Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

I was reading an academic paper earlier this week and learned a new word, finfluencer. According to

Sue Gouan of Santa Clara University, the term Finfluencer refers to a person

who by virtue of their popular or cultural status has an outsized impact on investor decisions

through social media influence. According to Guwan, a variety of Finfluences exist in today's markets, ranging from simple

celebrities that draw people's attention like Kim Kardashian to corporate personalities like

Elon Musk or Ryan Cohen, to ordinary investors who develop followings on YouTube, TikTok,

and other social media platforms.

There are also actors who play the part of knowledgeable investors on TV shows who become

Finfluences like Kevin O'Leary.

Finfluences are not traditional financial analysts.

Instead, their audience is mostly made up of retail investors

and their message, if they have one, typically focuses on democratising finance or increasing

access to information. She points out that Finfluence has long been a perfectly legal feature

of stock markets and gives the

example of media personality Jim Kramer, who's had a stock market analysis platform on

CNBC for over 20 years.

The phenomenon of Finfluencing is nothing new either.

Nearly a century ago in the lead-up to the

1929 stock market crash, an astrologer named Evangeline Adams amassed a sizable

influence among investors, including celebrities like Charlie Chaplin and bankers like

J.P. Morgan, doling out stock tips that she derived

...