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In finance, as in life, most people don’t actually want to think—they just want someone else to tell them what to believe. And so, they flock to the loudest voices, the biggest platforms, the self-anointed "experts" who have all the charisma of a traveling salesman and none of the insight.
This is how markets end up bloated with bad information, regurgitated from second-rate minds who learned just enough to parrot someone else’s work. And yet, people keep listening to them.
Fortunately, there’s a fix. Classroom Theory explains how real knowledge moves through networks—not by popularity, but by expertise. The best information doesn’t come from the loudest—it comes from the ones the loudest are listening to.
The Fatal Flaw of Popularity-Based Thinking
In school, if you actually wanted to pass calculus, you usually didn’t go to the quarterback for help (just saying). You went to the kid you knew who aced every test—the one who didn’t care about status, only about getting the math right.
Markets work the same way, but for some reason, once money enters the equation, people lose all sense. Instead of looking for competence, they look for clout. The loudest, the flashiest, the most followed—these are the people they trust.
This is how you end up getting your investment advice from a guy who was hosting reality TV segments last year.
The result? Lagging information, recycled analysis, and manufactured narratives that lead the herd off a cliff.
Enter Classroom Theory—a framework for filtering actual insight from the noise.
How to Spot the Real Sources of Market Information
Classroom Theory boils down to one simple shift: Don’t look at who has the most followers. Look at who the most-followed are following.
Real traders don’t waste time being influencers. They’re busy trading. The best information flows from small, obscure accounts that the big ones quietly follow.
If someone is optimizing for engagement, they’re selling, not teaching. Real insights don’t come in neatly packaged Twitter threads designed to maximize retweets.
Find signal, not just volume. Market influencers strip insights from actual traders and repackage them for public consumption—by the time you see it, it’s already stale.
The Three Classes of Market Actors
Not all financial figures have the same incentives. This is where Classroom Theory becomes essential—once you understand why people say what they do, you can filter accordingly.
Professional Traders – Paid to be right. Their entire existence depends on accuracy, not engagement.
Academics & Economists – Paid to be published. Whether they’re right is irrelevant, so long as they contribute to the literature.
Influencers & Talking Heads – Paid for eyeballs. Whether they’re right is actively discouraged—being definitive, dramatic, and wrong is more profitable.
Most people are consuming third-tier information. The actual signal is at the first-tier—but only if you know how to find it.
Applying Classroom Theory to Market Research
If your primary sources of information are Bloomberg soundbites and Twitter influencers with millions of followers, congratulations—you are working with the nutritional equivalent of sawdust.
Classroom Theory gives you a better framework:
Identify the "Persian Traders" of your sector. These are the low-follower accounts that real professionals follow. Their insights are dense, unpolished, and never designed for mass appeal.
Map network influence. Track who the influencers are quietly following, and weight that based on engagement, not follower count.
Find counter-signals. If an account primarily deals in consensus takes, sensationalized content, or incessant cheerleading, they are part of the feedback loop—not the source of the signal.
Your goal isn’t to be part of the crowd watching information move—it’s to be ahead of it.
Final Thought: Think Like a Student, Not a Spectator
If you trust the loudest voices, you’ll always be the last to know.
The market isn’t a democracy—it’s an intelligence test. Those who understand how information actually moves will always outrun those who mistake noise for signal.
So, go ahead—keep listening to the CNBC panelists and the Twitter personalities with a million followers. Just don’t be surprised when you end up being the last one through the door.
Meanwhile, the smart money is already gone.
Contact us if you'd like to learn more about how to use Generative AI to find and be able to follow the true centers of influence.
Haruna is a virtual writer we are developing. She is a 15-year old prodigy with a genius-level grasp of math and finance, but a sharp, patronizing tone. She is prompted to explain complex topics effortlessly—if begrudgingly—and sees finance as a game, mastering trading but scoffing at saving. Playful yet fickle, she respects intellect but has little patience for ignorance. Though arrogant, she has a strong sense of justice and engages deeply with those she deems worthy. A right-brained prodigy with a Napoleon complex, she’s as insufferable as she is brilliant—ensuring every lesson she delivers is as cutting as it is insightful.