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Stefania Nova, who goes by @blonderichwitch on TikTok, is a 25-year-old living in New York who uses astrology, tarot and “intuition” to guide her day-to-day trading.

“After scanning the market from 8:30am to 9am and choosing the stock I’m going to trade that day (today it was Amazon), I do one chart pull to confirm my decision or get guidance,” she says in a video . “Today I drew the Ace of Cups, which represents abundance; it gave me the confidence I needed to trust my strategy.”

The process seems to be working for her. In the next slide from her TikTok, Nova posted a screenshot of her portfolio for the day, showing a profit of almost $300 trading Amazon stock. “21% return in 8 minutes by trusting my higher self :heart:,” she wrote. In another video, she posted a screenshot of her monthly earnings of almost $6,000.

Nova is one of many TikTokers who attribute their financial success to their trust in the universe — touting techniques like using moon cycles to buy bitcoin and astrology to make $440,000 in crypto trading. The practice, while far-fetched compared to the conventional strategies of savvy investors, is the intersection of Gen Z’s love of vibes and financial freedom.

“It’s a new way to make money,” Nova said Wealth. “New opportunities for people: that you don’t have to work so hard nowadays. Work smarter, not harder.”

Following the stars worked out for Nova. She quit her job as a tarot reader and astrology consultant this year to day trade, finding it a more consistent stream of income and earning about $5,000 a month. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for everyone, warns one expert.

“In financial markets, you shouldn’t make decisions generally based on perceptions of things,” said Samuel Hartzmark, a professor of behavioral finance at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Wealth.

He added: “If these things do predict higher returns, then there are a lot of market participants who would probably use it as signals in their portfolio.”

It’s in the stars

Nova shrugs off the naysayers. Some people find success in looking at candlestick charts in the market. She can do the same by looking at deck cards and planetary alignments.

“Everything in the world is a cycle – the stock market, the seasons and astrology,” Nova said. “As I got more into astrology, into tarot, into intuition, all of that, I saw the connection that I’m not the only one affected by these energetic influences.”

For example, Nova said on Friday that it would avoid making any trading decisions at 1 p.m. because the moon is in a void phase, meaning it is not associated with a specific zodiac sign and has no influence on other celestial bodies. Decision-making should be avoided during these periods, Nova said. Instead, she waited an hour, at which point the moon was in Virgo. After checking the market and making a preliminary decision about the trade, Nova will confirm its decision by asking itself, “What is best for you in your soul?”

Hartzmark, the professor, says he doesn’t endorse astrology and tarot as a day-trading strategy, but he understands why people gravitate toward them.

“The illusion of control,” he said. “Financial decisions are complicated and scary.”

Choices about money are different from other choices people make on a daily basis, he explained. The possibilities are vast, causing people to turn to any form of guidance to gain clarity. The oversimplified logic of which stocks to day trade is one means of doing this, as exemplified by the theory that stock-picking monkeys could perform just as well as sophisticated investors due to the market’s inherent inconsistency. You shouldn’t buy Apple stock just because you like the iPhone, for example, Hartzmark argues. Decisions to buy stocks, especially day trading, should instead be based on knowing something other traders don’t know, or having evidence that the iPhone is worth more than what the market has valued it at.

“A lot of whims and vibes and things like that are really just similar examples of ‘That sounds like a good story,'” Hartzmark said.

Gen Z, young people graduating from college and finding their footing in the professional world, are particularly vulnerable to these trends, he added.

Protection against bad vibrations

Of course, the desire to control their uncertain future is one of the main reasons Gen Z fell in love with investing in the first place. Driven by a fear of missing out and a determination to escape the corporate rat race, more than 70 percent of the generation owns stocks, according to NASDAQ, more than previous generations at the same stage in life. With apps like Robinhood at their fingertips, Gen Z also has the tools to invest cheaply and conveniently, catapulting them into trading earlier than older generations.

Joey Yang, 25, a financial influencer who has assets worth more than $150,000 and 131,000 followers on TikTok, said Wealth she turned to the stock market to become financially independent after being kicked out of her parents’ house at age 19, forcing her to move into an apartment with three roommates.

“I learned very quickly that, shit, I’m alone in this world and I need to either make more money or make my money work for me,” she said.

Yang believes he shares the sentiments of many members of Gen Z, who seek to achieve financial stability in what they see as a largely volatile environment. Just 30 percent of the generation feels optimistic about the economy, according to an April report by identity verification platform SheerID, with more than 70 percent feeling the need to stretch budgets or look for discounts. Investing, Yang argues, is a way to ease that panic.

“Gen Z is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Yang said. “They’re not completely on their own or having to work for every dollar they earn.”

Although financial influencers like Yang share their investment success stories online, greater access to stock trading platforms and the proliferation of online investment chatter have also led to a lot of misinformation. Research platform WallStreetZen found that nearly two-thirds of StockTok videos or stock-related videos on TikTok are misleading, according to a January report. These videos have garnered 21.5 million likes and 194 million views.

Models of the Universe

But TikTok and Gen Z didn’t create warped investment strategy ideas out of thin air. In fact, there is some historical precedent for the wisdom of StockTok for day trading based on vibrations.

The famous JP Morgan said, “Millionaires don’t use astrology, billionaires do.” Even the American financier trusted the stars to guide his decisions: He is said to have canceled his planned Titanic voyage at the last minute because his astrologer had warned him.

William Delbert Gann, an investor who made his fortune in the early 20th century, became famous for using astrology, ancient mathematics and geometry to inform his business decisions. Using certain angles, Gan claims to predict market trends and identify the perfect time to buy stocks. His charts are still available today, although the validity of his philosophy is highly contested.

“After exhaustive research and study of the known sciences,” Gann said in a 1909 interview, “I found that the law of vibration enables me to accurately determine the exact points at which stocks or commodities should rise and fall within a given period of time.”

If you look at the correlation between the fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the days of total solar eclipse, you can momentarily forgive Gann for his eccentric ideals. On or just after five of the seven total solar eclipses seen in the U.S. since 1932, the Dow Jones fell, according to an Axios analysis. Of course, there’s another, less emotional explanation: The economy is often affected by eclipses, as people travel to witness the event, disrupting travel and usual spending behavior.

Hartzmark is still not convinced of Gann’s dogma. Guys like Gan are sometimes bound for success, he said, simply because the base success rate for day trading is so low to begin with. A 2004 study, which Hartzmark still cites, by researchers at the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis and National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, found that of 130,000 individual investors, more than 80% lost money in the practice . The few who did make money didn’t do it consistently.

Because the probability of day trading success is already so low, you can’t simply attribute success to complex investment strategies, Hartzmark argues. Part of it will be luck and circumstance. For the few who become rich and rely on unconventional strategies to do so, it is easy to attribute wealth to this. This is a phenomenon that has been around for hundreds of years.

“The psychology here is nothing new,” he said. “The way it plays out is a little bit different because of technological changes and things like that, but I don’t think Gen Z deserves a particularly bad grade.”