Introduction
Maybe TikTok isn’t the first place you’d go to learn about investing in the stock market, but that doesn’t there isn’t an audience doing exactly that. In this report, we will explore how this niche is structured on TikTok: who are the main accounts, what do they want, and which formats and hooks they’re using to get views, likes and conversion.
Accounts
Let’s first have a look at the main types of accounts that populate this niche.
Full-time traders and mentors
Most accounts fall inside this category.
Creators share their trading tips, daily routines and journey, just like app founders usually share their process of building and launching their apps.
Almost all are building an audience and personal brand that is connected to any sort of paid product: beginner courses, live trading shows, 1:1 coaching, etc.
A lot of the creators in this category with currently active accounts are women, several with freshly created accounts.
Other creators have started targeting other regions outside the US. Legally-impacted niches often require this geo-localization to target untapped audiences, as investing in the US is different that in Europe or Australia:
While others go a step further and tie their personal brand to another niche besides financial markets. It’s the case of tt@miarosemcgrath, who positions herself as a “fashion girly investing her way to freedom ✨”. 160K followers and promoting financial resources for different brands:
And, of course, we have a few faceless accounts following a similar mentorship strategy, but it’s a small minority:
Experts & book authors
Then, we have all the investing and stock experts which use TikTok to promote their businesses. It might seem like the same as the first group, but it’s not. The first category is using TikTok as the main platform for their business, while these are using it as a complement to their online presence.
Accounts like tt@george.kamel and tt@annabrading are posting headshot content about financial literacy to promote their books, while others like tt@perfect…trading are doing the exact same but with faceless content.
Educational content
It’s rare to find purely educational accounts on this niche, as most of them are promoting their own products, not just within the videos but also on their bios.
The ones which don’t have any commercial purpose (at least for now) are mostly faceless, posting informational slideshows and graph animations to teach viewers how to invest:
Apps,Websites & Affiliates
Several pages in this niche are branded accounts for investing and stock market apps and online tools.
Apps like Alinea Invest, Delta and Profit AI are running these accounts with headshot content, often UGC-style.
Interestingly, the same isn’t true for websites, which almost always go for faceless content.
Some others:
Apart from branded accounts, there’s of course plenty of affiliate accounts generating millions of views to these companies. These are typically faceless, and we will cover their formats in the next section:
Formats
Headshot + advice
This is my far the most predominant format out there in this niche. Creators sharing their advice, tips and insights on how to trade and make money.
Headshot has a huge predominance in this niche, probably because people are more likely to listen to financial advice when they can put a face to it. Trust is a big word here.
A few different formats here:
B-roll footage w/ UGC avatar
Some creators use this format of “cut-out” avatar over a screenshot or slideshow. It’s a great combination to share eye-catching materials while keeping your face visible for trust and personal brand.
This format is recurring in different niches, especially now that you can create this video with AI avatars. However, for this vertical, it doesn’t seem that many AI videos are exploding, at least not yet.
See video on the left and right.
Vlogging
A lot of creators go for traditional face-to-camera recordings.
Creator from the video on the left records mostly from her car, with over 16 of her most viral videos being in this exact format, some bulk recorded in the same day. While the one on the right does more technical, step-by-step advice recorded from home, at her desk.
Q&A
Another format, though less common, is Q&A where the expert interacts with the audience. In this account, with 522K followers, George posts these clips of his own interviews and events. This is his most recent format.
Hook is always the question in highlight, and he then answers it in video. It’s an easy way to re-use long-form while keeping it relevant (make sure the questions POV is something your audience will relate to and stick around to know your answer).
Live trading
Other creators go for a more raw format, where they simply record themselves trading, while also sharing their screen. The result is a split-screen format where the top half is the screen with trading platforms and graphs, and the bottom is the creator guiding the viewer through what he is doing.
It will appeal to an intermediate and advanced audience, more than for beginners.
This account has pulled over 40 million views with just this format on repeat.
Traditional UGC
Think all the UGC formats you’ve seen, but applied to Investments and Stock market content. This format is widely dominated by female creators who manage to print views with this crossover style of video.
Most are silent recordings of the creator performing an unrelated action (applying sunscreen, lip gloss, etc), paired with a long text hook over it.
A few examples:
“I don’t use Ozempic, but I do invest in Ozempic (…)” => 8.8M views
“No one talks about the small ways of how being poor keeps you poor…” => 607K views
“Not me uncovering a seven-figure investing hack the rich have been gatekeeping (…)” => 58K views
“top canon events for girls : (…)” => 2.2M views
Trader lifestyle + routine
Another extremely popular format is this “day in my life as a full-time trader”. Creators share their extravagant work stations, their hustle routines, how they spend their days trading and making money. Viewers love this kind of insider peak into other people’s lives, especially when it’s something they aspire to become.
Check this guy for instance. He’s been consistent with another format: “best stocks to buy today, July 16th”. Then he mixed it up and posted a “Day in my life as a full time quant trader“. It became his #2 video, with 344K views.
This other one, is a “Welcome to my office” format, where he opens the door to a crazy setup of dozens of screens. 19.2M views, best video on his account.
There’s different variations of this depending on the angle and hook you pick.
- “my payday routine as a _____ ” => video below did 7.1M views.
- “POV: a realistic day in the life of a trader” => video below did 446K views
- “day in my life as a girl who doesn’t work a 9-5” => video below did 209K views
- “day in the life of a day trader making $3,000 within minutes (with proof) => video below did 370K views
Motivational content
Wherever there’s money, there’s motivational gurus. It’s not surprising; most of these accounts are selling a dream of financial freedom and prosperity.
Some accounts do it with headshot content, some keep their face off camera. Let’s have a look at some formats:
Headshot
- “Do not quit trading” => 205K views
- “Girl please start investing” => 3.9M views
- Storyline: let them underestimate you => 2.3M views
- “You did it and your parent proud of you” =>205K views
Faceless
This whole account(above) is posting these dark-aesthetic motivation videos, including faceless slideshows like this one. Have a look here if you wanna explore more.
On a similar note, this other account is also growing its Discord community through just faceless motivational posts, like this super fast and dramatic sequence of images and graphs, all in black and white (1.2M views)
or this “This is the only thing I can think about” that did 791K views.
Check out their account or this one for more examples of aesthetic/motivation videos for traders.
Educational content
Last but not least, pure educational content. It’s not really advice or sharing trading strategies, but rather explaining basic concepts and introducing the stock market to viewers who are not necessarily educated on it. Think of this as the way to grow your niche and attract people who are not there yet.
Headshot
This girl shares tips on how to save money and invest, but mixing it with lifestyle content and vibes. She created the slideshow below explaning “basic concepts in finance” and got 50.7K views:
This guy puts together masterclasses about a specific topic, that he uses as text hook. His videos are extremely long for TikTok standards, with the latest ones ranging between 8 and 25 minutes. There is a demand for them it seems, as all his videos get some traction, even if none has gone crazy viral yet.
Faceless graphs & stock race
Faceless creators are posting dynamic graphic animations to explain and predict stock prices and market movements. Most of these accounts stick to the exact same design format and simply reproduce it daily.
Though it’s more scalable and easier to bulk produce, the research we did for this report tells us that it might be difficult to convert views into downloads and purchases when you choose not to have a face to “blame” in financial content, especially the ones that involve risk.
This whole account posts market chart animations, completely faceless. Same hook all around:
” I asked AI to predict _________” => 18.9M views
This other account focuses on this “stock race” animation format.
“If FC Barcelona didn’t buy Dembélé and invested into NVIDIA stock instead”
They grew to 44M views with this format alone.
App Strategies
[coming soon]
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