0:00 spk_0

Welcome to Trader Talk where we dish out the latest Wall Street buzz to keep your portfolio sizzling. I’m Kenny Polcari and I’m coming to you live from the Yahoo, Yahoo Finance studios here in the heart of New York City, a global hub where deals are made, fortunes are built, and the next market move is always just around the corner.Coming up, I’m gonna share my thoughts on investor curiosity and education. We’re gonna chat with my good friend Caleb Silver, and share my base scallops in a black truffle cream sauce. Oh my God, they’re so good. Now, let’s just jump into the big take.The moment you think you’ve got it all figured out is the moment the market humbles you. It’s not an insult, it’s a fact. Markets evolve, technology shifts, policy changes, and new risks appear out of nowhere. If you stop learning, you don’t stay still, you fall behind. Curiosity is one of the most underappreciated edges in.An investor can have. The best investors are not the loudest or the most confident. They’re the ones that are constantly asking questions. Why is this stock moving? What has changed? What am I missing? They read, they listen, they study history, and they challenge their own assumptions. They know yesterday’s playbook won’t always work for tomorrow.Now look at how quickly things change. A decade ago, no one was talking about AI as a driver of earnings. 20 years ago, few imagined smartphones would reshape the global economy. Go back even further, and entire industries that once dominated, have now vanished. Investors who stayed curious, adapted. Those who clung to old narratives, well, they got left behind. Learning isn’t just about chasing new ideas, it’s also about unlearning bad ones.Knowing when a thesis no longer works is just as important as finding a new one. Curiosity keeps you flexible, it keeps you humble, and it keeps you open to opportunity when others are stuck defending outdated beliefs. Bottom line, the market doesn’t reward confidence, it rewards preparation. The investors who win over time are the ones who never stop learning, never stop asking why, and never assume that they’ve arrived.Stay curious. It’s the one edge that compounds forever.My next guest is Caleb Silver, Chief Business editor of People Inc. and editor in chief of Investopedia, one of the most trusted financial education platforms in the world. And I should say, he’s a very good friend of mine. I’ve known him for years. Caleb helps millions of investors make sense of markets, money, and the.Economy by translating complex financial concepts into clear actual insights. With a deep background in financial journalism and market analysis, he’s at the center of how retail investors understand everything from stocks and crypto to inflation rates and personal finance.It’s great to have him with us, ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome Caleb to the show. Caleb, it is a pleasure to have you. Nice to see you. Happy holidays, all that good stuff. Happy New Year. It’s all very exciting for you because there’s lots going on.

3:02 spk_1

That’sright. Thanks. So good to be here with you, my friend. We usually are talking over Zoom, and I’m asking you for recipes, but to be with you in person on your show

3:09 spk_0

is so great to be in person because, you know, it’s a whole different energy when you’re, when you’re talking to someone face to face.So, let’s talk a little bit first about this exciting news that you have because you’ve gone from, you’re still editor in chief at Investoredia, but now you’ve got a whole new, a whole new line in your, in your title. Just tell the audience a little bit what it’s about.

3:27 spk_1

Yeah, I’m the chief business editor now for People Inc. People Inc. is the parent company of great brands like People magazine, People.com, Food and Wine, In Style, Travel and Leisure, Real Simple, Southern Living, Midwest Living. We’ve got about 40 brands.

3:41 spk_0

I love that whole idea,

3:42 spk_1

and they, they are our.Company. They’ve owned Investopedia, uh, for about 10, uh, about 6 or 7 years. And, uh, so just recently, I’ve sort of now covering the entire portfolio, which I was doing a little bit, but now it’s official. So now I’m doing the business of travel, the business of great food and wine, something you and I are passionate about. In addition to being the editor in chief of Investopedia, we are 26 years old, Investopedia, and I’ve been with the company now 10 years. So it’s been the honor of my life to be the editor in chief. I still have it. It’s still my, you know, my number one.Brand there, but now I’m representing the whole people

4:15 spk_0

portfolio. Investopedia, I have to say, Investopedia, uh, like Wikipedia is a great resource, right, because there’s so much information in Investopedia, um, and questions answered. People can go in there, they can type a question. They’re gonna come up with a, with an answer that’s, that’s easy to understand. It’s actionable, and it doesn’t make people feel like, you know, like, like they don’t know what they’re doing with it, right? It’s a, it’s an easy way to understand some complex kind of ideas, right?

4:39 spk_1

And that’s what we’re known for. We started out as a sort of a financial dictionary.We are an encyclopedia, but we are the difference between us and a Wikipedia is we are written by experts, reviewed by experts.

4:48 spk_0

You kind of morphed into this really this large educational platform, which I think

4:52 spk_1

is great. Yeah, and that was a, a good move by us years ago by the, by the founders and the companies that have stewarded it since. We’ve been a part of the, as I said, the people family for about 7 or 8 years now. But just focusing on education, making sure people understand investing money, writ large, finance, how to make decisions that’ll impact your life without being political.Without having a bias, just giving people the facts turned out to be a prettygood idea,

5:15 spk_0

right? Well, because, you know, something, because investing shouldn’t be political. It should not be. While you can understand and take policy into your investment thesis, it shouldn’t be political, right? Certainly Democrats might have a different policy view than Republicans, but therefore, as long as you understand it, then you can invest. That’s kind of what the importance is,

5:34 spk_1

absolutely. And as you know, as a great market historian, it really doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. Market’s gonna average 10 to 12% a year on.Average for the past 50 or so years, it could change at some point in time with policy, but in general, investors, they’ve learned to understand that that doesn’t matter as much. We just need to know the information so we can make the best decision.

5:51 spk_0

And for most people, as long as you build a, a, a, a well-balanced, diversified portfolio, it can ride almost any storm. It’s when you get out of whack, right? When you get way overweight in one sector or way overweight in another sector or underweight in a sector is kind of when it, when you’re out of whack. So I think it’s very important. I, and I love what you’re.Doing at Investopedia. I love the whole platform. I think it’s great.

6:13 spk_1

Yeah, when you’ve been a good, uh, a part of it and, and been on my show many times and just learning from you has really influenced me in my career. So

6:19 spk_0

Iappreciate you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So listen, let’s talk about a couple of things because there’s actually a lot to talk about. But one of the things that I like about what, what you guys do is that you’re really in touch with the retail investor, with sentiment, with, with how the, you know, what the retail community is kind of thinking about, asking the questions they ask.Ask, um, so tell us, kind of, tell us kind of recently, what are top of mind things for retail investors that come to the Investopedia site. Yeah,

6:48 spk_1

so we have about 8 to 10 million, uh, readers in a month in the US who are just coming through our site to try to learn something.

6:54 spk_0

8to 10 milliona month

6:56 spk_1

that just here in the US, and that gives you a lot of data. What is we have our fingers on the pulse because we know what questions they ask. Not only that, Kenny, we know the journey they take through our content. So they’re, they may start with a question about tariffs, but.They really want to know is what’s the impact of inflation going to be on my portfolio. So, we look at the top terms that people are searching for on a daily basis or what articles are gaining a lot of traction with our readers, and then we look at it on a monthly, quarterly, and then an annual basis to come up with our terms of the year. So this year, 2025, affordability has been the number one term. And I think it’s not just affordability about the cost of everyday items, because we know those are getting more expensive, except for gasoline. It’s about affordability and, and price.in general, the stock market is that affordable anymore? Can I afford to invest? So

7:43 spk_0

this question, that’s, that we’ll talk about that. Affordability though, was that a, was that a, a term that most recently came to the top of the list, or has it been something that all year?

7:52 spk_1

No, it, it’s been bubbling up all year in various aspects, right? And it is typically not a term people search for. Typically they’re searching for a root cause, so there could be tariffs, which was our term of the year last year. Number 2 this year, but this year was about the cost of living, right? The.Cost of everything. How much does it cost to be me and why do these things keep going up in price? I think healthcare and the concern about healthcare premiums rising in 2026 and the shutdown had a lot to do withthat,

8:17 spk_0

right? Well, because it’s become, it’s become the word, the, the, the newest term, right? Everybody’s talking affordability now. And so it makes sense that the retail investor is gonna start searching for that word to understand, you know, what it means to them, what’s it mean to the market, what’s it mean to maybe a range of things, including healthcare, including, you know, uh, food, products.Tariffs, groceries, whatever, um, which I think is interesting. One of the terms are, are kind of top of mind for investors? Yeah, well,

8:43 spk_1

this year they were also looking up tariffs, as I mentioned, but gold was huge this year because it’s been the best performing asset two years in a row, 2 years in a row, and you know how rare that is, uh, no matter how rare the metal is, that’s very rare. So people were looking at that and you could tell that was one end of the barbell, Ken of the other end was AI stocks, right, and some crypto, but mostly AI stocks, and I think that was, you know, that we’ve seen a lot of volatility in that.Especially over the past few months, but also some people feeling like they missed the boat, even though they probably didn’t because they own an index fund, which means they own AI stocks. And then, uh, the, the more risk-averse crowd wanting to own gold, wondering if gold’s gonna continue to go up. How can I buy gold besides going to Costco and getting my little ingot there? Can I buy a GLD? Can I buy a proxy for it? You know,

9:26 spk_0

it’s interesting, you bring up a point about when people say, is it too late? Did I miss the boat? Are things too expensive? Think about this. There’s always, there is.Always new investors coming into the market. Someone that’s just starting out, they got out of college. They got a job. Now they got money. They want to put it to work. So they’re 24 years old. Can you say to them, it’s too late? No, of course not. You would never say to them. You say you have to jump in, right? So you have to start. You start slowly. You start broadly, you know, maybe it’s an ETF until you build, right, but it’s never, in my mind, it is never too late to jump in. Absolutely

9:56 spk_1

not. We get this question a lot at Investopedia. How should I invest $10,000 right now? Well, the answer for you is different for me. It’s different for a 21.

10:03 spk_0

A year old,

10:04 spk_1

that’s different for a 75 year old. So it depends on you, how, who you are, and we’re trying to help people using technology to give them the best answer. But the fact that we’re getting that question a lot means there’s a lot of new investors always coming

10:14 spk_0

into the new investors that are curious that maybe don’t understand it. They don’t know, or maybe they think it’s gone too far because, you know, we hear in the news, we’re in an AI bubble, so people are now are afraid to put money to work in AI stocks. I think that’s a huge misnomer because I don’t think we’re in a bubble at all, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna take a break. We’re gonna come right back and we’re gonna talk about that.All right, so let’s come back to the AI bubble because that seems to be top of mind for everyone, because I’m in the camp that we’re not in a bubble. Stretch, maybe a bubble, absolutely not. What are you?

10:48 spk_1

Yeah, I’m in the camp that it may be, but I don’t think it’s the type of thing that’s going to explode all at once. There’s pockets of this spend and pockets of excess all over the place. Uh, we ask our readers in our sentiment survey.We just fielded it the last one of the year. Are you concerned about any of these assets being in a bubble? AI stocks, top of the list, of course. Guess what? Those are also the top stocks they own in their portfolio. Soit’s self-reflective.

11:10 spk_0

I hear you. And I wonder though if they, a lot of people are saying that because they’re hearing it in the media that we’re in this bubble, which I think is also a negative because I’m in the camp that.Uh, I think we’re at the beginning of this AI tech revolution. I don’t think we’re anywhere near it, you know, near the middle of the end at all. I actually think we’re still in the batting cage. I don’t think the game has started yet. We’re still in the batting cage, right? But,Um, I, I think it’s interesting because they hear the word, they hear the conversation, and so, and so retail investors that aren’t in this business every day, they get nervous. What should I do? Maybe I, maybe I’m not gonna put money in the AI trade, which I think is a, which is I think is a huge mistake because AI is going to be the future.

11:49 spk_1

Yeah, I agree with you there, and I think people hear it and guilty as charged. The media is always talking about it. Put on any business news channel, and you’re gonna be like.Uh, a lower third that says AI bubble question mark overvalued. So it just bubbles up the more you hear it, but people were also looking and didn’t make the top 10, made the top 20 at the internet bubble and the internet stock mania of the late 90s wondering if this was

12:11 spk_0

very similar. And so what do you think? Do you think, I don’t think it’s similar at all, but that’s, I

12:15 spk_1

don’t think it’s similar at all. But if you go back three years and you look at the release of chat GPT commercially, if you go all the way back to 19.96, 1997, and you see Netscape’s release of Mosaic. The NASDAQ looks very similar in terms of those timetables and the amount that it gained, but this is real money being spent, not pets.com.

12:34 spk_0

Exactly. And they’re also companies that have real products and they get real revenues and they’ve got real growth paths. Pets.com and the rest of them had none of that. They had no income. They had no revenue, had no history, pre revenue, pre-profit, right? And so I, I alwayssay to people when they ask me, you know, because I’ll have investors say to me, you know, it’s too late. It’s not too late at all. Now, if you’re just starting out, it doesn’t mean you take everything you got and put it in in one day. You would never do that. You have to feather it in over time and take advantage of market moves. That’s what I would say to anybody who’s coming into the market. You know, so it’s a question like when someone says, what would you do with $10,000 today? OK, is that all you got? Are you gonna put more? How much time do you have? There’s a lot of questions to ask, right?Uh, what they need it for, what they’re hoping for it to be, uh, how often are they can afford to lose it. That’s right. Well, I guess that’s the real, the real question. Listen, I wanna talk to you about crypto and tokenization because I think those are two other words that must be on your list somehow, um, because I think crypto is one thing people think of crypto, they of Bitcoin, but tokenization, talk to me about tokenism.And maybe what retail investors think it means or what Investopedia thinks itmeans.

13:41 spk_1

Yeah, well, this, I think, is gonna be one of the most important themes in 2026. 100% tokenization of assets, including stocks, which means it’ll be digital representatives kind of like an NFT of a stock that will trade on an exchange like the Texas Stock Exchange 24 hours a day, 6 days a week,

14:00 spk_0

and you’ll be able to buy.Pieces of it, you know, instead of buying a whole share, you’re gonna be able to buy a, a piece of it in a

14:06 spk_1

24/6 market. Any, anything. That’s the thing about crypto that, that, that brings these together. The crypto market trades 24/7. So tokenization is not cryptocurrency, but it is similar in that it is a digital representation of an asset. And in crypto, there is no asset necessarily.Except the greater fool theory of what people think it’s going to be worth. So we’re entering a really weird space along with predictive markets and sports betting and options trading, day trading, slamming together a lightning speed. This is going to be the mess we will see in 2026, and we’ll see if it blows out the capital markets or if it brings more people into them and that drives marketshigher.

14:45 spk_0

You can bet on almost anything.Someone’s willing to make you odds on almost anything anywhere, which I think is kind of interesting, you know, even the odds on who the next Fed chair is gonna be or, or the odds on, you know, where rates are gonna go. I mean, they bet on everything, which is interesting, but I think a lot of that can be also noise, and it can create, it can create angst for people.

15:06 spk_1

It can, but the predictive markets were actually more accurate than the polls, 10 during the election season, they were, and they’re getting a lot closer, uh, just because you have a lot more.Participants, which means more data, with crowds can help you get to tighter answers. So if that becomes the leading sort of indicator of which way markets and individual securities are going to trade, that’s going to take us into a very strange place because it could be potentially manipulated.

15:30 spk_0

So pollsters are probably gonna be out of a job prettysoon.

15:32 spk_1

Yeah, right. Who, who needs that, who needs to know that? But, but take this a little a step further, Kenny. You got ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, right, by, uh, making a 2 billion.Dollar investment into polymarkets because they know that predictive markets and people want this as a, as a part of their, their mix. Um, where, where one of our top terms in 2025 was parlay, which is a sports betting term when you bet multiple legs of a bet and all of them have to pay out in order for you to win. You want, you know, the Chargers to win and you want 10 rebounds by this guy and whatever. You can put together a series of bets, they all have to pay out. They all have to win for you to win. Take that to stocks for a second, Kenny.If you’re betting on the outcome of 3 different stocks or, or a different directional move for, for 3 different securities at the same time as a trader, not a long-term investor, that could disrupt.That could disruptpricing.

16:21 spk_0

100%, it could disrupt pricing. Look, I think a lot of things disrupt price. I think you look at triple levered ETFs can disrupt pricing. And now they’re talking about 5 times levered ETFs as if we need that, that risk in the market. I don’t think we do. See, I’m on, I’m, I’m on the side that I think they’ve created this casino-like atmosphere, which I think is the wrong thing to do. But to your point, it is what they wanted, so it’s not what they got, but it creates this potential volatility for.The guy who just wants to be a long-term investor,

16:53 spk_1

right, that’s, that’s to me, that is one of the biggest questions for the next decade. And how does all of this affect long-term investors in this diversified all-weather portfolio strategy, doing the right thing, not trying to time the market, just being steady.As a, as a long-term index investor or ETF investor, that’s gonna get

17:09 spk_0

weird. It is gonna get weird and then actually it’s gonna be interesting to see how this plays out because, um, it will create, it will create lots, it has the potential to create lots of volatility and not necessarily good volatility, right.Uh, let, let’s talk about behavioral mistakes that you see maybe in the investorped portfolio in terms of either the questions asked. But what do you think are some of the biggest errors that retail investors keep making and making and making? Like they don’t, they’re not learning from it.

17:36 spk_1

Yeah, timing,right? Trying to time the market. We know timing the market is always better than that, but timing is now the right time, uh, uh, taking or not taking profits when they should have not having a rules-based approach, rules-based.Investing, right? So I’ve had, I’ve had hundreds of people come to me personally and also thousands coming to our site saying, should I take profits in X stock, uh, not X, uh, Nvidia or any of the big stocks that have made major moves. And the question I always ask them is, what are your rules, right? Do you have a rule where you, if it goes down 20%, you get out? Do you have a rule that if it goes up 25%, you take house money out? Like you need to have a rules-based approach to your portfolio if you’re going to buy individual stocks.You’re gonna buy ETFs and just index your way for the rest of your life, that’s fine. So a lot of people don’t have actual rules. They just go on gut or what they hear,

18:23 spk_0

right? And what’s interesting, you know, is that, is that people also say that to me, like when they, like the latest drawdown in the market, we saw, you know, tech take a hit and all that stuff. And right away, uh, you know, I got a couple of customers that call up because they say, you know, I’m too nervous. I got to sell my Nvidia. No, no, no, slow down, slow down. You don’t need to sell your Nvidia. We own it for a reason. We’ve done our analysis.We understand what it does. The story hasn’t changed. Yeah, the market’s under some pressure, but that’s a, that’s a cycle that’s not specifically to Nvidia. So unless the fundamental story on why you bought it has changed, why are you selling it? In fact, the weakness you should use to buy it if you still believe in the fundamental story, right? And so you have that. I have that conversation over and over. And, and, and as you have it, and people get more comfortable with, you know, kind of the swings in the market, they don’t nearly get as anxious, um.But you know, you have to make sure that the fundamental story hasn’tchanged.

19:16 spk_1

PS, I think investors are getting smarter about this, and I think they’ve also seen how fast these cycles are moving. Kenny, we had that 5% drop in November that was bought back in one of the 3rd fastest recoveries in history after a 5% drop. The, the bear market, uh, we had for a minute or two during COVID until the government helicoptered money. These cycles happen.Quickly. The rips happen quickly. The dips happen because

19:38 spk_0

the technology makesthem happen. Absolutely.

19:40 spk_1

You’ve been talking about that to me for years, but also individual investors see this happening. We saw through data, whether it’s from, you know, Schwab’s retail, uh, Stax index, or from Vandertrack, which tracks individual investors’ purchases outside of their defined contribution plans. They bought the dip almost at everyopportunity this year.

19:57 spk_0

Yeah, I will say, I will say.That the bulk of my customers when the, when the dip happened would call me up and say, are we putting more money to work? They were, you know, beca and, and that’s a positive sign, right? Let me ask a question because we’re gonna run out of time, but I want, I want this, this, this view of you. Do you have a sense of what investors are worried about going into 2026 because it is a midterm election year. So are they, are people suggesting that they’re nervous aboutThe midterm elections. Yeah,

20:23 spk_1

midterm elections are about 3rd or 4th on the list. We just asked them that very question. What are you most worried about right now? Number 1, inflation. And inflation’s come way down, but it is prevalent going back to the affordability world. Number 2, geopolitical instability. Nobody feels like we’re in such a hot place right now, and all you have to do is turn on the news and know that we’re not. The 3rd thing that they’re worried about is bubbles in the market.And that’s, maybe they’ve heard enough of it. Maybe they’ve seen, you know, a little bit of air come out of this one. Maybe they’re worried that this is a redo of whatever 1999 or the railroad bubble or pick your bubble because we’ve always, there’s always one or two, over a decade or so. So those are the things they’re worried about the most, but most people are optimistic. They’re not expecting another banger of a 20% year. They’re expecting reasonable returns, and I think that is good.

21:09 spk_0

But you know what’s interesting. In January of this year, a lot of people are expecting a return to normal, reasonable 10, 10%, maybe 12% all in when you add in divvies, right? Uh, and it’s funny. Look what’s happened, right? The Nasdaq’s up again 20 nearly 25%. The S&P is up 16%. The Dow’s up, I think, 14%. So it’s been a great year, different than I think what even I expected coming into it, yeah.

21:31 spk_1

And, and if you’reIf you’re not entertained as an individual investor, you’re not watching the movie because this has been extraordinary. The past 3 years have been extraordinary, and there’s been one wall of worry after the other, but guess what? Market keeps churning up and to

21:43 spk_0

the right. Yeah, Listen, we have to carry this conversation on another time. I really appreciated you coming in to have it, and I’d love to do it with you again, but it is time because it’s the end of the podcast, and I always end with a, with a recipe, which I know you love.So today I’m gonna give you base scallops in a black truffle cream sauce. They are delicious. This dish is one of my favorites, and this comes from the ground as much as it comes from the ocean, right? Base scallops are small and sweet, and they’re quick to cook. They’re easy to ruin though, if you don’t pay attention. They’re asking you for attention. Don’t force it, just let it happen. The pan, you warm it up carefully, a little bit of butter and olive oil, you, uh, put the shallots in there to soften until they almost disappear.Right into this sweetness. The garlic follows that just enough so that the dish knows the garlic is there. Then you put the scallops in, you sear them, you want to hear the sizzle when you put them in there. Um, and then you add a little bit of white wine to just lift the pan up and deglaze it, uh, a cream moves it slowly into this thickening, uh, calming sauce, right? Then you add the black truffle. That’s where it enters quietly. You shave it thin, uh, it warms right into the sauce, and it, and the, that’s where the earth kind of folds.Into the cream. It replaces the, with the, um, uh, uh, the depth with some brightness, right? It’s a whisper of white truffle oil that comes at the very end, not enough to dominate it, but enough just to finish it, to just carry it far enough, uh, that you get this delicious aroma. And then the green leaves of the Brussels sprouts add a richness, uh, and a balance to it that, that, well, listen, you can scan the QR code on the screen for the full recipe, and you can thank me later, trust me.That’s a wrap for today’s Trader talk, but the conversation continues. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You got questions or topics you want covered? Email us at tradertalk@yahooinc.com because we’re always listening. Until the next time, stay sharp, stay disciplined, stay in touch, and take good care.This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.