I asked to pitch me investing topics, business ideas, etc. There were a lot of fantastic suggestions, but @DD17_Capital stood out the most. I promised I’d pick my favorite and write about it, so here it is.
The Market Isn’t Your Biggest Opponent. The Algorithm Is.
Social media has given investors something previous generations never had: unlimited access to information. That’s an incredible advantage, but it also comes with an invisible cost. Every headline, every viral thread, every notification, and every prediction quietly influences how we think about businesses long before we ever buy a stock.
Most investors believe they’re making independent decisions. In reality, they’re making decisions inside an environment carefully designed by algorithms. The market hasn’t changed nearly as much as the way we experience it.
The fascinating part is that algorithms don’t optimize for truth. They optimize for attention. Fear spreads faster than facts, confidence spreads faster than uncertainty, and bold predictions spread much faster than thoughtful analysis because those emotions keep people scrolling.
Imagine two investors discussing the exact same company. One says it could compound at roughly 18% annually over the next decade if management executes well. The other says it’s the next 10 bagger and anyone who doesn’t buy it is an idiot. Guess which post reaches millions of people.
Over time, this quietly changes the way investors think. The companies appearing in your feed every day begin feeling like the best opportunities, not because you’ve studied them more carefully, but because your brain mistakes familiarity for quality. Psychologists call this the availability bias, but social media has turned it into a daily habit.
The same thing happens with FOMO. Most people believe they experience it because stocks go up. I think they experience it because thousands of strangers constantly remind them about opportunities they missed while almost nobody talks about the disasters they avoided.
Social media creates a completely distorted picture of reality. You see screenshots of 300% winners, predictions that a stock is going to the moon, and victory laps from people who happened to be right. You rarely see the years of waiting, the mistakes, the permanent losses, or the thousands of ideas that quietly failed.
The greatest damage isn’t convincing someone to buy one particular stock. The greatest damage is changing what investors consider normal. Once your brain becomes accustomed to stories about extraordinary returns, an exceptional business compounding at 20% annually suddenly feels boring.
Businesses haven’t become faster. Costco still opens stores one at a time. Visa still processes payments one swipe at a time. Wingstop still builds restaurants one location at a time. Reality still compounds slowly, but social media has trained investors to expect instant gratification from businesses that were never designed to provide it.
The irony is that the attention economy and the investment economy reward almost opposite behaviors. The attention economy rewards speed, confidence, emotion, certainty, and constant activity because that’s what generates engagement. The investment economy rewards patience, humility, probability, independent thinking, and long periods of doing absolutely nothing because that’s how wealth compounds.
Think about who benefits every time you open the app. The platform gets paid when you scroll. The influencer gets paid when you watch. The advertiser gets paid when you click. Your brokerage gets paid when you trade. Nearly everyone in the investing ecosystem benefits from your activity, while the investor usually benefits from patience.
This creates a fascinating conflict of incentives. The entire internet encourages you to do something every day. The market often rewards doing nothing for years. One system monetizes your attention, while the other rewards your discipline.
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Since we are on social media, I think it would be interesting to read about the influence of the media and especially social media on investor behavior. Things like FOMO, herd behavior, and the availability bias immediately come to mind but ofc there are a lot more.
