Dealing with family asking about stocks

I mean they're expensive right now so I'm telling them to diversify at least a bit

Fuck stocks buy bitcoin.

“I don’t cover those stocks so I’m not actually up to date on the investment case.”

I was a financial analyst for a F500 for years doing corporate finance and friends and family would always ask me "I have $100K to invest, which stocks should I pick?" 

Not sure what advice to give since my family aren’t morons and know the difference between an I-banker/PE professional and an equity analyst.

I just tell them I cover private companies and leave it at that. I’ve occasionally told them what I’ve invested in too but caveat that it’s not advice and that I’ve lost money before. 

My family , like others here I assume, are white collar professionals and a few medical professionals (docs, PAs, etc) and they are absolutely clueless when it comes to stocks or real investing. Everyone wants a short cut, or to be the smartest in the room, or has no understanding of risk based returns or damn near anything. 

Very smart people whose house is their primary investment vehicle and talk themselves into making negative ROI five figure reno's every year or to take advantage of low rates to finance a new car but wont put too much in stocks because it's 'gambling' and understand compound interest as a concept but dont truly understand it.

I've come to learn finance isn't really math for most, it's behavior. Can they put off eating one cookie to have two cookies tomorrow. At the end of the day we are all just toddlers. 

I stated clearly I don't follow the market (pricing) and are not the best person to speak about whether a stock is cheap or not. Other than that, you can say these seem great companies that have achieved a lot, but the future can be different and urge them to do their own diligence. Frank, direct and save yourself the same question every year.

as you can imagine, I get "what do you think about _____" all the time. less from family now (they're trained) but more from friends and randos when they find out I'm in finance

99% of the time, they just want you to agree with them, so I turn it around and say "you first, what do you think?" and they will often go into their thesis. no matter how retarded it sounds, I just say "sounds like you've thought a lot about this, I hope you get rich, good luck!" and they will almost never ask me what I think

on the rare occasions someone says "I don't knows, that's why I'm asking you" I continue to probe. if they're serious, I'll have a separate 1:1 in private, with some shit like "this is way too personal to discuss at Christmas, I'll call you when I'm back in the office"

tell them to follow congressional holdings (whatever nancy pelosi buys)

I normally get "you need to tell us what stocks to buy" and I normally say something like "I'm not actually paid to be right" and they shut up.

I tell them buy real estate and either BRRR or flip depending on budget and time availability

So many of you are such unempathetic bores. Think about this from your family’s perspective. Most of them are in dead-end careers with little perceived hope of retiring rich, but they know that their relative is some kind of hotshot on Wall Street who may have just the ground-floor insights they need to strike it rich. Therefore, the objectives are twofold:

1. Appeal to their fantasy of ground-floor insights to strike it rich by explaining the mega-bull and perma-bear cases for different companies (bitcoin reaching mass adoption through the financial system due to 1:1 reserve requirements, but not really being based on a firm standard of value. Nvidia is powering MSFT, META, and GOOG with billions of dollars in computing hardware, but people are still trying to figure out monetization. Talk basic points on OpenAI, TSMC, Taiwan.) Give these poor b******* something exciting in their life for once. It’s entertainment.

2. After having regaled them with your storytelling, reel it back in and tell them to buy index funds because they’re 45% Mag7 anyway and return 10% returns over time because America is a great country.

You’re dealing with people in the desert who are dying of thirst and lack of excitement, and the best most of you can do is deflect and say that it’s out of your purview. Be salesy for once. Satiate their curiosity with a sneak peak behind the curtain, then deftly manage their expectations with some legitimate wisdom.  Live a little.