Reading The Motley Fool never made anyone rich

That headline is a bit unfair, because it is too clean. Real life is never that clean. But the spirit of it is true enough to be useful.

Most people who “invest” through mass-market investing content are not building a strategy. They are renting a feeling. The feeling is usually confidence. Sometimes urgency. Often both. And if your inputs are designed to keep you reading instead of keep you disciplined, your portfolio becomes a side effect of someone else’s business model.

Here’s my thesis: the problem is not that popular investing outlets are evil or that every article is wrong. The problem is incentive design. When the product is attention, the content will skew toward what grabs attention.