Customer sentiment in 2025 reflects each newness and continuity. Behind the hype around AI and geopolitics lie ongoing concerns about cost, timing and behavior. Based on confidential conversations with readers of (where I write a monthly column), these five concerns will remind us that investor psychology moves way more slowly than markets.
1. I’m frightened of tariffs.
“I’m in a little bit of a pickle. I lost my job at the top of 2023 and just turned 60. During the present round of tariff wars, I panicked and sold about 80% of my stock portfolio. I’ve at all times been a successful buy-and-hold investor, but it surely felt just like the Great Financial Crisis could thoroughly occur again. I desired to avoid losing a number of money. Luckily, I even have other savings to cover that Income needs might be met for a while, so I’m still able to speculate the long run. I wish I had kept the whole lot because it was. What do I do now?”
My advice: If the market falls below the extent you sold, your panic selling was not a mistake. However, if the market never returns to the extent at which you sold, not only would you may have missed out on the profit for the reason that April lows (the S&P500 is up nearly 35% since then), but you’d also miss out on any future gains.
The biggest mistake investors make is attempting to time the market. The average investor typically cashes out after they needs to be buying, and vice versa. Remember that every one markets are cyclical. Sometimes it seems like the stock market is a casino and we forget that good investing plans exist for good reasons.
Apparently, before you panicked, you had a solid investment strategy that had worked well for a few years. Why argue with success? Your investment goals haven’t modified. You’ve had a while to lick your wounds, but now it is time to work on a disciplined approach to purchasing back your dividend stocks. Put together a stock purchase plan and keep on with it. Maybe on the primary of the month buy 20% for the subsequent 4 months or something like that. If there may be a pointy decline, you possibly can speed up stock purchases.
2. Which undiscovered stocks will profit from AI?
“Everyone knows that Nvidia is doing well in making generative AI (GenAI) chips. Depending on the day, it’s the most valuable company in the world. I’m trying to find an undiscovered stock that could benefit from GenAI. I’ve been reading about liquid cooling in the data centers. Does that make sense?”
My advice: Everyone is in search of a stock that can rise with the GenAI tide but hasn’t been discovered yet. Something like this may need been possible within the early days of 2023, but now represents a greater challenge.
There are all types of corporations which can be known to have ridden the GenAI wave: chip corporations (Nvidia and AMD), the hyperscalers that construct data centers and AI services (Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft), and massive players (Meta and Oracle). Other winners include corporations that own data centers (Equinix), corporations that make connectivity chips for AI data centers (Broadcom), corporations that assemble the varied chips into servers (Dell, Supermicro), and corporations that provide power to those data centers (Schneider Electric).
With any megatrend investment theme, it’s difficult to seek out a very undiscovered opportunity once the height is reached. Unless you are fascinated by the method, I do not think in search of that (metaphorical) needle in a haystack is way of a waste of time.
To put that in perspective, take a take a look at Nvidia, whose market cap has risen to $4.6 trillion. It is trading at about $188, up from about $14 at the top of 2022 when the GenAI wave got rolling. Meanwhile, Vertiv is commonly touted as an “undiscovered gem” that produces advanced cooling solutions for data centers. With a market capitalization of just about $50 billion, Vertiv is significantly cheaper than Nvidia. It was last trading at $164, making it only barely less “undiscovered” than Nvidia.
3. Will my asset manager miss the GenAI wave?
“I’m taking a look at what is going on on at GenAI and I’m nervous that my money manager is not investing heavily enough on this megatrend: GenAI ETFs are outperforming the NASDAQ. GenAI is already having a seismic impact on my job, and it’s just begun. Google is launching real products that we are able to use today. For example, I just added Gemini to my marketing firm’s Google Workspace. Is my asset manager already missing one other wave?” still emerging?”
My advice: Some technology analysts I spoke with identified that GenAI is already changing the best way people work: by 2030, most computer code, probably the most advanced semiconductor chips, and plenty of successful drugs can have been written, developed, or discovered using GenAI. This will likely contribute greater than $1 trillion to the worldwide economy. It is predicted to grow to be ubiquitous in the worldwide call center/CX industry and amongst marketing firms like yours. Perhaps 100 million people work in these industries. At around $500 per yr for basic GenAI tools, we’re talking $50 billion. If we add to that a 20x forward P/E multiple, it might be value over a trillion dollars.
The only problem is that that is already priced in. The combined market capitalization of leading publicly traded AI corporations (Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Amazon and maybe Meta, Apple, Tesla and Oracle) has risen to almost $22 trillion as of October 2025, suggesting that the majority expect well over 100 million paid each day users.
If the number of individuals paying for and using these tools increases to 100 million by 2028, the worth of a GenAI ETF would likely decline. And if the variety of paying each day users increases to 200 to 300 million (or about just 1 / 4 of all knowledge staff today), the worth of GenAI ETFs would remain unchanged.
For this “wave” to form, greater than half of the 1.1 billion knowledge staff would need to buy GenAI tools. Is this possible? Early evidence shows that while many staff enjoy fooling around with these tools, they and their CFOs don’t see enough value to pay for them. A recent study found that 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots don’t increase revenue or reduce costs as expected. Although about half of consumers have used GenAI tools, the share who use them each day continues to be lower than 10%.
While GenAI sales may proceed to grow over the subsequent few years, GenAI stock valuations may not. Therefore, the GenAI promise appears to be embedded in stock prices.
4. How necessary are investment fees?
“My husband and I are busy professionals with two young children. We don’t want to manage our investment portfolio. The good news is that we are quickly building a solid nest egg. We outsourced the management of our investment accounts and hired a financial planner a few years ago. He charges us a flat 1% fee for advice and structured a portfolio of mutual funds for us.”
It looks like our management expense ratios (MER) are around 2% in each of the funds. Should we switch to a self-directed ETF strategy to scale back fees? Our goals are very clear: growth for the subsequent 30 years until we retire.”
My advice: People generally give attention to what fees they may pay as they accumulate a bigger fortune. Do it beforehand. Our industry is designed to incentivize salespeople so as to add as many high-fee mutual funds to their accounts as possible. From a regulatory perspective, we want to see a radical change.
A 2017 Morningstar report found that Canada received the bottom rating for investment fees and expenses amongst 25 different countries. This trend has continued. The average MER is 2.23% in Canada versus 0.66% within the United States. I am unable to consider any reason to speculate in mutual funds with such high fees. You quit a 3rd of your potential return over this 30-year period.
Investors need to know that they either pay a percentage fee upfront simply to get right into a mutual fund or they pay a percentage fee after they wish to get out.
Australia is an excellent example of how you can do it right – I recently interviewed the CIO of AMP, an investment firm with AU$85 billion in assets under management. I used to be told how their government modified pension system regulations to limit the usual alternative of investment products to easy, low-cost and high-performance products. This has affected your complete pension system. An investment culture has emerged where the main target is on the worth you get for the fees you pay.
5. Should I keep my loss holdings?
“I’m changing my asset mix and need to sell some of my stock allocation. I think it might make sense to sell the stocks that have made gains and keep the ones that are still in a losing position. Hopefully the losers will come back soon.”
My advice: I remember an excellent paragraph I read in Ashvin Chabbra’s book: “A well-diversified portfolio delivers market returns with market risk, but does so on its own terms, without being aware of or caring about your needs and wants.” Holding on to losing stocks is similar concept. There is little question that they may inevitably come back on account of their loss in value.
My advice is to attempt to remove emotions and take a tough take a look at what’s in your portfolio today. If you would not buy these corporations today, it’s best to eliminate them. There are many other fish within the sea.
