just because you are a child?

You can think of parents instead of teachers.

When you don't know what is right or wrong, you just follow what the elder person is saying because you trust them.

Now talking about what went wrong with this Financial Influencers?

According to the SEBI report, only 27% population is Financially Literate, that means the remaining 73% population don't have any basic knowledge of Finance.

Now the majority of us didn't have finance subject in school/college (engineers/doctors/other non commerce).

They will not go back to college to get Financial Knowledge after getting their degree.

So the only source for them is an open source platform like #Google/#YouTube.

So these Financial Influencers community emerge and took this responsibility of increasing the financial literacy so that majority of the people become Financial Independent early in their life.

Undoubtedly, their motive was good in the true sense.

Now these Influencers are the same Teachers and the viewers or followers are the kids who don't know what is right or wrong while taking Financial Decision.

Do you think these followers will even care to read the disclaimer just like the cigarette example or read about the risk in any investment or maybe listen to any other person?

This adds up to one more responsibility for the Influencers to make sure that the followers don't suffer.

But sometimes money greed overpowers the true mission of Financial Literacy and they start promoting aggressively about the things that were not good for the followers.

For any promotional video, content will of 25 mins and disclaimer will of 5 seconds or sometimes written in description. Do you think this will help even followers?

In content, just talk about the how great this investment opportunity is? How did it give 10 times returns?

This is one video of 24 minutes and it is talking about the risk in the crypto for only 5 seconds.

One lady who is a CA shamelessly promoted Cryptocurrency.

My question to her was how did she arrive at the fair value of all this crypto?

Surprisingly, I was blocked.

This adds up to Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) in the mind of the people who don't have any idea of what risk they are taking.

And they get onboarded on the train and invest in random things.

Worst Part of this is if that investment goes down, then create another video and say how great the opportunity is? The crash is temporary and it will go up again.

Now this leads to averaging of the investment by the followers. If it goes down, then more pain for the followers.

If that followers raise voice or say anything bad about the investment, then use block feature and shut their mouth. Best part will be to hide the comment.

The idea of doing this is to keep new followers unaware of all this and they also get trapped into this.

Second mistake was to promote investment opportunity for which they themselves are not confident about.

Read this disclaimer. Clearly, it states that the person is not confident and still promoting for money.

Now, one will say for any investment Pan Card is needed, and an individual has to be above 18 years who are matured enough to take a decision.

That is correct, but remember discussing about the 73% population who don't have knowledge of Finance and not the Financial Literate.

These 73% population look upon these influencers as a teacher who will guide them in their personal finance.

When these influencers says consult with your financial planner or advisor for the investment, then who will bother to look for a genuine advisor in the busy schedule?

Even when Finance Minister, #SEBI, #RBI warns about the cryptocurrency, these influencers come up with the video talking about the growth and future in cryptocurrency.

Now one will say it means followers were ignorant.

But this means that influencers were not trustable.

These Influencers were not aligned with their mission of increasing Financial Literacy of our country instead, they were aligned to increase their own finance.

There has to be accountability for everything.
Even after 90% fall in crypto, these cryptos are projected as good.

That's all about the Influencer mistake.

I am no one to point their mistake as I don't have big followers like them. This thread is not for them but for you, who are their followers and got trapped because of their content.

What are all the things you can do now?

1. Our Central Bank: RBI takes initiative of the financial education and they organize financial literacy week. So you can be part of this.

Link: rbi.org.in/FinancialEduca…

2. Market Regulator: SEBI also takes initiative to educate investor.

One of the link is this: investor.sebi.gov.in/fin-edu-mat/fe…

Also, just google out you will find materials from SEBI.

3. Zerodha Varsity is one of the best source to get an education for Stock Market for free.

This is not from regulators, but it is free and a good source to learn.

Link: zerodha.com/varsity/

Other than these, don't invest in any asset class that is not regulated by any regulator or government body.

To end this thread, I will just quote what my Grandfather says, "There is no Easy Money or Free Lunch in this world. One who is guaranteeing good returns is a fraud."

That it from my end for Financial Influencer and Financial Literacy.

Thank you all, if you have spared your time in reading this thread.

Don't forget to Like❤️ and Retweet🔄 the first tweet so that it reaches to 73% People who are not Financially aware.

https://twitter.com/YMehta_/status/1544661114222288897