Investing & Dividends Misleading — the headline number is real but unrepresentativ

By the Income Reality Check Editorial Team · Updated 2026-05-29 · 7 min read

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Professor G’s quantum picks: the $2 billion rally is real, the “proof” is not

Verdict: Misleading — the headline number is real but unrepresentative. The 50% gain happened; the way it’s shown to you does most of the persuading.

In his May 23, 2026 Saturday roundup, “🚨 Investors Could Get Blindsided.. (CRUCIAL Market Update 2026),” Nolan Goa — “Professor G” to his subscribers — walks through a genuine news event: the U.S. government just committed roughly $2 billion to quantum computing companies, and stocks like Rigetti and D-Wave jumped 30% to 50% in days. He then shows the entries he posted to his private group before the run, invites you to a free newsletter, and dangles a free year in his paid Patreon. The news is real. The picks really moved. But the gain you’re being shown is a peak, not a pattern, and the only reliably recurring income in this video belongs to the person making it.

What the video actually claims

Goa’s pitch has two layers. The first is market commentary. He explains that the Department of Commerce announced about $2 billion in funding for quantum companies through the CHIPS and Science Act, frames it as a U.S.-versus-China “tech arms race,” and says this is why quantum stocks “exploded.” He also flags a separate worry: the 10-year Treasury yield is climbing, which he says puts pressure on high-growth tech. Most of this is accurate, and his general advice is unusually conservative for the genre — he tells viewers not to FOMO in at the top, to be patient, and to lean on a “three or four fund portfolio” of broad index funds. He even says he expects a dip in these names “by next week.”

The second layer is the part that sells subscriptions. Goa shows a blog post he made to his Patreon group on April 29, where he says he bought Rigetti at $15.79 (it was around $27.70 when he filmed, “up over 50% in the past month”) and disclosed an IonQ position. “A lot of people in that group made a lot of money over the last couple of weeks,” he says. He notes he has over 11,000 free-newsletter subscribers, that he randomly picked one to receive a free year in the “exclusive group,” and that he’ll do it again next month for anyone who signs up.

So the implied offer is straightforward: join the funnel, see the picks before YouTube does, ride gains like that Rigetti trade.

Was the quantum news real? Yes — and that matters

This is where the video earns its credit. On May 21, 2026, the Commerce Department announced letters of intent to provide about $2 billion in CHIPS Act incentives to nine quantum companies, with the government taking minority equity stakes — and the stocks did soar, exactly as Goa describes (CNBC). The allocations break down roughly like this:

Notice who isn’t on that list. IonQ — one of the two positions Goa highlights — was not among the named grant recipients. It rallied on sector sympathy, not on a direct government award. That’s not a lie, but it’s the kind of blur that makes a portfolio look more “called” than it was. And the bond story checks out too: the 10-year Treasury yield touched about 4.6% on May 18, its highest in a year (CNBC). His one stretch is the claim that long-term yields are near 2007 highs — back then the 10-year sat above 5%, so we’re not there.

What the method actually requires

Here’s the gap between the headline and the experience.

A 50% gain shown after the fact is survivorship in a frame. The pure-play quantum names are some of the most volatile securities on the market — they “routinely move 10–15% on no news, with drawdowns of 50% or more happening repeatedly,” and they trade at price-to-sales ratios that bear no relation to current revenue. As of late May 2026, IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave carried P/S ratios of roughly 109, 836, and 791. Rigetti’s market value sat above $8 billion on about $7 million of 2025 sales. A price-to-sales ratio that high means the price reflects a future that may or may not arrive, not a business you can value today.

What does it take to actually capture a gain like Goa’s? You’d have to buy before the announcement, at his cost basis, in size, and then sell into the spike rather than hold through the next 40% drawdown. He says himself he expects a near-term dip and warns against buying at the top. So a viewer who sees the video after a 50% run and buys is doing the precise thing the creator says not to do — entering a P/S-800 stock at a peak, on momentum.

Then there’s the legal frame that makes the whole presentation possible. Goa opens with “this is not financial advice and I’m not a financial adviser.” That disclaimer isn’t decoration. Under the Investment Advisers Act, the “publisher exclusion” — affirmed by the Supreme Court in Lowe v. SEC — lets newsletters give impersonal, general market commentary without registering as advisers. Registered advisers, by contrast, fall under the SEC’s Marketing Rule (Rule 206(4)-1), which forbids cherry-picking: they must show performance over standard 1-, 5-, and 10-year periods and can’t extract a flattering subset of winners without showing the whole portfolio (SEC final rule). A YouTube market roundup faces no such requirement. It can show you the Rigetti trade and never mention a loser. That’s not illegal — it’s the structural reason highlight reels look the way they do.

Who actually wins this game?

Two groups, mostly. The first is whoever got in early and small — before the funding headline, with position sizes they could afford to see cut in half. That can absolutely include Goa and some of his paid members; the April 29 timestamp is plausible and the gains were real for anyone who actually held those entries.

The second winner is the funnel itself. Eleven thousand free subscribers feeding a paid Patreon is a business with recurring, predictable revenue — the membership fees arrive whether or not next month’s picks work out. The SEC’s own investor alerts make the general caution explicit: be skeptical of stock promotion you didn’t seek out, and remember that promoters can profit from attention regardless of whether you do (SEC: Fraudulent Stock Promotions). To be clear, nothing here suggests Goa is running a fraud — his portfolio advice is conservative and he discloses his positions. The point is narrower: the dependable cash flow in a paid-pick model is the subscription, not the trade. (For more on how these market-call channels are built, see our look at why “the great market flip” videos keep going viral.)

What you’d realistically earn

Be honest about the distribution, not the highlight. If you’d bought Rigetti at Goa’s $15.79 and sold near $27.70, you’d have made about 75% — extraordinary, and real. If you bought after the funding announcement at the peak he warned you about, you could just as easily be down 30% to 50% within weeks, because that’s the documented behavior of these stocks. There is no middle “passive” lane here. These aren’t dividend payers or index funds; they’re lottery-ticket equities where the median outcome over any given month is a wide, two-sided swing.

Goa’s other advice — the three-fund index portfolio — points at the realistic number he doesn’t dwell on. A broad U.S. or global index fund has historically returned something in the high single digits annually over long periods, with far smaller drawdowns. He’s right that if quantum ever becomes a real industry, index investors get exposure automatically when these names enter the Nasdaq-100 or S&P 500. That quiet point is worth more than the exciting one. (We made a similar case in our review of the “best quantum computing ETF” pitch.)

Who this is (and isn’t) for

This style of trading fits a narrow profile: someone with money they can fully afford to lose, the stomach for 50% drawdowns, and the discipline to size positions small and take profits into spikes rather than hold through volatility. If that’s you, a free newsletter costs nothing and the commentary is reasonable. It does not fit someone hoping for steady “passive income,” anyone investing money they’ll need within a few years, or a newer investor outside the U.S. who’d be buying single U.S.-listed momentum stocks through a foreign broker with currency and tax friction on top of the volatility. For that reader, the index-fund advice buried in the same video is the safer takeaway.

What to remember

The funding was real, the rally was real, and Professor G’s caution about not chasing the top is sound. What’s misleading is the frame: a single 50% winner, shown after it ran, in a category that swings 50% in both directions — used to feed a subscription business whose income doesn’t depend on your trade working out. Treat the picks as entertainment, treat the index-fund advice as the actual lesson, and remember which side of the screen gets paid every month.

View counts and stock prices cited above were accurate at the time of review and will have changed since publication.