Digital Gold, Or Digital Tulips? ("This Is Not Financial Advice" Movie Review)

 I came into investing by accident. 

As a retail worker, I would randomly come across a customer asking me if our store was going out of business (funny enough, this would happen more than once, at at more than one business). Not knowing if these questions were true or not I would head over to finance channels on television, like Bloomberg or CNBC, and get the financials of the stores I was working at. And usually our stores would be fine. A store I worked at long ago, Mervyn's, did end up going out of business, but the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 was the one event that eventually took a bankrupt and limping business to the edge.

Later on in life as major news networks like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC featured warring, partisan bickering and profited from it with the ratings, I returned to business news. They covered the important events going on in the world but through the lens of finance. I could see how these events affected my personal and work life and the best part was not hearing the arguing of talking heads.

So in 2020 as the U.S. and a good chunk of the world went into lockdown as Covid broke out, I was surprisingly stoic. I had money saved up and having the right opportunity to invest, I invested. I had never been in that situation before and it felt like the stars were aligning. But as I was following the tried and true investing lessons from the likes of Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, and John C. Bogle, there was something else going on. A separate group of 'investors' who were YOLOing their stimulus checks into crypto currency, NFTs, meme stocks, and other insane investments. Thankfully I was old enough to stay the course and had read enough books about financial euphoria to know a bubble when I saw one. Yes, Bitcoin is still around, but I stand by my convictions. 

Today on digital was the release of the documentary "This Is Not Financial Advice," an entertaining snapshot of that frenzy of zero interest rates and buckets of money printed out to the public. And the youngsters flexing their digital assets. 

The focus is on four individuals...a young man who invests the traditional way but has the patience to do so, a young TikTok influencer who wants to teach the right way to her following, a divorcee who sells his house and throws it all into crypto, and the main focus being The Dogecoin Millionaire, a young man with nothing to lose but who lets the hype overtake common sense. 

Seeing the rise of their investments was humorous. To be honest, the entire meme culture of this era was humorous. Even though I would go the traditional route, I had a good time revisiting this insanity. Seeing the massive drop in their investments was groan inducing. It wasn't even my money but I felt the gut punch of $2 Million plus being reduced to half a million, just because the HODL (Hold On for Dear Life) crowd don't allow 'paper handed' sellers. That's the true tragedy of all this frothiness. A lot of these kids could've made good gains if it weren't for that gambling side of wanting to see that big number rise even more. It's frustrating, but since the 17th century and the first bout of financial euphoria (being the Tulip Bubble Mania) to the Dot Com Bubble to Beanie Babies...it's human nature. The times and technology may change, but the hearts of men and women mainly stay the same. Even with the lessons learned over the years.

By Jess Solis

BUY OR RENT "THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE" HERE:

This Is Not Financial Advice