When it comes to an investor’s next trade, the shows on their playlist may be just as telling as the companies on their watchlist.
Podcasts have joined newsletters, publications, and broadcast media as a mainstay of investors’ content arsenal, tasked with equipping traders with insights to stay on top of their game.
The potential audiences for investing shows are swelling. As trading apps have brought the barrier to entry for the stock market ever lower, there has been a surge in interest in investing.
Worldwide searches for “how to get into trading” has increased 178% over the past five years, while “trading tips” has jumped 195%, according to research done by UK-based CMC Markets. Searches for “stock trading tips” has ballooned by 204% worldwide over the past five years.
What’s more, podcasting as a medium continues to gain in popularity. As of last year, nearly three-quarters (73%) of the U.S. population aged 12 and above listened to podcasts at least once per month, according to Edison Research.
Listening to pods while driving is really accelerating too, with 32% of American adults reported having listened to an episode in-car, up from 30% in 2021.
This post will look at the most popular investing podcasts in the world, what makes them so appealing, and the debate over their utility as a learning tool.
Top Pods
InvestED is the most popular investing podcast, per CMC Markets. InvestED typically racks up a whopping 1,600 searches per month globally.
This unique family-based show is led by father-daughter co-hosts Phil and Danielle Town. The pair share their investing experience and compare views on various trends.
They also dive into core concepts of value investing, such as “Rule #1,” and discuss how listeners can apply them to their portfolios.
“Our podcast is a down-to-earth, sometimes contentious chat, between a headstrong daughter reluctant to invest and her Warren Buffett-style fund manager dad,” says Phil Town.
“We love digging into making our values count and how investing changes our inner selves as well as our bank accounts. “
Tying in second place are The Animal Spirits and The Mad Money, with each podcast averaging 1,400 searches per month.
Hosted by portfolio manager Michael Batnick and finance blogger Ben Carlson, Animal Spirits podcast explores the investing world from a variety of angles.
Through their episodes, they typically discuss the media content their consuming and how it is influencing their money moves.
Named after CNBC’s eponymous hit show, the Mad Money podcast delivers Jim Cramer’s take on the Street in audio form.
The iconic host offers up his stock tips and what he’s buying, selling, and holding as breaking market news rolls in. The show also features interviews with CEOs, analysts, and other industry folks.
Invest Like The Best comes in third, with 1,000 searches per month worldwide. In each episode, host Patrick O’Shaughnessy talks shop with leading investors as well as entrepreneurs like Tobias Lütke and thought leaders like Tim Urban.
Listen to this podcast to learn how to succeed in the stock market with the help of some of the world’s best business and investment leaders.
Besides the top-ranking shows, there are other hidden gems out there for investors.
The Michael Martin show, for instance, delves deep into the emotions of investing and how they can impact trader behavior.
Michael delivers it in short, monologue form, with most episodes being just several minutes long. The show has received 95 reviews, with a 4.9-star rating on Apple Podcasts.
“The podcast is aimed at investors and traders. The show helps listeners deal with the strong emotions and behavioral psychology that can undermine their efforts in the markets,” says Michael Martin. “Think: Chicken Soup for the Investors’ Soul.”
Learning Aide?
Podcasts are an easy way for investors to consume great content, but do the gems of wisdom they pick up in the audio stream really sink in and stay there for the long term?
With the explosion of the medium, there has been considerable debate as to whether users can retain the same level of information as with more traditional mediums, like reading.
The Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh, contends that podcasts are not as educational as they appear, and there is a danger in listeners substituting them for reading.
“Five hours of podcasts wash over me and leave no mental residue. I wonder about the ‘stickiness’ of knowledge that you don’t have to fight for,” he writes in a column.
As far back as 2010, some academic studies claimed that podcasts were inferior to written text as classroom material, with students who used podcasts showing poorer quiz scores.
In 2016, however, a brain mapping study of the popular podcast show “The Moth Radio Hour,” showed something different. Researchers compared the neural activity of those who listened to an audio version of a narrative and those who read a text version.
Their findings showed the brain maps they created from both audio and visual datasets were virtually identical, with participants experiencing the story at the same level of intensity.
So while podcasts may not be well-suited for conveying nuanced details of subjects or covering coursework in formal education settings, audio may be just as effective at transmitting deeper concepts, as the medium is as mentally engaging as text, especially in narrative form.
As an increasingly popular medium, podcasts are likely to keep investors listening.
Despite its flaws, when leveraged properly, the medium can deliver expert insights, stay up-to-date with the latest news digest of the markets, and deeper into investing concepts. Investors are hungry for compelling content, and for many, pods hit the spot.
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This article was produced and syndicated by Wealthy Living.
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / SFIO CRACHO
