Free financial advice is too expensive! In many cases, it’s a simple supply and demand problem: The demand side wants free alpha—which is mostly unrealistic. Sure, you might get lucky if someone is unusually generous or early in the process, but that's rare. On the supply side, producing high-quality insights consistently requires time, skill, and resources. Unless there's a way to monetize—usually through ads, which need massive scale—there’s no incentive to do the hard work. So what happens in practice? Creators default to the path of least resistance: chase mass engagement and cut production costs by dumbing down the content. In other words, they churn out low-effort, high-sensationalism garbage like: “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED!” or “NO ONE IS BULLISH ENOUGH!” You’ve seen it. That’s the model. This approach lets creators push out tons of content, rack up views, and profit—without any real expertise or research. Free information can be very costly. Assume most of your favorite “influencers” are compromised—driven by their own monetization strategy, not your best interest. Another great example is stock cheerleaders. They have an incentive to perpetually peddle the bullish stock and turn you into a corporate army. And be sure that the company is paying them handsomely behind the scenes.