Capitalist Investor

Thematic Investing, Meme Stocks & AI: Opportunity or Just Hype?

• Strategic Wealth Partners

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On this episode of The Capitalist Investor, hosts Tony Zabiegala and Derek Gabrielsen unpack the rise of thematic investing. From meme stocks and AI ETFs to clean energy and crypto, investors are piling into trendy themes hoping to “get rich now.” 

But is thematic investing a smart long-term strategy — or just a dangerous distraction? Tony and Derek explore the psychology driving this movement, the risks of chasing hype, how to evaluate ETFs, and why balanced portfolios still matter most. 

👉 Got questions or want to discuss your investment strategy? Email us at info@swpconnect.com

And this week's Capitalist investor, we are going to talk about one of the hottest investment trends. Thematic investing in meme stocks. All right. Tony, what's going on? What's up man. Oh yeah. We're rolling today baby. Oh, man. Do you like that Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well. And actually. All right, so I, you know, it's actually true that one of the hottest investment like, people are investing the the, you know, on a theme or meme stocks or what they read in some article. That's how people invest today. Yep. And it could be AI, clean energy, crypto gold. You know, whatever anyone's talking about. That's where the retail investor is flocking. And now we have to just step back and say, hey, is this a trend or is this a real opportunity? Yep. So from there, let's, just kind of talk and hit based on what, the metric. That's my saying it. Right. Thematic. Thematic. Okay, okay. I just did not do well in finance since in elementary. That's all right. And that's what I'm here for. I'm good at math, though. So, like, theme investing, things like that. What is it? You know, we're building a portfolio around popular long term macro trends, and I don't even want to know if they're long term. They're just trends. Right? I'm going to strip a lot of words out of that definition. And it's like building around trends. And that could be I. So I mean like I said, is it a trend or is it real AI aging population funds, clean energy, cybersecurity, crypto three times levered ETFs like you name it, man. If you want to get involved in something there's a product for it. Yeah I call it a product. But like an ETF a mutual fund, you know, things like that. But why are they just so popular over the last five years? And and it started everything. Everything got flipped upside down since Covid. Yeah. I'm just I just can't believe how different the world is. And since Covid, I that's just how I feel. And why is this type of investing so popular now? And I would say it's it's stems from Covid. The world, everything around us in my through my lens, through my opinion has changed dramatically since Covid. The way we interact with people, the way that we go to work, the way that we just everything politic, everything is just so different. Yeah. You know, I think I think you hit the nail on the head because during during Covid, that's when it seemed it seems to have really kind of solidified where just everyone is online, you know, whether it be TikTok, Twitter or whatever it is. And they're just talking about stuff and, well. They're talking about being rich. Hey, look at my car. Look at this. Hey, what did you do today? I don't know, I'm not working, but I'm traveling and I'm, you know, like, it's the reason why these these themes are so popular is because it's like, I want to be rich right now. You know, people, today's maybe younger investor is like, I need to be rich now. Like, well, I don't want to wait 30 years to be, you know, be comfortable and retire. And I want I need that now. Yeah. That's the main trend. Right. And like if you go online, it's, it's themed, you know, whether it's restaurants or vacations or whatever the case is, you know, that one guy that just like, films like himself dunking, himself in water and, like, working out as just like, like, hey, guys, I'm really rich. And this is what my day is like. And that is really driving everything, especially in, you know, we were talking before the show about, how old we are, basically, and how the kids these days are not into the things we were into. They're just talking movies. Yeah, but this is what they're into now. They just are online all day. And, a good portion of the traffic is, how do I get rich? Right now? I'm like the, you know, what they call that, the keeping up with the Joneses. Yeah, exactly. So why is there why is it appealing? You know, it's story driven, easy to understand. Invest in AI. It's the future, right? It you know, it's actually you know, there's studies coming out that it's making people more dumb. Like, seriously you can't think for yourself. I'm like, hey, I'm just gonna ask the robot to answer this question for me. Allows, targeting of secular growth areas. Appeals to again, I mentioned this before meals. The kind of like to the young investor who wants to align with beliefs and maybe megatrends. And that could be like again, like clean energy or meme stocks I don't know, like I can go on and on and on. But what are the risks and concentrated exposure and high volatility. This is where you're going to get jammed up. Because again everybody wants to get rich now and you're not going to get rich. If I only take five, 10 or 15% of my money and dump it into this idea, like I need that thing to double tomorrow. Yeah. Like not like, oh, it went up 10% this year. No, no, that is that's a failure. Yeah. You're failing if you're exactly 1%, and you're chasing the hype, you know, and building you're chasing hype versus building a balanced portfolio. And and that's kind of like what you know, that's what we bring to the table is like, hey, yeah, man. Like, I remember it's like, what was it, 20 was it 23 or 24. The the index was was up 20. Let's call 20%. I don't know the exact number, but it's up 20%. You strip out the top ten stocks and the index was up two. Right. The other 490 stocks did not participate in index returns. It's crazy. So that's a problem right. Because then people are like well then I'm just going to follow the trends. But the problem is usually smart money moves on before you do. You will you will get toasted. You'll be left in the dust if you don't move first. But then you have FOMO. Oh man, am I leaving chips on the table like that's called greed. Yeah, that's so there's this whole thing, this give and pull with the new investor of, like, get Rich. Now I need my money. The two acts overnight and and then I'm going to sell it and I'm going to find the next two acts are like, good luck, man. Yeah. So, yeah. And, you know, the risks, of, you know, these, these trendy thematic, investing trends, something that just also came into my mind. Do you remember Dave Portnoy's ETF? I don't read that one. I don't I didn't know that one. Yeah, I forgot I'd had one. It was, it was called Buzz Busey. And it was, you know, basically just investing in whatever people were talking about on Twitter is essentially a is what it was. Right? I don't I just looked it up quickly. I can't tell if the fund is no longer, no longer going. But I do know it was an epic failure. Yeah. That's why you can't find it now. So, you know, obviously, like Tony just talked about, there's there's lots of good, you know, thesis behind some of these, you know, megatrends. But it is very, very hard to execute. And it is very, very hard to be early because by the time you see it on Twitter, it's essentially already priced in, correct? Yeah. Right. And you know, some of the biggest themes right now in 2025 is obviously AI and automation like that. Just now. It's just oversaturate that that comment. But we you know, we also do have like aging demographic and health care innovation funds. You know, there's there's something there I like it popped up on on the thread. But like clean energy transition. Actually I think that had died when Trump won the election. Because it was never popular. Well, I'm not going to say it's not popular. It was actually never profitable. Like clean energy is extremely expensive. Yeah. Because the, the technology is not it's just not up to snuff yet to make it economical, unfortunately. Yep. Clean energy is only popular like the first two weeks that, after a Democrat is elected president, and then it goes away because everyone figures out that that it doesn't really work. Like it's just more it's more expensive. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cybersecurity, obviously that's a big, thing. Crypto. Before we started, our engineer was talking about like, data centers, you know, here in Cleveland. I mean, they're turning like the IC center into a data center. From what I hear, that place is gigantic. Massive. I just don't know where they're going to have the car show next year. That's all I care about. It's like a massive convention center. If, you're out of town. Yeah, it's it's gigantic. Massive. They used to build tanks for World War Two in there. So it's, it's a production, you know, facility, and and it it is built like a Brexit house, I just call it that. Like it is huge and highly constructed. Right. But these are, these are some of the trends that are happening right now. And yeah, I could say AI, aging, demographics, cybersecurity. And those makes sense, right? Because they're just constant problems in today's society. And I want home problems. But like they're they're highly used. They're realistic issues. Now crypto again I keep on saying I'm like there's legs to it. But no, when you when you don't really have a way to use it in day to day life, what is it doing right? I don't know, we'll find out. And then data centers right. But then clean energy it that's essentially you know, it's a 20 it was a 2020 20 to 2024 thing. Right 25. It's it's over. Right. So, how how are you you know, so like we like these themes. How do we structure them? How do we get into it. Right. How do we invest in it. And typically, we're looking at ETFs are probably the most popular. Like if you want to buy crypto. Yeah you can go Coinbase and pump cash into it. But actually you can get crypto exposure to crypto in your IRA if you go by you know like a I bet. I, you know, I'm, it's not, I'm not, you know pump in that fund or anything but it's like it's, that's an example of being involved in Bitcoin and iShares you know built that ETF. That's a way to get it in other accounts other than your point base account. Do you own the actual coin. No you don't. Where you wouldn't Coinbase. But that's how you get your exposure. Gold. You know like everything everything's usually ETF based. And obviously you can probably find a mutual fund that's the equivalent. But ETFs are a lot more popular. They they sell like a stock. You can buy it at,

you know 10:

00 in the morning and sell it at two if you want. Like they trade. You can't do that with the mutual fund. And I guess you got to figure out like is that fund actively traded or passive. Right. Like what are they doing. So like, all right I want it for example, I want to get involved in aging demographics and health care innovation. Cool. Like how like what do you want to do? You when are you going to do like nursing homes? Are you medical equipment. You know, pharmaceutical drugs. Like what what how do you want to be involved? And maybe you say all of it. Now you're going to try and find a active manager in an ETF that has a diversified basket of those types of investments, and they own that they own in the facilities. They own into the pharmaceutical companies, maybe like Eli Lilly or, you know, whatever it may be. So that those are the things that you have to start figuring out what do you want, what do you want to be involved with? And it shouldn't be because that guy told me to write. A guy on TV said, I need to be doing this. You have to start rolling up your sleeves and doing your own research, right? Yep. And I would I would also add, you know, if you're if you're getting into these, you know, these spaces that you don't know a lot about, an active manager is probably, a valuable thing for you versus, you know, just a passive ETF, you know, the underlying funds, you might not even know what what's in there, really? You know, so not all fees are bad. And if you're getting into a very specialized, very, you know, niche, you know, corner of the market, it might be better to, to have an active manager in a mutual fund or, an active ETF than than just a passive fund. Right. And I mean, like, let's let's just take it let's like, kind of take a, just a step. I was like a step deeper is where, like, okay, I found an ETF that I like. What stocks does it hold? Is it holding like an overlap with like the S&P 500 or is it a bunch of companies you never heard of? Right. If you see it has a bunch of companies never heard of or they're maybe, you know, maybe small to microcap stocks, get ready for high volatility and probably get you either going to make you're gonna either double your money, you're going to get cut in half like there's no in between. Now if you look at that ETF and you're you you notice a lot of companies you actually heard of in the S&P 500. The odds are that it's going to be a more steady investment strategy. It's going to be less volatile. So again we have to just evaluate the fund that you want to be involved with, with the theme you want to be involved with. Yep. And you can, you know, there's there's ways to splash them into your portfolio as well. You know, like a good example of a passive, passively managed ETF, is like, mags, mags to get into just like the magnificent seven stocks, you know, so you can play a lot of themes. Okay. So let's say you had 2000 bucks and you want to buy one share about, you know, I don't even know if 2000 bucks can buy you one share of all of the mags, right? Like, do you need to got $2,000? You want to be involved with all those companies. That's a perfect way to get involved right. For sure. So the biggest thing here is like how do you build this. Smart. Right. And that's where, that's where I might be talking to a wall because depending on who I'm talking to. Right. Like who who am I talking to. And because it's like hey, you should, you know, 5 to 10% just in case. Like it because it could be volatile. It could be it could be gone tomorrow. Who knows. And you know, and then you start talking to the person that's like, that's not you know, it doesn't sound sexy enough. It's not, it's not not enough action. Right, right. Like, so we have I you have to figure out what your goal is right and can if you're going to invest X amount of dollars, can you afford to lose X amount of dollars tomorrow if this whole thing gets turned upside down. Right. So and you know that well we all we just keep saying over and over again on some of these podcasts, you know, kind of kind of the same thing, you know, balanced balance out your portfolio. So, you know, there's there's nothing wrong with taking some risk, even if you're younger. But keep it. Also keep in mind where we are, you know, where we're sitting at all time highs. You know, the market's in kind of a strange place with some weird economic data coming out. You know, there's new tariffs obviously new administration in there. You know don't get caught up in the FOMO. You know, it's it's you need to have an investment strategy and kind of stick to it if you're just always going back and forth between the the popular meme stocks on the internet, and that's the basis of your investment strategy, you know, that can blow up in your face pretty quick. Yeah. And again, the key takeaways to all this is listen to the headlines. Don't avoid them but listen to them. See if they make sense. But you gotta you can't. Chase returns. You have to believe that investing is a long term. It's it's long. It's a long term game. Yeah. It is not a get rich overnight scheme. If you try that you will actually go broke. You will not double your money. You will probably lose all of your money. So you have to be smart. You have to be diversified. If you want to be involved in particular sections like you have to chisel out five, ten, 15% of a portfolio to put your chips on. But because you need to, you need to look yourself in the mirror and say, if it goes broke tomorrow, am I going to? If that thing goes belly up tomorrow, am I going to cry? Like, am I going to lose sleep? Am I am I going to make it the next day? Can I still pay my bills? Right, right. You got to be very because you have to be very smart and chasing being rich is not a good thing to chase. Yeah, right. So with that being said, you know, I, there's a lot of there's a lot of noise out there. And if you have any questions, concerns, things like that, or are ideas that are framed around this, you know, hit us up, you know, you can always email us at info at, connect.com. You can put a comment on our, our YouTube channel. Whatever you want to do, if you have us maybe a specific question related to like this topic. But other than that, the take us home, man. All right. Well, you said are there, you know, hit us up at info at connect with, comments, show ideas. We always love hearing from you. And in the comments comments as well, you know, both good and bad. I'd say. So thanks. Thanks for listening. And we'll talk to you next week. The opinions expressed in the podcast. Are for general informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial or tax strategy. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.