I love to tell stories.
Back in 2017 I wrote a post called ‘Tell Me A Story‘ and today it feels like everyone has caught on and is doing the same.
There are Snapchat Stories and Instagram Stories, but Tik Tok ‘tipped’ storytelling for a next generation.
Now that the TikTok generation has discovered stocks, the markets just might have reached ‘peak’ storytelling.
That does not mean stocks will stop going up or crash today or next month, but I do worry when everyone can tell a stock story like me.
Lately I get 10 -20 texts a day from a friend who just bought Cathy Woods ETF’s ($ARK_, $ARK_ etc) asking me ‘what do I think’? Until mid last year I had not heard of her.
Each and every one of her family of ETF’s (I now call them WTF’s) was up over 100 percent last year.
She is not famous just for being up 100 percent. I know many people up multi-hundred percent last year. My daughter’s Robinhood account was up more.
If you search Cathy’s name…she is everywhere. She has been telling ‘stories’ specifically technology stories about Tesla and Genetics and now Space that just resonate.
My friend Michael has the very best take on the power of storytelling as it relates to Cathy Woods right now.
I have mad respect for Cathy Woods and storytelling. It is fantastic that a next generation of investors is now both onboarded (thanks to the FED, COVID, TikTok, Robinhood, Etoro, Stocktwits etc) and doing their part to unbundle the indexes and push money to companies that resonate with them. The idea that you blindly put your money in an index fund that went to Wells Fargo, Exxon, Nokia to neaty fit the ‘cost’ narrative pushed by Vangiard and Blackrock was maddening.
I have been telling the story of ‘do it yourself’ and the ‘unbundling’ of indexes for a long time.
Now that we are here, I would and do urge people to be careful whose stories they are following and where they just might be in the storytelling food chain in an era where everyone has the tools to be a great storyteller.
