How to handle investment advice

This week, my friend Dan wrote an excellent article about when to buy eternal playable cards. The short version is when cards rotate out of standard you should buy. You can read his entire article here.

I just wanted to say from another slightly different angle regarding the specific mention of Abrupt Decay. I used to do a youtube show weekly that gave lessons on Magic Online investment theory and then gave some recommendations. The purpose of the recommendations were to really allow the viewer to look at the information available and compare them to my picks to see if they are similar in certain relevant ways.

Unfortunately for me, what ended up happening was double bad. People either thought the information was for some nefarious purpose (although it was not) or they just watched to get the recommendations to buy and sell what I said.

This was a problem for me that viewers were circumventing the purpose of the show. People wanted "get rich quick" type advice. They didn't want to learn how to do on their own. It felt like they were leaching good information to make a buck until the information went away. I was trying to teach them how to milk the cow on their own.

One thing that Dan has done is he always talks about ideas and uses specifics to back them up.

I just wanted to make sure everyone out there is taking the information and using it to make good decisions, rather than look for handouts. Abrupt Decay is probably a card where people should buy as many as you can afford because it's every-format playable. I agree with that advice, but I want to let everyone know that they should do their own research.

Doing your own research and being able to use it to make decisions is the key to running any kind of successful business and Magic Online Speculating is no exception.

I'm sure Dan intended that everyone who read his article do their own research and make their own decision as to the playability of Abrupt Decay in other formats.