Grifting

Recently I have been coming across a lot of posts on Twitter that claim that the user was able to use Grok Bots to create full-hands off trading firms, and are boasting crazy returns. Something like this

It always has some claims of amazing profits with just doing this ONE thing, or following THESE prompts. And they throw some acronyms to make it sound more legit. Well, I decided to look into this, and TLDR; if anything seems to good to be true, it is. Yes trading bots exist, yes, some of them are very profitable, but no you’re not going to find the key to riches on a twitter post.

That all being said, this reply to the OP sums up my feelings entirely.

This matches my exploration as well. I fed countless twitter posts with links to GitHub repositories, official looking white paper pdfs, prompts, guides, everything. The results all fell into one of several categories:

• This is a basic trading strategy, nothing novel
• This post is hiding a paid service that promises to make you rich
• AI clout farming

None of this is surprising.

I’m sure you know the golden rule of thumb: if its too good to be true, its not real. But to elaborate on this - every time you come across something like this - ask, whats in it for them? I’ve worked in finances for a long time now, and I guarantee you, if someone is making money off of a strategy, they’re sure as hell not going to tell you how. These opportunities are rare and never last long, as when the secret is out, the market responds and there is not longer an opportunity. Its fun for me to see people sell courses on how to trade and make money - ask, what are they getting out of it? You are the customer, they make money selling courses, not trading. If they made money trading, they wouldn’t bother making a fucking course. That and most of those courses just teach normal trading strategies that are nothing new in the world of finance. Which brings me to my second point. Finances and trading are not well understood, and its easy to spin a narrative around “The dumb professionals don’t understand this opportunity” ( Same playbook for pseudoscience ). Anyone who is telling you that is selling you something. Retail traders always loose, in the long run. Just like the house always wins in the casino.

We’ll leave this post with one of my favorite economic concepts: TINSTAFL “There is no such thing as a free lunch”. There is always a price to everything you do. In money making, that comes from your effort/time, capital or risk - all have value. Get rich quick schemes, aka anything that seems too good to be true, they waste all three. Dropshipping, they waste your time and capital, crypto/options/retail trading ( aka robinhood ) they waste your capital and risk (since its just gambling ).

You don’t have an edge. Who you follow don’t have an edge. Learn finances and realize its boring and slow.

PS: “Everything is priced in” Watch @benjjjaamiinn’s stuff on youtube, as a spiritual followup to this post.