The Top 5 YouTube Investment Channels
YouTube is a tool that you can use to your benefit, but usually turns into a time waster and can even have detrimental effects on your health. It’s no secret that its extremely easy to veer off task and start watching random videos resulting in minutes, sometimes even hours of time lost to procrastination. Outside of YouTube, a recent study on the effects of internet addiction discovered some alarming facts; college-aged students who spent excessive amounts of time on the internet exhibited more depression, anxiety, impulsiveness and an inability to manage time and routines than those who did not. To counter this detrimental behavior, you need to break the habit and replace it with another good habit (I’ve written an in-depth post on breaking bad habits here).
Our minds like visual material such as videos and presentations, and as a result learn more from this type of medium. This makes YouTube one of the greatest tools on the internet for learning (about money and investing, in our case). Best of all, it’s all free and has virtually unlimited content. You can choose to pay $100 for private lessons on economics, or go online and view better content, for free. By taking advantage of the tools available to you, you can build something great — in this case, a wealth of knowledge.
Before I list my favorite YouTube channels, that have personally impacted me, I’m going to show you how to avoid being distracted.
YouTube is designed to make you watch video after video because it makes Google and the creators money. Your homepage contains targeted videos for you personally, based on your viewing habits — this is extremely bad for focus. We need to not be affected by targeted videos, clickbait, and the trending page and stay on task. For some, this may be easy… Just don’t click off topic. For others (like me), we need some help with this.
DF YouTube. This is a free Chrome extension that allows you to block all distractions on YouTube. You can select what elements of YouTube you want to block — for me it is everything, and the only thing remaining is the YouTube Search Bar. No distracting sidebar, recommended videos, comments, playlists or home page. Best of all, you can easily turn it off, when you want the full YouTube experience. However, it doesn’t block videos deemed ‘off topic’, so you’ll need to self-regulate that. I’ve kept the extension on since I’ve got it, and now spend very little time on YouTube.
Now that we know how YouTube can be beneficial to us, and how to avoid distractions, let’s take a look at the top 5 channels that will aid you in becoming a Millionaire By 25 (sorted by best content).
1) Graham Stephan — Think of this blog in video form. Graham is one of my favorite creators because he makes really down to earth content that hits current events in the investing world. He’s fairly young (27), and a real estate agent. His content is marketed to teen and young adults and is great advice.
2) Crash Course (Economics) — This channel singlehandedly taught me economics. They provide great content, such as 35 in-depth videos on economics (which total at about 500 minutes). They teach in a way that is easy to follow and do a better job than any high school course you could have taken.
3) L2inc — This channel publishes a series of videos hosted by Scott Galloway called “Winners and Losers in the Digital Age,” and is like a podcast with video. He breaks down companies to figure out if they are a sound investment, has exclusive interviews and weighs in with his thoughts.
4) Preston Pysh — Publishes videos (mainly audio only), in the form of courses. The channel studies successful people and lands exclusive interviews. I recommend listening to them because I’ve learned a lot from his interviews.
5) Grant Cardone — Grant is a love/hate type person. He’s a successful real estate investor, but now makes most of his money from being a ‘guru’. His videos are great for motivation but don’t teach you much, especially when compared to the other listed channels.
Some Other Channels:
Investopedia — Provides great visual representations of economic terms. It’s great for understanding key concepts that are difficult to understand in text. They have any economic term/concept you can think of.
Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell — Not an investing channel, but provides extremely high quality animated ‘life lessons’ describing really difficult concepts (such as life, the universe, and everything). This is my favorite YouTube channel.
Jon Olsson — The only vlogger I (periodically) watch. He’s an ex-professional-skier, who took his profits and created a bag company out of it. He is now a very successful businessman and documents his life. It’s great content for motivation.
Fous4 Trading — A very successful day trader vlogger. Like Jon, great for motivation, and provides insights into his investing.
If you stay on task, YouTube can be extremely beneficial to you as an investor. The more things you know, the more money you can make, and a visual format is especially great for teaching. And, while these are my personal favorites, there are hundreds upon hundreds of channels dedicated to investing. Take advantage of this free tool, and become one step closer to Millionaire By 25.
