Why Wrong Pundits Sell Memberships, Not Apologies

Opening

Subscriber, have you noticed the recent swings in the won-dollar exchange rate? The rate that surged to the ₩1,480 range in the second half of 2025 dropped back down to the ₩1,420 range by late January 2026. Now it’s back up near ₩1,480 again. For reference, I do most of my transactions in dollars, so I tend to be sensitive to exchange rates. But there are people even more sensitive than me. Just a few months ago, there were voices shouting “the dollar’s headed to ₩2,000,” “the won is finished.” So what are those same people saying now?

“We got lucky.” “The market’s gone mad.” “There’s always opportunity in crisis.” “Inverse-leveraged ETFs are the answer.”

Watching these reactions, I felt an odd sense of déjà vu. It’s a pattern I’ve seen many times before. Today’s issue isn’t really about exchange rates — it’s about why people who get economic predictions wrong sell memberships instead of apologies, and the structure behind it.

The Real Reason Behind the Weak Dollar: It’s Not That the Won Got Stronger

Let’s start with the facts. Some people interpret the recent drop in the exchange rate as “the won getting stronger,” but that’s only half the story.

Look at the Dollar Index (DXY)¹​ and the picture gets clearer. The index, which sat around 109-110 in early January 2025, fell to around 99-100 by the end of 2025 — a decline of roughly 7-9% over the year. In other words, the dollar itself weakened against the six major currencies in the basket.

Why did the dollar weaken? There are a few structural reasons.

First, political uncertainty in the United States. In January 2026, an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)²​ agent shot and killed a U.S. citizen in Minnesota. The incident triggered nationwide protests, and Democrats refused to pass the budget bill, pushing the country toward a government shutdown³​. When domestic politics in the U.S. shake, confidence in the dollar shakes with it.

Second, the Trump administration’s tariff policy is backfiring. The investment pledges extracted from allied nations haven’t materialized, and the back-and-forth on tariff rates has created uncertainty that’s translated into revenue shortfalls and political backlash.

Third, the conflict between the Fed and Trump. President Trump pressured Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, but Powell held rates steady instead. The Fed chair’s job is to safeguard the dollar’s value, and the economic indicators simply didn’t support a cut.

So here’s the core point: it’s not that the won got especially strong — it’s that the dollar weakened because of political turmoil inside the U.S. The Bank of Korea said as much at its January 2026 Monetary Policy Committee meeting, noting that “the won-dollar rate fell sharply due to foreign exchange market stabilization measures, then rose again into the mid-to-late ₩1,400 range.” Even the U.S. Treasury assessed that “the recent weakness of the won is inconsistent with Korea’s solid economic fundamentals.”

No national leader can control exchange rates at will. Trump can want the Fed to “print more dollars” all he wants, but if Powell doesn’t listen, that’s the end of it. Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae wanting the yen to rise doesn’t make it rise either. The currency market is where government intervention, central bank policy, geopolitical events, and shifts in supply and demand all interact at once. Calling that “just good luck” means either not understanding how markets work, or understanding it and distorting it anyway.

In particular, the FX futures market requires margin of under 5%, maintenance margin of under 3%, allowing leverage of 30 to 50 times.If you truly, definitively knew which way exchange rates would move, why would you be talking about it on YouTube instead of trading FX futures?

The Doomsayers Who Went Quiet in Two Days

As it happens, on the very day I’m writing this (March 5), a vivid case study is unfolding in real time.

Last weekend, U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran began, sparking fears of a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. On March 3, the Kospi plunged 7.24% to close at 5,791. The next day, the 4th, a circuit breaker was triggered as the Kosdaq crashed 14%, and ₩377 trillion in Kospi market capitalization evaporated in two days — the steepest drop since 9/11.

The doomsayers who had spent 365 days a year warning “a crash is coming” all raised their voices at once. “Told you so.” “This is just the beginning.” Victory declarations poured in, as if their predictions had finally come true.

But today — just two days later — the Kospi is rebounding. Looking at past historic crashes, excluding the IMF crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, the Kospi has mostly rebounded the day after a drop of 7% or more. Just like after 9/11 in 2001, when a 12% plunge was followed by a 5% rebound the next day. This time too, bargain hunters have stepped in and a recovery is underway.

So what happened next? Silence again. The voices that shouted “told you so” vanished without a trace. Not a word about the rebound. This, right here, is the microcosm of the structure I want to talk about. Right, and it’s your skill; wrong, and it’s silence. This pattern repeats not just in currency markets but in stock markets too. And then they say the market’s gone insane while they were the ones who got it right — as if the market itself is broken.

If you actually pick that claim apart, it’s strange. DRAM prices rising worldwide, shipbuilding orders being signed, defense contracts being finalized — is all of that some elaborate hidden-camera prank the entire world is running just to deceive Korea and pump up the Kosdaq and Kospi?

”A Crash Will Come Eventually” — Anyone Can Say That

Here’s where the real story begins. Looking at the response pattern of many economics YouTubers, there’s a strikingly consistent structure.

Step 1: The extreme prediction.”The dollar’s going to ₩1,800, ₩2,000.” Delivered with total confidence, stoking fear. Sometimes it comes packaged with a dangerous pitch to bet it all in the RP repo-derivatives market⁴​.

Step 2: Deflect blame after the prediction fails.”Bad luck.” “The market’s gone mad.” “It’s just not time yet.” Instead of admitting the analysis was wrong, they shift the blame to outside factors.

Step 3: Immediately pivot to the next prediction.”There’s opportunity in crisis.” “A crash is coming soon.” And the cycle repeats.

Does someone come to mind? If so, that person is the problem.

Let me be blunt here. “A crash will come eventually” is something anyone can say. Given how economic cycles work, a downturn will always come eventually. The real question is when, how much, and why — and failing to answer that while saying “See? Told you it would happen” isn’t expertise.It’s no different from saying “it’ll rain tomorrow” every single day and eventually being right. This is sometimes called the “rain dance fallacy” — after the old joke that Native American rain dances always “work” because the dancers just keep dancing until it rains.

Actual private bankers (PBs) or quant⁵​ experts don’t talk like this on YouTube. Currency arbitrage is territory that even brokerages handle with extreme caution, because there are simply too many unpredictable variables — government intervention, shifts in central bank policy, geopolitical shocks.

The Structural Twin of End-of-Millennium Rapture Cults and Economic YouTubers

Here’s where things get interesting. Doesn’t this pattern look familiar?

In the late 1990s, Korea was reeling from the shock of the IMF foreign exchange crisis. At the same time, end-of-millennium “Rapture” beliefs⁶​ were spreading — the notion that believers would be taken up to heaven before the world ended. “The world will end in the year 2000.” “Give up your possessions and be saved.” The apocalypse never came, and no one was held accountable. When the prophecy failed? “Our prayers delayed it,” they said — and then set a new date.

According to a 1998 study by psychologist Raymond Nickerson, confirmation bias⁷​ is defined as “the inappropriate bolstering of hypotheses whose truth is in question.” The key point is this: people tend to accept only the information that confirms what they already believe, and dismiss evidence that contradicts it.

What happens between economic YouTubers and their subscribers follows exactly this structure.

• A YouTuber predicts “the exchange rate will spike,” and subscribers who want to believe that prediction gather around it.
• If the prediction turns out right: “See, the master was right!” The belief gets reinforced.
• If it turns out wrong? “The market just hasn’t caught up to what he said yet.” “Bad luck.” The counter-evidence gets ignored.
• Through this process, the YouTuber evolves from “economic guru” to “cult leader.”

There’s a famous Stanford experiment on this. Students split into pro- and anti-death-penalty camps were shown the exact same research data, and both sides trusted only the data supporting their own position, dismissing the opposing data as “poor research.” Even when looking at identical data, people interpret it only in ways that reinforce their existing beliefs.

And when one more condition is added, things get even worse: economic anxiety. Just as Rapture beliefs gained traction during the IMF crisis of the late 1990s, people want something to lean on when they’re economically anxious. Something you’d normally dismiss with “yeah, right” starts to sound different when times are hard.

Psychology also explains this through the concept of “Belief Perseverance” — once a belief is formed, new evidence showing it’s wrong can actually make people cling to it even more tightly. If you watch a live stream from an economic YouTuber, you can see this happen in real time. “You trust me, right? Should we hit 7 together?” And the chat floods with 777, 1111. Honestly, watching this floored me. It wasn’t the structure of an economic analysis channel — it was the structure of a religious rally.

Oz’s Lens

Honestly, I think this phenomenon goes well beyond simple “YouTuber criticism.”

From my experience building go-to-market strategies, I’ve seen this pattern play out many times before. A startup that fails and says “the market just wasn’t ready for our product yet.” An artist who insists “I was 10 years ahead of my time.” Blaming external factors instead of admitting your own analysis was wrong is, in practice, a way of permanently losing your next opportunity. Investors reinvest in founders who own their failures — not in founders who only blame the market.

The same is true for economic YouTubers. The moment they say “my analysis was wrong here, I missed this variable,” trust actually goes up. Predictions can be wrong — currency markets are territory that even brokerage experts approach with caution. The problem isn’t being wrong. The problem is a structure that never, under any circumstances, admits to being wrong.

From the perspective of someone who works with data, the truly dangerous thing isn’t a failed prediction itself. It’s failing to revise the predictive model. The moment a wrong prediction gets written off as “bad luck,” the next prediction is bound to repeat the same error. But because these people’s business model isn’t “accurate prediction” but “maintaining subscriber trust,” preserving the narrative matters more to them than correcting the error. That’s the decisive difference between an analyst and a cult leader.

And one more thing. There was a recent news report about a former writing instructor who claimed to be the returned Jesus and swindled subscribers out of tens of billions of won. This person, who had 900,000 YouTube subscribers, used subscriber trust as a weapon to inflict financial harm — a structure that’s not so different from the membership businesses run by economic YouTubers. Of course, the two shouldn’t be equated outright, but the case shows just how far a trust-based community can go when it operates without any criticism.

Closing

To sum up: the recent drop in the exchange rate isn’t the won getting stronger — it’s the dollar weakening because of political turmoil inside the United States. No national leader can raise or lower an exchange rate at will. And a structure that stokes fear while knowing all this, then dodges responsibility the moment it’s wrong, isn’t economic analysis. It’s closer to a faith-based business.

Once you’re caught in confirmation bias, it’s genuinely hard to escape. But as Nickerson’s research suggests, bias isn’t unbeatable. The starting point is simply staying open to the possibility that “my judgment could be wrong.” If you know someone who’s deeply invested in a particular economic YouTuber’s predictions, try asking them this question:

“When’s the last time that person said, ‘I was wrong’?”

References & Further Reading

• Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises”, Review of General Psychology, Vol.2(2), 1998. A classic paper in psychology that systematically lays out the definition and mechanism of confirmation bias — the core research underpinning this issue.
• Lee Yekyung, “Exploring the Principles of Critical-Thinking-Centered Education for Overcoming Confirmation Bias”, Journal of Educational Research, 43(4), 2012. A Korean study that classifies confirmation bias as “unconscious Type 1 thinking” and discusses ways to overcome it.
• Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), 2007. A book on the psychology of self-justification that helps deepen understanding of the blame-deflection mechanism that follows a failed prediction.
• TradingView: Dollar Index DXY live chart
• Export-Import Bank of Korea, “2026 Economic and Industrial Outlook” report

The author, Kwangseob Ahn, is a professor of business administration at Sejong University and lead consultant at OBF (Oswarld Boutique Consulting Firm). He teaches statistics and data analysis — business data management and business analytics — while leading GTM and AI strategy consulting in the field, designing the seam between technology and business. He has published academic research on a memory architecture for AI dialogue systems (HEMA) and runs Daily Arxiv, a daily curation of global AI papers. He holds a master’s from Korea University’s Graduate School of Technology Management and a KMBA. He is the author of Homo Brainless: The People Who Outsource Their Thinking.

Footnotes

1. Dollar Index (DXY): An index that measures the dollar’s average value against six major currencies including the euro, yen, and pound. Above 100 signals a strong dollar; below 100, a weak one. ↩

2. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement): A U.S. federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration law and cracking down on undocumented residents and customs violations. ↩

3. Government Shutdown: A situation in the U.S. where non-essential federal government functions halt because Congress fails to pass a budget bill. Unlike in Korea, if the U.S. has no budget, civil servant paychecks stop. ↩

4. RP repo-derivatives market: A derivatives market for betting on currency fluctuations. With just 5% margin, traders can take on 30-50x leverage, making it an extremely high-risk market — riskier than crypto. ↩

5. Quant: A financial professional who designs investment strategies using mathematical and statistical models. The term comes from “Quantitative Analysis.” ↩

6. Rapture belief: The religious belief that believers will be lifted into heaven before the end of the world. In Korea, this combined with end-of-millennium anxiety in the late 1990s to cause real social problems. ↩

7. Confirmation Bias: A cognitive bias in which people accept only information that confirms what they already believe and dismiss evidence to the contrary. First conceptualized in the 1960s by British psychologist Peter Wason. ↩