WSJ's Take On the Week: Kyla Scanlon on Navigating Financial Advice on Social Media
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Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for Realtor.com, the pros number one most trusted app. Finding a home is like dating, you're searching for the one. With over 500,000 new listings every month, you can find the one today.

Download the Realtor.com app because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com. Pro's number one most trusted app based on August 2024 proprietary survey. Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings. February 2024 through January 2025. Hi, your money briefing listeners. It's Sunday, May 11th. I'm Julia Carpenter. The news is moving so fast and it can be hard to know where to focus, especially when it comes to what might affect your investments.

But the Wall Street Journal is here to help. This week, we have something special for you, a bonus episode from WSJ's Take on the Week podcast, all about navigating financial advice on social media. Co-host Talis Demos is joined by social media content creator and economic commentator Kyla Scanlon. She's helped transform how younger generations, specifically Gen Z, are engaging with news about the economy and finance.

And if you like what you hear, be sure to check out WSJ's Take on the Week wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. I'm Telus Demos, and I'm here with a bonus episode of WSJ's Take on the Week. We all know the economy is shaped by a variety of different forces. What the government does, foreign policy, the stock market, the bond market, the list goes on and on.

But today, I want to get into something a little broader. I want to talk about generational shifts. As we move from one to the next, the ways that we talk about the economy, the things that are important, and the way that we get information about our investments and how we think about them, those things change.

And so here to talk us through how people are navigating that transition and how new investors think about things is Kyla Scanlon. Kyla is an author and economic commentator. Kyla, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Kyla, let's start with like how you got into this line of work. So you studied economics and finance in college, right? Yeah.

You had a job at like a big asset manager. But what made you decide to start kind of putting yourself out there, like writing things, making videos? What made you kind of switch gears in that way?

Yeah, I've always been really passionate about economics education. So I sold cars when I was in college and was studying economics at the time. You sold cars? Mm-hmm, Hyundais. Like at a car dealership? At a car dealership, yeah. People would come in and not know what an interest rate was. And so that was like really the moment where I was like, oh my gosh, we send people out into the world without any understanding of what the economy is. And so I graduated from my university and moved out to Los Angeles to work for a company called Capital Group.

One of the world's largest asset managers. Yeah, and was in their early career program there. So it was like a great program, great company, but graduated basically right into the pandemic. And so during that time, everybody was locked inside and GameStop happened. And so I decided to start making videos, like number one, inspired by the passion I had around economics education from that experience at the car dealership.

And then number two, because I kind of needed something to keep myself sane during that time. And that was what I did and ended up...

You know, four years later, having so many opportunities because of that. Interesting that you brought up that like you were at the beginning of your career during the pandemic. And we talk a lot about around here about the ways that investors are kind of shaped by something that happened like during their formative years that sort of defines how they think about things.

investing for the rest of their lives, right? For people around my age, I think for a lot of us, it was the 2008 global financial crisis, right? If you're, say, you know, maybe if you're a little older than that, it could be the dot-com bust and boom. If you're a little older than that, maybe it's the, you know, 1987, you know, Black Monday stock market crash or the oil crisis of the 70s, right? Like,

Would you say that for the youngest generation investors, for people who have started working or investing in the last five or 10 years, is the pandemic the thing that you think will sort of define the way that they think about investing for a while? I mean, obviously, that was when you sort of

like, you know, kind of started, like you said, putting yourself out there as a commentator. Yes, definitely. Because we saw so many weird things happen. Like we saw GameStop, we saw AMC, we saw the rise and eventual fall and now rise again of crypto. And so I think a lot of people, like that was sort of the moment, I think for

many people where the stock market kind of became a little disconnected from the broad economy like fundamentals no longer were reflected and that's what you saw with gamestop for example and so i think it's informed a lot of people like younger people specifically

There are tendencies to maybe think through the lens of gambling rather than investing. A lot of people are aware of 401ks, and I do think the younger generation is investing and saving and thinking about that. But you have a big segment of them that are all in on these more risky bets. Yeah.

Why do you think that is? Is that something cultural or maybe it's – I mean you mentioned the GameStop sort of meme stock moment, right? And that seemed like a time when –

Like people were rewarded for like, you know, kind of really going out there and, you know, taking kind of a wild idea and running with it. And people made a ton of money. And we talk a lot about, you know, kind of buy the dip, right, being the ethos of the markets today. And that's just worked again and again. I mean, heck, it's even worked now through this.

Liberation Day kind of volatility, right? That's true. The market ended up doing not that bad in April. For now. For now, right? We'll see. But what is it about –

the idea of gambling or treating investing like gambling, like why do you think that became? Was it just the tools people had in their pockets made it more possible as people are empowered to, you know, invest more themselves? They have these tools in their pockets. You know, it does put an onus on the information that they're getting and who they're listening to about about investing. And so I want to know a little bit more about just sort of your, you know, kind of in

emergence and journey to doing what a lot of other people might be doing for, say, a large newspaper or other news organization, writing about finance and economics. And you're doing it through a lot of social media platforms. You have a pretty wide following on Instagram and TikTok. What have you learned about the way that people get information through those mediums

that is different about how people might have gotten it from a newspaper. How has that information kind of funneling mechanism changed the way people think about investing?

It's quick. Yeah, I mean, the social media space is really interesting for investing because you have a lot of bad actors in the space, like people trying to rip other people off, you know, put them into pump and dump schemes in crypto where they're like, hey, everybody go buy this crypto coin and I'm going to sell the top and all of you are going to be stuck with, you know, these losses.

And so you see a lot of people using social media to accomplish stuff like that or to spread faulty information about markets and the economy. So there's some bad elements to it, but

The reason I think social media is important and part of the reason I started using it is because it's just where younger people go to get their news, right? So a bunch of Gen Zers use social media and TikTok as their primary news source, and that might not be the best thing. But my theory is, you know, I rely a lot on sources. And so like

I read a lot of articles and I always reference those articles in my video from journalists and try to explain the news through the lens of economic education. So if we're talking about the labor market and unemployment rate, like I'll try to be like, "Okay, this is the unemployment rate, but that's what that means." And look here, you can see it in action, right?

And so that's how I try to think about my use of social media and my use of bringing people along in the economic and finance world. It's just where they are. And you have to think of it as a tool. And there are definitely bad aspects to it. But, you know, it's just the reality is people are there. How do you think you've been able to sort of amass a following while giving like

thoughtful economics talk? How did you manage to, you know, sort of bring like, you know, kind of nuance and like real information to people and have them resonate with it? Do you think that says that people are hungrier for that than maybe we give them credit for? Yeah. No, I mean, people are super hungry for information. Like everybody wants to understand stuff.

And if you can – and what I try to do is like I try to make it fun and I try to make it interesting and I try to make it visual. And so how I got my start is by pretending to be Jerome Powell. I think I might be the – one of the only people in the world that's ever like dressed up as him. And that was fun and that was new and – How do you dress up as Jerome Powell? You have a suit and glasses. Oh, okay. So you could do it too. And you like – I don't know. I –

Talk like him a little, I guess. But that was how I got people interested in the Fed meetings is because it was sort of this absurdist kind of skit style stuff that is actually painful to rewatch sometimes because I've been like, oh, goodness, that was a little... Wow, you know, I really took some big swings there. But I think that that was a big part of it is you have to make it fun and entertaining. And people really want to know about the economy, but like a lot of times...

some elements of economics education can feel really detached from reality or it's really hard and really abstract for people to relate that back to their lives. And so,

Everyone wants to know how to make more money and to save and to be stable. You just have to give them an avenue and a path where they feel comfortable going down it. And a lot of things can feel like a little bit scary. Like when I try to read about telescopes, like the James Webb Telescope, sometimes I don't know where to start because I'm like, well, how do I start understanding outer space? And that's the thing. You just have to give people an entry point. And so that's what I try to do with my content. And hopefully I can find somebody that does that for telescopes.

Maybe by leaning into the slight absurdity of all of it, like that actually feels more real to people than just saying this is meat and potatoes homework. Here are the absolute X's and O's that you need to know. Yeah.

Maybe we could, I don't know, maybe we could have more fun around here at the Wall Street Journal one day. I mean, yeah, but I think it's a big part of it. It's like finance and economics feel so, you know, my sweater is buttoned up all the way, but like it feels so buttoned up and it feels like people can't get in. And it's definitely been a little bit of a gatekept club in a lot of ways. And a lot of people just want to understand it. They don't want to know the intricacies of like the bond market, but they want to know how they can buy things.

treasuries to hedge in their portfolio. Right. And so I think that's a big part of it. And then to the point of absurdity, like the stuff that happens in the world of finance, if you really do zoom out and kind of be like, OK, I know this is impacting lives and it is elements of it are very important and scary, as you said, like some of it is funny and it's weird. Like GameStop was so weird. Right. And so you should be able to like laugh about that and have fun with it and bring people in in that way. Like that sort of

style of humor and comedy is important if we want to bring more people into this space. Yeah. Okay. We got to take a quick break. And when we come back more with Kyla's camp. Isn't home where we all want to be Reba here for realtor.com. The pros number one, most trusted app. Finding a home is like dating. You're searching for the one with over 500,000 new listings every month. You can find the one today.

Download the Realtor.com app because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com. Pro's number one most trusted app based on August 2024 proprietary survey. Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings. February 2024 through January 2025. So if somebody is starting out as an investor today, they've just downloaded an app, say they've just put Robinhood or something on their phone, what would you say are some of the best practices for investing?

you know, how they should start to think about where to get financial information from. Like what would you recommend as kind of a starter kit for like getting good, besides following Kyla's career, and a Wall Street Journal subscription. - Yes, of course. - Sorry, we need to pay for this segment here. What would you recommend are some best practices for people?

Well, it really depends on how tuned in they want to be. Like a lot of people, all they want to do is just have an investment account and buy and hold until they are ready to take some money out. And so in that case, like I think you should have a basic understanding of like how the

the Federal Reserve is making decisions because that impacts so many aspects of our lives and like what fiscal policy is doing. And so I think in that case, like just having a general subscription to news, definitely the Wall Street Journal is important. Just being like a little bit tuned in. But for people that want to go a little bit deeper, there's a lot of really good educational resources out there. George Mason University and Tyler Cowen have like a big intro to economics

style course available for free on their website. Um, so there's a lot of free resources, but it is challenging. Like, like that point I was trying to make using a telescope as an analogy as a starting point for people, like that is really the hardest part. Like when I talk to a lot of, I've been traveling for the past year on book tour with my book and, um,

I've been to over 20 university campuses and I've been to like, I think over 25 states at this point. And something I've heard on every campus and in every state was that people just don't know where to start. And that's why you asked me this question, right? But I think it is still hard to figure out where to tell people to start. Like the best thing to do is like open up an account and try to just like dollar cost average, like just put some money away each week or each month, whatever you can afford. Yeah.

How do you know that somebody is selling you something or trying to get you to believe something that is not in your best interest?

Well, this is where media literacy is important, which I feel like we've really kind of failed on as well. But I think the biggest thing is like if they're asking you for a bunch of money and being very abstract and what you get in return, like if they're like, hey, man, give me $20,000 and I'll make you a million. And you're like, well, how are you going to do that? They're like, don't worry about it.

That's really where you have to be careful. It's just like gut checking where people are coming from, what they're promising you, how much they're asking for. And also being cautious around the body language and the word choice that people are using. Like if they're trying to scare you, they're probably lying to you, right? Like if they're manipulating your emotions to get across a certain story, right?

And to get you to do something like invest in their course, perhaps, that's when your red flag should be waving in the wind. So let's talk a little bit about the current moment and...

And, you know, you sort of, you know, came up with this framing for the economy a few years ago. I'm sure you're both thrilled and tired of hearing about the vibe session and the vibes. By the way, thank you for that. We use that all the time. It really like perfectly. Sure. We say that all the time on our podcast. Oh, cool. It just really frames things well. Yeah. So – and we should credit you more often for that. I don't think that we do. I always appreciate a shout. But –

What I want to ask you about that is that it seems like is that a permanent state of affairs, basically, because now we've gone through, you know, we we attributed a lot of that to I think at the time to, you know, something to inflation. Right. To something about, you know, kind of the Biden presidency, the post pandemic era, you know.

Now we have a whole new context, right? Obviously some things are similar, some things are different, but we still seem to be in a situation where the sentiment data is running well behind the sort of hard economic data, right? You mentioned the jobs report. Looks all right. There was a GDP report that was sort of scary, though. You know, if you kind of, you know, as you talked about recently, you know, you sort of poke some holes into it. It's not quite as bad as it sounds. What is it, you think, that makes people feel negative and

even when the data is telling them is they should not? Is there something that we should start to think about? The word vibe session has actually been around for almost three years now. We had this weird sentiment tick down and, you know, inflation was going down. GDP was strong. The labor market was strong. So people were feeling really bad. The economy was OK. And that's kind of how we are now. Like, and obviously it's a little bit different because we have so much uncertainty now. Like, we just don't know which what sort of press conference

press conference we're going to get and what sort of announcement we're going to get about tariffs. So people are really feeling bad because of that uncertainty. But when you look at the GDP report, under the hood, the economy is still relatively strong. People imported a lot of stuff to try and get ahead of these tariffs. But if you look at the labor market report, we saw a lot of losses in government jobs because of Doge, tech jobs, because they're recalibrating over there, I think.

But most sectors are doing OK. Right. Like inflation is doing OK. So we're worried about it in the future. For the time being. Right. But the future matters. And this is the tough part about sentiment. And it's why the Federal Reserve pays so close attention to inflation expectations because

Because how people feel ultimately might manifest some sort of downturn. And it sounds nuts. Like, you know, you're talking about vibes. You're talking about manifestation. Like, it sounds like astrology. But some aspects of finance are definitely—

I think we all can say that in our lives we know that how we feel influences how we behave, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. Exactly. Like if you're really worried about the economy, like you might stockpile, like buy a bunch of rice and beans and, you know, not spend any money for the next six months. Coffee. Don't forget. People always forget coffee when you're stockpiling. Yeah. I just want to remind everyone. We do. And one thing with the vibe session was like people thought –

that it was saying that the feelings don't matter. A house is both a speculative asset and a place to live. And like, so like people feel bad that they can't achieve that foundation of the American dream. Right. And so that shows up in how people feel. And like things like child care and elder care shows up in how people feel about the economy. And like,

Economic data might be saying things are okay, but you have a housing crisis. You have the Gen X generation getting totally squeezed on both ends with the child care and elder care costs. And then you have inflammatory aspects of social media where people, the first thing that they see when they wake up in the morning is a headline telling them that the world is going to end. And so, of course, people feel bad. But there are real structural factors to that sentiment being negative that isn't always captured by the economic data that we use. And in people's behavior, though.

And you mentioned people traded actively during Liberation Day, right? You know, if you just go by, say, Robin Hood's earnings, that does not paint the picture of people who are feeling they're like they just want to get under the covers and hide, right? Like people are – they're betting on stocks. They're buying options. You know, they're trading options. They're trading in, you know, a kind of event contracts and things like that. So people act –

kind of very bullishly, right? And we know that consumer spending has been pretty strong. I mean, now that the data is a little mixed, but, you know, are the way that people talk and the way that people act just sort of different? Well,

when it comes to the economy these days? Yeah. I mean, Visa actually said that in their earnings call. I think it was Visa. They were like, you know, people, the sentiment, we see the sentiment reports and like it's looking bleak, but people are still spending money. And Treasury Secretary Scott Besson kind of said something similar where he was like, you know, we do see this really negative sentiment, but, you know, people are out there spending still. And like,

doing stuff, right? And we are seeing weakness and softening and spending data in people's plans for summer and stuff like that. So, yeah, it is a disconnect in a very big way. Like, people feel a certain way, but their behaviors don't always reflect how they're feeling. So,

Cutting through the noise of these kind of sentiment and other data signals, what do you think that investors should really be kind of paying attention to most right now? Tariffs. We do that a lot around here, too. Everyone's a little stuck in the tariff laundry cycle. But I think...

What I am really focused on is thinking about what's next for the United States. But I'm also really excited for like hard tech stuff that's happening. Like a lot of people are building really cool, like Waymo is really interesting, the self-driving cars. We're seeing a lot of investment in that space.

stuff like um not to say stuff a lot of but like you know the self-driving cars I think are really cool I think we're achieving some cool stuff with certain startups around like medical manufacturing and so that's something I'm paying very close attention to because to that point about it feels like the United States society is falling apart physically like if we can really invest in hard tech and get those things up and running like that can be maybe what fixes it and

It restores an element of hope to American society. So as an investor, that means like looking at, you know, innovative companies and like who might be funding or benefiting from, you know, the advent of quantum computing or whatever, whatever the next thing around the corner is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of stuff. A lot of them are still private companies, but I think some of them are public. So that's a very exciting thing to me. I've really enjoyed seeing the focus on that from the VC space. And just a lot of people are like, OK, well, you know, we can have all the software and B2B SaaS in the world. But what if we had, you know, cool physical things? And I think that'll really do something if the companies that are working really hard on that are able to achieve it.

Well, we're going to take one final break. And when we come back, we're going to have one last question for Kyla Scanlon. The Hoover Dam wasn't built in a day. And the GMC Sierra lineup wasn't built overnight. Like every American achievement, building the Sierra 1500 heavy duty and EV was the result of dedication. A dedication to mastering the art of engineering. That's what this country has done for 250 years.

Welcome back. Kyla, we wanted to ask you one last question. In 30 seconds or less, what's the biggest concern for investors right now? Uncertainty. I think everyone's just like, nobody knows what's next.

And it is a very pervasive topic. Everybody's talking about it all the time, right? Like what's happening, what's going on. So I think that's the biggest concern for people is like, what are the tariffs going to be like? So I think that there's just a lot of questions in the air that are creating a lot of uncertainty for investors. And then I think number two is the AI bubble. Like we have seen some softening and elements of that. And if we do enter into a real trade war with China, like that could

really put a dent on things for those companies and how we think about that. And the MAG-7 has been just dragging the S&P 500 along. So we don't know what's coming and the things that have been working might be on the cusp of not working anymore. Right, exactly. I can see how that would make people anxious. All right, well, Kyla, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a great conversation. Thank you.

And that's everything you need to know to take on your week. This show is produced by Jess Jupiter, Jessica Fenton, and Michael LaValle with help from Trina Menino. Michael LaValle and Jessica Fenton are our sound designers, and Michael also wrote our theme music. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are the deputy editors. And Philana Patterson is the head of news audio for The Wall Street Journal. For even more, head to WSJ.com. I'm Telus Demos. Until next time.