Bethany McLean

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391 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Bethany McLean’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Part 2: Your Index Fund Is a Bet on AI — Whether You Know It or Not · 2 Aug 2026 podcast

But once again, it's just going to be wildly unfair.

Oh, dear.

You know, I've never been great at investment advice, but I guess what I would do is to have as broad an exposure to the market as you can.

Own an index fund.

It's heavily weighted now toward the hyperscaler.

So you're effectively, if you own an index fund, you're making a bet on AI.

And then own something that is as separate from AI as you possibly can so that you're somewhat hedged, so that you have some capacity for some cushion if the AI trade does go badly.

But I think the most important thing to realize is that your index fund isn't your index fund anymore.

meaning that the S&P 500 index funds are heavily weighted toward the hyperscalers.

So your index fund is a bet on the AI economy.

So if you think that your index fund is still helping you profit from a broad swath of the market, it's not.

And so I think that's something to be aware of.

I mean, unfortunately, I think that the direction of the AI trade is going to determine a lot because it is so big now and the spending is so big as a percentage of U.S.

GDP that if that goes south, I'm not sure anything else really matters that much.

It's going to have, if that goes south,

wildly south, it would pull our economy into a recession, in which case all bets aren't off, but they're all different.

So maybe biotech, as risky as it is, stands apart from that in some ways.

But even that, if there's a recession in the market craters, that will drag biotech stocks that need funding down with it, too.

So I think for better or for worse, we are all massively exposed to the AI trade, even if you're steering clear of all AI investments.

I'm sure somebody who is more of an investment strategist than I am could suggest where you could put money that would be safe from the AI trade, but that's not really, I'm not an investment advice person.

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