The number of social media influencers have gone up the roof accelerated in part by the COVID induced lockdown. Its not hard to notice the new kind of gurus who sell gyan. They give advices on Telegram, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube etc. Otherwise it is online dissemination of strategies to profit from the market. Yet another approach is to provide free educational strategy content and then lure the subscriber base to take paid courses, product & service offerings etc. Those who have been in the market for sometime would know that there is nothing new about these free strategies. Its all out there already and we just have old wine in a new bottle. 

There is no debating the fact that social media and internet in general has brought lot more awareness about the stock market in our society. Some of the guys online are genuine too and they flash their p&l as proof. But before you put your hard earned money on a tip or educational content its important to ask the right questions.

• Do you really trade the market with the strategy you are selling ? If so are you willing to share the P&L, Trade List from your stock broker ? 
• Do you have a discretionary strategy ? If so, do I need to always depend on you or spend significant time at my end to execute the strategy ? 
• Do you propose a systemic strategy ? If so, do you have the backtest report spanning significant period of time ? Is it easy enough to follow and execute between the daily chores of my life ? 
• What is the capital needed ? What is the accuracy ? How much is the risk - reward ratio ? What is the trade drawdown and max drawdown in the strategy ? 
• What is the worst case trade and systemic risk with the strategy ?  
• Are you SEBI registered ? If not are you operating as per SEBI guidelines ?