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How the Financial Media Scam Really Works

Most people have no idea how the financial media actually works. I'm going to expose the truth to you today, and it's a very ugly truth. The media doesn’t exist to inform or help investors. It only exists to sell advertising and to help its advertisers mislead the audience.

The Business Model of Deception

The truth is that broadcast networks like CNBC and Bloomberg and financial publications like Barrons's and the Wall Street Journal don’t feature genuine experts who can help viewers make money.

You see, real insight would make the audience smarter, more self-sufficient, and less likely to need financial services. And that’s bad for business if you're in the financial services.

Let's not forget that the primary advertising customers of the financial media are banks, brokers, and fund companies, so they expect a good return on their advertising dollars. In fact, they'll even pay even more when viewers are confused, anxious, and losing money because this leads to more business for them.

To make it all work, the media’s job is to create the illusion of expertise while delivering advice that keeps the audience dependent on Wall Street. as a result, the media fills airtime with performers as opposed to experts. In reality, the media's "experts" more closely resemble, used car salesmen, clowns, cons, and contrarian indicators masquerading as market sages.

The result? Viewers lose, advertisers win.

Manufactured Credibility

It’s all theater. It's a Hollywood production. The media dresses up its guests with words like “legendary,” “brilliant,” or “famed investor.”

In reality, these people are either washed-up fund managers, shameless promoters, or serial contrarians who have been wrong for decades. I’ve tracked the performance of these so-called “experts;” Schiff, Rogers, Faber, Grantham, Dent, Cramer, O’Leary, the Najarians, and the rest, for nearly twenty years.

The result?

Their track records are disasters.

The producers know it. But they also know the average viewer can’t recall who said what three months ago. The constant churn of “expert” opinions keeps the audience disoriented and glued to the screen. And that's the perfect environment for selling ads.

The Math Behind the Scam

Media revenue = ad cost × number of viewers.
To maximize both, the networks need to:

Convince advertisers their audience is valuable.
Convince the audience that the “experts” are credible.

The trick is perception. If the audience believes they’re hearing from brilliant investors, viewership stays high. Meanwhile, advertisers buy more airtime because the confused audience keeps needing financial products.

The Incentive to Mislead

Ask yourself which audience is worth more to Wall Street? One that invests successfully on its own, or one that keeps losing and turning to professionals for help?

Do you understand? The system profits from failure. The media’s incentives are perfectly aligned with misleading its viewers.

When people lose money following televised advice, they call the advertisers: brokers, insurers, fund managers, and trading apps. That’s the conversion the advertisers pay for. Everyone in the chain benefits, except the audience.

Perception Over Performance

The networks protect the illusion they create. They recycle the same bad forecasters and give them endless exposure, knowing most viewers won’t fact-check.

Meanwhile, the few analysts who have genuine predictive skill and who expose this racket are blacklisted.

The “experts” themselves are rewarded for keeping the machine running. They sell books, host podcasts, launch funds, and cash in on their fake reputations. Their job isn’t to be right; it’s to sound confident.