NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
From Meme Stocks to Index Funds: A 2025 Investing Guide
09 Jan 2025
Welcome to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast, where we answer your real-world money questions. In this episode: Learn how to balance risk and reward in your investments, rebalance your portfolio, and avoid common investing pitfalls. How can you manage risk and reward when investing? What are the best strategies for rebalancing your portfolio for 2025? Host Sean Pyles and Investing Nerd Sam Taube discuss how to set yourself up for long-term financial success by evaluating your investment strategy and taking actionable steps to achieve your goals. They begin with a discussion of investment basics, including tips and tricks on building a balanced portfolio, understanding stock market trends, and preparing for potential risks and rewards. Then, Sean and Sam discuss strategies for rebalancing your portfolio to align with your financial goals and risk tolerance. They cover how to identify when it’s time to rebalance, the benefits of diversifying investments, and common investment pitfalls to avoid. The episode also dives into avoiding scams and red flags in the investing world, so you can make the smartest decisions to set yourself up for long-term growth. NerdWallet’s roundup of the best IRA accounts: https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/investing/ira-accounts Best brokers for beginner investors: https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/investing/online-brokers-for-beginners Best brokers for options trading: https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/investing/options-trading-brokers In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: how to invest, risk and reward in investing, rebalancing portfolio strategies, building a balanced portfolio, stock market trends, long-term financial success, avoiding investment scams, index fund investing, S&P 500 index fund, how to diversify investments, financial goals for investing, portfolio risk tolerance, investment basics, retirement account strategies, financial planning for 2025, clean energy stocks, tech stocks, financial services sector, meme stock trends, solar energy investments, tech regulation, banking regulations, index fund advantages, tax credit changes, and smart investing strategies. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [email protected]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Well, here we are. It's a new year. Time to take stock of how things are going with our investments. Are you thinking maybe it's time to take a bit more risk? Or are you looking at your portfolio and wondering if it's time to pull back? We've got some ways for you to consider all the options for investing in your financial future.
I do believe that people should generally build a safe and boring portfolio of index funds first, and then they can speculate with whatever money they've got left over. And I'm practicing what I preach there.
Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Sam Taub. It's 2025. Do you know how your stocks are doing? Are you doing that classic New Year exercise of checking the batteries in your fire detector and rebalancing your portfolio? Will you be investing some time in your investing strategy? It's a great time of year to do that.
And Sam, today we've got a whole slew of tips for getting started. Yes, we do.
And let's say upfront what we always say at the end of the show, which is that we are not investment advisors. And this nerdy investment info is for general educational purposes only. It may not apply to your specific circumstances. That said, a lot of us touch the investing world in some way, whether it's through retirement accounts or college savings plans or maybe a health savings account.
The latest Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances showed that some 58% of U.S. households had some sort of stock ownership as part of their finances. That was the highest number on record. The survey measured the years 2019 to 2022, so included the COVID era and the meme stock era for whatever that's worth.
For some people, that era was worth a lot. For others, not so much. That Fed survey is also borne out by another survey, this time the Economy and Personal Finance Survey from Gallup. That one found that around 62% of American adults invest in stocks. That's everything from what we already mentioned, so savings for retirement or college to people holding individual stock portfolios.
If you're interested in investing, well, you have a lot of company.
Sam, how about you tell us exactly what's going to happen in the stock market this year so we can all make a lot of money?
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