How to film a “stock went to the moon” reaction video

First, the line you don’t cross

Moonshot reactions are the house style of a particular kind of marketing: the scream, the screen, then a link to a pick service, a signal group or a course. A reaction filmed with Pozer is a skit. Posting it as proof you made the trade — to sell any of those, or to get anyone to buy the stock — is prohibited by our acceptable use policy, and accounts that do it are closed.

Keep the moonshot fictional, too. A real company’s ticker at a price it never traded is what a pump post looks like, and clips travel without their captions. Invent the company, and search the ticker you make up before you film: four random letters are often somebody’s listing.

What the app won’t do for you

It won’t move a price. Pozer’s trading app has no market feed; every price sits where you typed it, and the LIVE button is the shortest chart window, not a stream. So a before and an after are two takes with a cut between them, and you change the numbers in the gap.

It won’t draw the size of the move, either. On LIVE and 1D the chart shows which way the day went, not how far: the line keeps the same shape whether the account is up 2% or 290%, so the number has to carry the size. What it does do is everything a thumb can do on camera — open a holding, switch the chart’s window, and fill a sale with a receipt.

Step 1: Build the moonshot

This guide’s example is an invented company with the ticker PKLZ: 1,500 shares and a previous close of $2.84. Make it the account’s main holding, with very little buying power beside it — $412.37 here. The Today figure on Investing is worked out from the holdings, so when one stock is nearly the whole account, the headline percentage tells that stock’s story before anyone opens its page.

Only two fields change between the takes: the holding’s Price and its Day %. Keep the previous close the same in both, because a viewer can work it out from either screen — the price divided by one plus the day’s move. $2.91 at +2.46% and $11.93 at +320.07% both come back to $2.84. A before and an after that imply two different closes is the detail a pausing viewer catches. Leave the share count and the buying power alone as well, or the totals won’t follow.

Step 2: Pick the window that tells the story

The row under the chart runs LIVE, 1D, 1W, 1M, 3M, YTD and 1Y, and the app opens on 1D. Each window shows a different amount of the Trend you shape in the editor:

• LIVE and 1D show only its last sliver: mostly the day’s noise, tilted to go the same way as the Today figure, over a dotted line at yesterday’s close, and drawn in the day’s colour along with the window buttons.
• 1W, 1M, 3M and YTD show progressively more of it, and 1Y shows all of it. On these, the line takes its own colour, up or down over the stretch on screen.

So a line that climbs off the chart is a job for the longer windows, and it has to be shaped before you film anything. In the editor, drag the last bars of the Trend well above the rest. The longer windows then finish in a climb, and 1Y shows it most plainly: a quiet year, then a line that runs to the top of the chart. Every full-size chart in the app shares the Trend — the account’s and the one on each holding’s page — so keep the before on 1D, where the Trend’s overall shape barely shows and can’t give the ending away. The small line beside each row of the Holdings list is the exception: it follows that holding’s Day %.

Switching windows only changes the chart. The total and the Today figure describe today and stay the same on every window, so when you say “look at this year”, point at the line, not the number.

Step 3: The shot list

1. The open. The phone on its home screen, your thumb on the app’s icon. Installed — the steps are in the stock app guide — it opens fullscreen straight onto Investing — the total and the Today figure — with no browser bar to crop.
2. The number. Hold on the total and the Today line long enough to read them. This is the frame people pause on.
3. The stock. Tap PKLZ. Its page opens on the company name, the price and the day’s move — $11.93, ▲ $9.09 (320.07%) Today — over its own chart, with Your position below it: 1,500 shares, a market value of $17,895.00 and a portfolio diversity of 100.00%. The move checks out against the close from Step 1: $11.93 less $9.09 is $2.84.
4. The cash-out. Tap Sell on the trade bar, type 1500 on the keypad — it reads 1,500 sh — and tap Sell. A tick draws itself above FILLED and −1,500 sh, with ≈ $17,865.00 under them and, on the free tier, the SIMULATED · POZER.COM mark. The sale fills at the bid the button shows, $11.91, two cents under the last price, so the receipt lists Proceeds of $17,865.00, an order ID, and the time the order filled from the phone’s own clock, and it waits there until you tap Done. Type exactly what you hold: ask for more and the receipt adds an Unfilled line for the difference.
5. The face. Film it as its own shot, lit for a face rather than a screen, and cut to it on the tick.

Step 4: After the sale

Selling doesn’t undo the day. The Today figure keeps the gain the sale banked, less the two cents a share the bid cost, so Investing reads up $13,605.00 (291.18%), with the total at $18,277.37 and the money now sitting in Buying power, as it would at a brokerage. The last shot can be Investing as easily as the receipt.

The one thing that looks odd is the holding itself. Sold down to nothing, it stays in the list, reading 0 shares beside a $0 pill. Frame the total and the Today line, or sell all but a few shares so the row still reads as a position.

Step 5: Change the numbers between takes

1. Film every shot of the before first.
2. Hold two fingers still on the screen for a moment, and Edit appears at the bottom right for five seconds; tap it. It only ever appears for you — on the device you published from, or wherever you’re signed in. On iPhone the home-screen app keeps its own sign-in, so the first time, the same hold asks for your email and a code instead.
3. The panel opens on what you published, not on the take. Under Positions, change the holding’s Price and Day %, tap Save changes, then Close. On this phone the app is already showing the new figures, with the before take’s orders cleared.
4. Film the after, ending with the sale.
5. To film the sale again, bring Edit back the same way and tap Reset to published values. Until you do — or publish another change — the sold shares stay sold, even if you close the app.

Reset goes back to what you last saved — the after — not to the before. That’s why the before comes first.

Step 6: Light and sound

• Expose for the screen in the inserts. A phone screen is brighter than the face holding it. Turn the screen’s brightness up, lock focus and exposure on the phone for the screen shots, and light the face for its own.
• Let the receipt keep the time. Its Filled line is the moment you actually tapped Sell, so don’t put a time in the dialogue that the receipt will contradict.
• React to what’s in frame. The line should land as the number comes into view, not before it. Viewers check the reaction against the screen.

The same, in reverse

A crash reaction runs on the same rules. Give the holding a negative Day % and its pill turns orange-red; once the account as a whole is down on the day, so do the Today figure and, on LIVE and 1D, the chart and the window row. The previous close still has to agree across the takes, worked out the same way.

One limit: don’t take it all the way. The Today figure works yesterday’s value back from today’s price and Day %, and at a price of $0.00, or a Day % of −100, there’s nothing to work it back from, so the loss drops out of the headline. A stock that’s gone to zero on screen should be sitting at a cent, down a little less than 100%.

Mistakes that sink a moonshot video

1. A before and an after that imply different previous closes.
2. A real company’s ticker at a price it never traded.
3. A Holdings list with a 0-share row in the final shot.
4. A before filmed on 1Y after the Trend was shaped for the after.
5. A crash typed all the way to $0.00, so the loss vanishes from the Today figure.
6. A second take that starts with the shares already sold.