WARNING: YouTubers are being paid to promote stocks.

Well, I think we need to have a little bit of a chat. What we're talking about today is: Is it ethical for YouTubers to accept payments to review or promote stocks? That's the question at hand.

Now, this definitely wouldn't fly where I'm from in Australia. You're not allowed to imply a buy, hold, or sell recommendation on a financial product unless you have an Australian financial services license, which none of the YouTubers do. However, I do not know what the rules might be elsewhere in the world, particularly in the United States.

So, yeah, it's an interesting topic because the reason I bring it up is because we are now starting to see it happen. YouTubers are getting paid by publicly traded companies specifically to review their stocks. In some cases, they are being paid specifically to promote their stocks. But I should say that, you know, most of the stock market creators out there are absolutely fantastic people. They really do care about making content that helps out their subscriber base, that adds something, provides value to people, and helps people out.

So, most of the people out there are absolutely fantastic. I've spoken to a lot of them now, and most of them are really fantastic people. It's unfortunately the case with everything, right? It's just a select few people that start to ruin it for everyone. Unfortunately, there are a few people in the stock market, finance, e-commerce, and all these kinds of niches that really just care about money.

When they get a new subscriber, they don't see a new person signing up to their content; they just see another dollar sign in the making. I'm definitely not going to name names or point fingers and say, "this person" or "that person" or whatever, but I think that if you get used to watching someone's content, it kind of becomes pretty obvious, just naturally, whether someone's genuine or not.

But anyway, with that said, what am I even talking about here? I should probably explain this. First of all, like I said before, I'm definitely not pointing fingers because at the end of the day I'm not sure whether any YouTubers have been paid specifically to review stocks or positively promote stocks. The only way I would know that is if they actually disclose that this video is, in fact, sponsored. However, this is essentially what has been happening recently.

Basically, all of the finance YouTubers out there have recently gotten an email, myself included. I got the exact same email. The title or the subject was, "What will it take to do a 10-minute phone call with me?" Now, first of all, that's pretty obvious straight off the bat. That's pretty shady. But even if we go on, you can read the first line here: "I would love to make you an offer." So straight up, that tells you that this person is willing to pay me for something.

Now, what do they want? Well, if we go further down in the email, they say the clients that they work with are looking for either a CEO interview on your channel, a company overview vlog going over the opportunity, or a hybrid of the first two. Now, I should say that I personally have no issues with a YouTuber accepting some sort of sponsorship deal and being paid to make a video about something.

I mean, we see this all the time specifically with, say, tech channels. A lot of channels out there have sponsorship agreements with some of the big tech companies, whether it be like Apple or Samsung or something. They will get paid to review a product. But the reason I don't mind that is because they're not paid to say one thing or another about the product. They're just paid to review the product.

So they could say something great; they could say something terrible, but they'll still get paid to review that product. In essence, their opinions are their own, and they don't get financially penalized. So, when we look at this email, it's pretty obvious that, well, the wording here. They want a company overview vlog going over the opportunity.

So they're not even trying to hide what they want here. They're not just asking for us to review the companies; they are asking us to promote them. Now, to me, that sounds pretty dodgy. So we can actually have a look in this email: what companies are they talking about? Well, there's a company called First Majestic Silver, Calnex Mines, Gold X Mining, Gold Mining Inc., and The Very Good Food Company.

Now, out of these companies, the first one, which was First Majestic Silver, that's actually a pretty decently sized company. In fact, that's got a market cap of 3.4 billion dollars. However, when we start looking at these other ones, they're actually very small companies, or small in the grand scheme of things. We look, there's a market cap of 31 million, 181 million, 482 million, 348 million.

So what's the play here? Well, the play here is that these companies are using their marketing budget to pay YouTubers to make reviews about their stock to try and get more investors, to try and get more people to buy their stock and push the stock price up. But the sad thing is that it's working.

If you have a look at some of these companies, these small companies over the last little while, last couple of months, their share prices have been skyrocketing. And as I said before, I'm not pointing the finger at any one channel saying, "oh this is sponsored" or "that's not sponsored" or whatever, because at the end of the day I don't know whether they're sponsored or not. Because unless they actually do disclose that the video is sponsored, I think it would be fair to assume that a lot of these videos are sponsored just purely by the fact that, well, there's consistency.

I mean, you can just search these five companies on YouTube, and you can start to see consistencies in who's reviewing the stocks. But you can also think about it like this: YouTubers care about views, right? So if we're a stock market YouTuber, we want to be covering the ones that are going to get views—the Teslas, the Apples, the Facebooks, the whatevers.

I mean, at the end of the day, talking about a 31 million dollar mining gold mining startup that's pre-revenue—nobody's ever heard of it before in the middle of the desert in some place—no YouTuber is going to make a video about that because it's simply just not worth their time. It doesn't really help them out in terms of views.

It also doesn't help out their subscribers because it's just like some crappy speculative brand new company that really no one would recommend. But here's really the point of the video. This is really what I wanted to get to: I wanted to hear from you guys. Do you think it is unethical for a stock market-related YouTuber to accept payments from publicly traded companies to make a review about their stock?

Because, you know, if you ask me, technically, I wouldn't say it's unethical to receive a payment just to make a video about something. I think that's totally fine because that's kind of like what we're talking about before with the tech companies: "We'll pay you to make a review about this smartphone." That's fine; I'll still have my own thoughts and opinions, but I feel like that's ethical.

At the end of the day, I mean, if I made a video about Calnex Mines, some mining startup or whatever, then at the end of the day, you guys can decide whether you want to watch that video or not. You don't have to click on the video and watch it through the end. But then on the flip side, one of the things that is unfortunate with a lot of stock market YouTubers, especially some of the bigger YouTube channels, is they get thousands of views per video.

They've got the verified tick; it all looks very credible and trustworthy. Well, unfortunately—and this has happened to me as well—we run into this issue where even if we make a video about a particular stock, and even if we stand up at the start and say, "look, even though I've bought this company," or "even though I'm talking about this company, I do not recommend you buy it simply because I'm buying it." Even if we say that sort of stuff, we will still get people that decide to invest in the companies that we're talking about just because we're talking about them, even if we say don't do it.

I've experienced this myself. This goes back to when I was a shareholder in Sky and Space Global, a very small speculative space company of all things. I just got really interested in that company. I made a speculative bet on it; I made some videos about it. I was always saying in those videos, "you know this is a speculative position; I don't think you should follow me into the position just because I'm buying it. I don't recommend that."

At the end of the day, a lot of people still did, and this was really frustrating and really it upset me quite a bit because, you know, that investment didn't work out at all. It basically just went bust; it just didn't work out. It was a speculative bet—it's like going to the casino. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't; more times than not, you don't win. In this case, it didn't work out.

But I felt really bad because a lot of people reached out to me after I said, "hey, I invested in this stock because of you and I've lost money because of it." That makes me really angry. I really didn't like that, and to go on a bit of a tangent, that's why I don't really talk about what is in my portfolio, what am I buying, what am I selling. Because even if I say, "don't follow me into this stock; please don't do it," then a lot of people still will.

I've had the experience of that happen and it go wrong, and I just do not want to feel that again. It doesn't help me, right? It doesn't help you, and it doesn't help me. It doesn't help you guys if you know what's in my portfolio because the way I invest is probably slightly different from the way you invest. My investing strategies and my goals are probably different from yours. It just doesn't help anyone.

So anyway, at the end of the day, despite us putting up disclaimers and saying, "don't buy this stock just because I'm buying it," a lot of people still do. To be honest, these companies—they know that! That's why they are paying YouTubers to make videos about these stocks because they know that that will get some people to invest, to blindly invest in these companies.

So that's the question that I want to pose to you guys: Do you think it's unethical for YouTubers like myself and my peers to accept payments to make reviews about different stocks? Even though, at the end of the day, it's your financial decision whether you go in or out of a stock, we still know that just the fact we are making a video about this crappy startup, pre-revenue, speculative, high-risk company—we still know that some people that watch the video are just going to dump their money into that company.

So overall, let me know what you think. When this struck me, I mean when it struck me that this was actually starting to happen, man, that just made me think that, you know, the YouTube finance stock market space is just getting very fishy. It's just getting very fishy, and unfortunately, I don't see it changing. I see it just continuing down this path into the future.

With that said, I wanted to finish off the video by saying, okay, some practical points: What can you guys do? How can you be on the lookout for videos that may or may not be sponsored?

What should you do? Well, first of all, we should say that if a video is sponsored, you always have to declare it to YouTube. Usually, most YouTubers will just say, "hey this video is sponsored." A lot of people can get around that because they have affiliate agreements with various sites. Technically, you don't have to disclose if you've got this affiliate agreement.

What YouTube wants is it wants you to disclose whether a third party has given you some sort of payment or benefit specifically to make a specific video. If that happens, where you're actually getting paid to make a specific video, then we as YouTubers have to tick a box with YouTube that then lets YouTube know that it's sponsored, and then YouTube lets you, the viewer, know that that video is sponsored as well.

However, with that said, some people still like to cheat the system. They still like to not disclose when a video is sponsored, which is quite unethical in my opinion. So I would always just recommend, you know, just going in with watching these stock review videos with a big grain of salt.

Okay? And you know, just really use your brain. I mean, if a big finance YouTuber usually talks about companies like Facebook, Apple, or JP Morgan or something big like that, and then all of a sudden, they release this video about a 31 million dollar market cap speculative gold mining stock, I don't know; that kind of just starts ringing alarm bells.

Or, you know, maybe a finance YouTube channel puts out regular animated content which is about a topic of finance that they try and break down through cool animations, and then all of a sudden they've got a one-hour sit-down interview with the CEO of some startup. That stands out! That, to me, says that something's a little bit off and a little bit fishy.

So, if you're wondering whether a video is sponsored or not, feel free to comment and write to that YouTuber and say, "hey, is this video sponsored?" Because I know personally if that comment was left on one of my videos and the video was not sponsored, I would be quick to pounce on that comment and comment back, "no, this video is not sponsored."

So overall, there are some different maybe tips or tricks, but I think at the end of the day we've just got to start watching out. We've just got to pay close attention to what we're watching, and when it comes to stock reviews, we've got to treat everything with a little grain of salt.

Because there may be an incentive for the YouTuber to be saying all the good things that they are saying about that stock, whether it's a direct payment, whether the YouTuber has made an investment in the company prior to making the video and they want more people to support the stock price by buying in as well. We just got to watch out and treat everything with a bit of a grain of salt.

But anyway, I would love to hear from you guys. This is something that I'm really interested to hear your opinion of because at the end of the day, you guys are the viewers. We're the content creators; you guys, the viewers! Do you think it is unethical for YouTubers to receive or accept payments to make reviews about a stock? And furthermore, if you think that maybe that's fine, do you think it's unethical for a YouTuber to accept a payment to make a positive, specifically a positive review about a stock?

I would love to hear from you guys, so please let me know. Let me know; leave a comment down below, and let's get to the bottom of it. Because, hey, we could even do something like if you guys think it's totally fine, we could just devote 'Stock Review Sundays' or something, and I could just accept like a ten thousand dollar payment for a stock review.

I could totally just stand up and say, "I definitely recommend you guys do not buy this stock; it is a 31 million market cap exploratory gold mining pre-revenue stock," and I could just take that payment. We could just do some sort of giveaway; beat them at their own game!

But anyway, guys, that's it for this video. Hope you enjoyed it. Leave a like on this video. I think we need to spread the word about this, so definitely share this with other people. Leave a like on it; let's help it get out there to more people that watch videos in this space. I'd really appreciate it.

But that's about it for today, guys! Thank you very much for watching. Definitely let me know your opinions down below. Go and comment; leave me a comment right now. I want to hear your opinions, but apart from that, guys, thanks for watching, and I'll see you guys in the next video. [Music] Today. [Music] Quote.