Finance

No one really cared about the losses, however, as numbers are not what drives the stock price of companies like GameStop.

Over the weekend, I met up with my favorite financial podcaster, Dimitri Kofinas, who coined the term financial nihilism in 2019 on his podcast Hidden Forces, which I would strongly recommend that you check out, and I'll put a link in the video description to it.

Dimitri describes financial nihilism as a philosophy that treats the objects of speculation as though they're all intrinsically worthless.

He argues that while Soros' theory of reflexivity sees price as affecting fundamentals and vice versa, financial nihilism sees price as the thing in and of itself, completely unmoored from any relationship to underlying reality.

Dimitri ties social media and the larger phenomenon of living our lives online to the concept of hyperreality proposed by the French postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard, as a state where we can no longer distinguish between reality and mere representations of reality in the world we live in.

This idea deeply influenced the Wachowski brothers in their development of the Matrix movies, The idea that we're increasingly living in a simulation and in such a world reality, if there is such a thing, takes on a more tenuous hold.

The term selfie was first coined in 2002 and at the time it would have been seen as shameful to be seen taking photos of yourself in a way that's totally normal today.

I remember being on a beach around 10 years ago and seeing a young girl arrive at the beach who spent maybe 15 minutes posing for the perfect selfie, probably for Instagram.

Where would you like me to start?

I found from my research, quite surprising fact that you started in finance.

which I wouldn't have assumed.

What took you to finance and then what took you out of finance?

When you grow up in and around New York, I think that the opportunity to work in finance, the vortex is strong.

There's the promise of money and of knowledge and all those things.

And I had a really great experience being there for three years.

I worked at a broker dealer and then I went to go work for a client of the office hedge fund.

Isn't it amazing? And I was thinking back ahead of this interview that you and I are basically around the same age.

We were taught nothing about finance in high school.

Nothing.

Like nothing, nothing at all.

And they have an amazing curriculum inside of high schools, but it's not inside of all the high schools.

I'm currently a HBCU professor at Virginia University.

And specifically, my president asked me to come in to speak on finances.

So I teach consumer economics and we had that conversation.

I love that.

You, uh, you made this video kind of targeted at the same audience, um, titled "Every Way To Outsmart The Subscription Slop," and it went pretty mega viral, you know, for a, for a finance video, I feel like.

Um, and I wonder, first off, like, what were some of the biggest takeaways for you from making that video, things that you learned in, in doing your research and stuff like that?

Yeah, well, I'll give you two little things, a little YouTube meta for the people who might wanna be creators.

Like people tell themselves, "I just like, I would love anybody to see my videos." It's not, it's not realistic.

Like there are people that you would rather see your videos more than others.

Um, you know, I, if I make a video about finance and someone said, "Would you rather have like 100, uh, 90-year-old grandmas watch it or would you rather have, you know, 100 20-year-old men watch it?" I'd probably pick the guys because I feel like I'm gonna have a bigger impact on them long term and, you know, they'll probably come back and watch my videos in the future.

So you dial in what that is first, your audience profile let's call it.

Prior to joining Lone Market back in September 2009, I was with a brokerage firm for seven years, focusing on personal loans and car loans mainly, a little bit of commercial stuff.

So when I left there, we had to have a license in WA and I was able to have accreditation with loan market and accreditation with the credit force for asset finance.

So the first 18 months running the business, I pretty much income came from asset finance.

I probably settled maybe four, five home loans in the first 18 months.

And I operated out of an office in Oldham Park with another, a former ex-inc and low market broker who's no longer there.

Interesting time to join.

Yeah.

And getting referrals from that office that I was in, plus other low market brokers for asset finance, doing all that.

That's 800-525-7000.

This is Faith and Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions.

[upbeat music] Well, have you ever noticed what happens in scripture when wealth becomes someone's identity? There's the rich fool, the rich young ruler, and the rich man who lived while a poor man named Lazarus suffered outside his gate.

We know what these men possessed.

[upbeat music] The opinions offered during this program represent the personal or professional opinions of the participants, given for informational purposes only.

Any information provided is not intended to replace advice from a financial, medical, legal, or other professional who understands your specific situation.

situation.[upbeat music] Grateful to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West.