Seeking Alpha is supposed to be a treasure trove of insider stock tips that will make you rich. What you actually find is a cesspool of amateurs chasing the hottest trends and morally bankrupt “experts” espousing nonsense to try to gain followers. It’s the blind leading the blind. At the top of this festering heap of recycled news and shady advice is Jim Van Meerten. This guy is all over Seeking Alpha, and he’s an absolute joke. The fact that sixty six thousand people are following his updates is a travesty. Who are these dummies? There hasn’t been someone with this big a following whose acolytes have this low a collective IQ since Charles Manson was put in prison. Van Meerten is a man with a very shaky investing history that is borderline criminal. Pumping and dumping penny stocks is a classic shithead shenanigan, and Van Meerten seems to take pleasure in it. But, he must be sort of good, right? His picks have averaged a thirteen percent return since 2009! That sounds okay until you remember that the S&P 500 is up EIGHTY ONE percent since 2009. If you’d just set your money in an index fund and jacked off for six years you’d be way better off than if you’d invested with Jim. The kicker for my anti-Jim rant is his over the top bio on Seeking Alpha’s site. He tries to come off like the next Warren Buffet, but he’s trying way too hard. The best part is his line about how he “padded” the CPA exam: I think that means he passed, but I’m not sure. He could have set up the padded chairs for the test. We really don’t know. Now, that mistake could be the fault of the editor of Seeking Alpha as well. All I know is that it solidifies Van Meerten’s status as the ultimate jabroni of the financial advisor community. Now, it’s time to take on the next Seeking Alpha clown: Mark is one of Seeking Alpha’s favorite tech writers. He claims to be an expert on electronics. He seems to be more of an expert on smug looks and terrible haircuts. Mark should spend less time complaining about his Apple TV and more time finding a barber who isn’t blind and using his feet. He’s a couple hair flips away from having a full on Trump situation. But, we’re not here to talk hair. We need to discuss Mark’s abomination of an article about the Apple TV. And before we get into that, it’s important that I point out that Mark is even worse at his job than Jim Van Meerten: Forty-two percent? For shame, Mark. As with most of these guys, if you want good stock advice you’re better off using a Ouija board, calling your Crazy Aunt or just tracking the performance of the market. In the latter case, you’d have beat Mark by a cool seventy five percent. He spends almost 1200 words bashing the TV because he wants to be able to “access email and browse the web” from the Apple TV. I’m going to go ahead and assume that the braintrust at Apple is smarter than Mark “42 Percent” Hibben. I bet Apple did their market research and decided that most people can just grab their farking phones if they want to check their email while they are watching TV. Most of Mark’s other arguments center around the fact that this Apple TV is not as good as the Nvidia TV. Now, I’m a pretty tech savvy dude, and an Apple TV owner myself. I have to admit to not having a farking clue what the Nvidia Shield was before reading this article. Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Google Chromecast. I know those. Never heard of this Nvidia thing. Well, after reading this article I’m left with the impression that it will provide an amazing TV experience and fix my marriage and start a college fund for my kids. Mark’s boner for that device is so big it threatens to dwarf the rest of the article. I don’t know if that’s one of his future failed investments and he’s trying to pump it up, but he’s definitely doing his best to drive interest. This article about a recent recall of the Nvidia devices is sure to send him into a deep depression. My professional opinion? Apple will be fine. End of story. Alright, if you know these men personally and they volunteer at orphanage’s on the weekend and have wonderful souls, I apologize. That could totally be the case. But, they could also spend their free time counting their money that they made tricking idiots into paying for their piss poor advice. In which case, I’m not sorry.