Borrowed conviction & social traps
By Carlitos
There was an ongoing discussion this week on X about creators wanting to be traders and how it was easier to make money online before this cycle. From the outside it might look easy. Follow the steps described above and make money with your friends.
https://x.com/Carlitoswa_y/status/2087801952604151850
Sadly though, it ain’t that easy. A lot depends on the quality of the people in your group. But a lot is also on you. I have seen friends outperform others even though they bought in later, just because they held through ups and downs. There is no strategy you can simply copy paste and print money. Every cycle is different, things change and you need to adapt. You should however not allow your past bear market trauma to hold you back.
Looking at social trading apps is a double edged sword. The biggest trap on social feeds right now is confusing public engagement with trading competence. Half the accounts posting PnL screenshots or calling rotations are running undisclosed promo deals or dumping private allocations on their followers under the guise of sharing alpha.
Real alpha rarely gets broadcasted to 50,000 people for free in real time. You might think xyz is a genius trader when in reality he has insider information and is dumping on you while publicly stating something different. Be very cautious on whom you follow and create mental associations with that person. Aping on borrowed conviction can be very dangerous.
I was using a social trading app for a month as an experiment and closed the account with $16,331 profit. Finishing amongst the top 250 all time traders on that app. Not only was I really happy with my trading outcome, publicly trading also secured me a deal as it did not go unnoticed. I call this a successful experiment.
