How the 'Harvard of Trading' Ruined Young People's Lives

Matt Levine wrote about this is Money Stuff a few days ago (https://archive.is/Kgeee section "The Harvard of trading")

In summary: "But at the meta level, [the IM Academy story] provides a helpful lesson in adverse selection. The thing that IM Academy teaches, if you are paying attention, is “if they know so much about how to make money in financial markets, why would they teach me how to do it for just $250 a month?”"

This comes around every 15 years or so, when a new generation who hasn't seen that scam encounters it.

There aren't many original scams. Most of the mass-market ones date from the 1800s, when newspapers provided a way to reach suckers in bulk at low cost. Almost all new scams are repeats of classics. The classics should be taught in school.

These sort of "academies" have been going on forever, and just ride the wave of whatever hype is hot at the time.

20 years ago, it was real-estate, penny stocks, membership clubs, and whatever.

15 years ago, it was online poker, MLM, e-commerce, drop shipping, etc.

In the past 10 years it has been crypto, FX - mot mostly crypto.

Usually it's the same people, or same group of people that operate these scams. These are not beginners - but experienced scammers that know each others. They tend to aim at poor / rural folks that are easily bedazzled by glitter and glam.

If you've ever seen these clowns, they usually stroll onto stage in the most gaudy and gauche looking stuff imaginable - dinner suits with diamond studded lapels and loafers, diamond cane, largest wristwatch they can find. If you're from rural India / Cambodia / Azerbaijan / etc. you might thin that, wow, that's a legit millionaire - he/she/they must know what they're doing.

And then pour your life savings into the products they're pushing.

Here's a site for tracking this kind of garbage:

https://behindmlm.com/

The pandemic was a wild time. Crypto, SPACs, meme stocks, NFTs, s**coins, VC-backed startups…everything was trending up and people thought they were geniuses rather than just benefiting from monetary policy.

Many people thought they were going to be the next Ken Griffin or Jim Simons from trading, lol. IM Academy is just a tip of the iceberg of MLM trading schemes.

Fortunately, they’re trending down because of higher interest rates.

Pinnacle of American culture - predatory lunatics selling MLM schemes. It's so sad to observe people swallowing the bait.

Higher interest rates solve this problem.

Getting 1 paragraph into this and hitting a paywall is understandable but darkly funny. Go get em bloomberg