Ken Fisher on AI, Inflation vs. Wages, Stock Selection and More - Aug 2026

Transcript:

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Naj Srinivas

Hello and welcome to the Fisher Investments Market Insights podcast, where we discuss our firm's latest thinking on global capital markets and current events.

I’m Naj Srinivas, Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications here at the firm. Today, we’ll hear from founder, Executive Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Fisher Investments, Ken Fisher.

In this episode of Market Insights, Ken answers some common listener questions to help you better understand the world of finance and investing.

But before we dive in, I'd like to ask you a favor. Recommend our podcast and rate it wherever you listen. In just a few minutes, you can help make this valuable information available to even more people. Thanks so much for your help, in advance.

With that, let's dig in with this month’s Ken Fisher mailbag. Enjoy.

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Ken Fisher

Every month, people send in questions. Every month I pick out a few and try to answer as best I can. I'm supposed to try to do it quickly. That's nearly impossible for me to do if you ever heard me do this before. So I'll rattle through these and take them one by one.

I've seen in the news that about half of Americans are getting financial advice from AI. What are your thoughts on this trend? Well, first off, I don't believe it. I don't think half of Americans are getting financial advice from anything. That it's in the media doesn't mean it's true. You may have noticed that. But the real question that this is asking is, a lot of people are getting investment advice from AI and is that bad? What do I think about that?

Well, first, I think it's good if investors get advice. Secondly, if you think about what AI is, it's an algorithm that accesses data. A little bit like something that's able to go through a library fast, looking for an answer to a question that you might otherwise ask and put an inordinate amount of time in going to a library to find an answer for. It might not be right. It might not be right in the same way you could go into the library and maybe get a bad book that tells you something that's incorrect. But it's just that process, hugely automated. You ask the question, is that a good thing for me to do such and such with my investments? And it goes and looks through all the stuff and gives you an answer that tends to be a basic answer that's a consensus of what it finds. Is that bad? I don't think it's bad. Let me go another way.

If you said to me a huge percentage of Americans are buying things at Walmart, what do I think about that? And the answer is, well I think they're probably trying to go to a big place, that’s got a lot of stuff in it and all in one opportunity to get the stuff they want. Probably some of those people are doing it well, and getting great, great stuff at good prices and probably some people are buying stupid stuff they shouldn't have in the first place and that's not Walmart’s fault. You can't blame Walmart for what the people actually end up buying. I really struggle with the notion that AI is a bad thing in this regard. I do believe that there'll be people that are perfectly able to do it stupidly. Come up with questions that lead to bad answers. I do not believe that AI is probably ever going to be the only source of advice on almost anything, but it's a useful tool and I encourage you to get what you can. You can get AI, and if you just do a Google search and ask a question, it's going to give you the answer via AI. It's all good.

Inflation is outpacing wage growth for the first time in years. Will this affect investors in their portfolios? No. Let me just take you through this. It’s real simple. It's always been true. It’s true now. It'll be true in the future. An ongoing increase in inflation comes from an increase in the quantity of money, growing faster than the production of goods and services. Sometimes that goes on for a little while, sometimes it goes on for a long while. But it's the creation of money through the central banks, in the process by which central banks create money, which you can look up online, that creates inflation.

When we have a pickup in inflation, it's coming out of nowhere, wages were already set where they were. Then with a time lag, the inflation stopped. With the time lag, wages catch up during negotiations to the next year pay increase and what have you. Wages have always lagged inflation. Then inflation slows down. Wages catch up fully until the next time when you have an upsurge in inflation and we have upsurge in inflation and inflation goes up, wages lag and with the time lag, wages catch up again. This has been this way forever and will be this way now.

How strong is the US dollar compared to other currencies? And how does US debt and inflation play out in the strength of the dollar? So you asked two questions, not one. That gives me the opportunity to talk twice as long as I normally talk too long for. Fact is, first, the US dollar fluctuates against other currencies and in the long term tends to be pretty stable. In the short term, it tends to be highly volatile. It also tends to have a political quality to it. There's an age old saying that presidents tend to get the currency they want. The fact is, Republican presidents have and particularly in the first half of their terms, tended to like a “weak dollar” and to get a “weak dollar”. In the back half of their terms, it tends to strengthen somewhat. Democrats have tended to prefer a strong dollar, but it's not about the US debt. Even though I know so many people want to blame everything on US debt. It's not about inflation. It's about the fears of such things. Let me go back to a different point that I don't normally say. I normally say, that Ben Graham says the stock market in the short term is a voting machine, and in the long term it's a weighing machine, meaning that in the short term it's about fads and fancies and popularity. Like voting. That guy is cool. That other guy, he's terrible. But in the long term, it's a weighing machine, which is reflecting absolute and relative value. The fact is, in currencies, in the long term, it's about those realities and weighing them. In the short term, it's about the fads and the fancies and is not about anything other than people thinking things, whether they're true or not.

Do you have a recommended stock selection process? Well, let me say that differently. I got a way I go about doing things. Most people have a way they go about doing things. What I do, I like. That doesn't mean that it would be right for you. Does that make sense? I'm not going to go through in what's supposed to be a fairly brief answer, all the ways that I go about stock selection. I'll summarize it but I can't give you all the detail. I've written a lot about it. You can put a lot of time into it you want, but that doesn't make it right for you. What I'm trying to do, almost always is think through first, what are the types of stocks that should do well now. and some of the kinds that I think would do well if the ones that I think will do well don't. So that if I'm wrong, I don't get killed. Then once I've got those types figured, I look at the stocks within the types, and I want to be sure that I don't have any oddballs. So I throw out oddballs. Ones that don't look and act and have the fundamental business of the type. Now, with that means I throw out some bad stocks and I throw out some good ones, and I don't know which will be which. And in some ways, I don't really care. Because what I'm really looking for is one that will perform like the type but do a little better. That's what I'm trying to do, always.

So in that then I look for fundamental underlying qualities like high relative market share and low-cost production, basic categories that a management can use to continue to do a little better compared to competition over time. And then I want to see if that is broadly recognized in the price and not, that's a little tricky. I also want to look and see does management really understand that that's what it should be doing and that's a little tricky. I'm not going to take a lot of time on this today to go into all of how you go about doing that. What I do is a little bit complicated. It may not be right for you. I also have a huge research department behind me to help me do it, which also maybe you don't have, so it might not work for you. I'm not trying to tell you to do things the way I do them. But of course, you should have your own process, and you should keep consistent with it, and it should be consistent with who you are. And so that therefore, when you do it and you have all the volatility that occurs in the stock market and things go against you temporarily, it doesn't make you very uncomfortable. And that uncomfortable quality motivating you to shoot yourself in the foot doing something stupid that you actually know better than to do. You should come up with your own process. That's true to who you are.

And then the last question is, how are you using the three questions you talk about in your book, The Only Three Questions That Count, in this market now. Same way as I always do. I keep asking myself, what do I believe that's false? I'm looking for things that I believe in that I think are true, that I can demonstrate one or another, actually aren’t, so I don't make those mistakes. What can I see that other people can't see? What can I fathom that most people find unfathomable? And that's just a matter of thinking. What is it that’s real in the world that nobody sees, nobody's thinking about? And the final part is always thinking about what is my brain doing to blindside me? Because our brains are always trying to screw us up when it comes to capital markets.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the questions. I'll answer more questions next month. I always enjoy doing this. Take care. Have fun and have a good month.

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Naj Srinivas
That was Ken Fisher answering listener questions as part of his monthly mailbag. Thanks to Ken for sharing his insights with us.

If you want to learn more about the topics discussed today, you can visit the episode page of our website, Fisher Investments.com. You'll find a link to that in the show description. While you’re on our website, you can also subscribe to our weekly digest, which rounds up our latest commentary and delivers it right to your inbox every week. And if you have questions about investing or capital markets that we can cover in a future episode of Market Insights, email us at marketinsights@fi.com.

We'd love to hear from you, and we'll answer as many questions as we can in a future episode.

Until then, I'm Naj Srinivas. Thanks for tuning in.

Disclosure:
Investing in securities involves the risk of loss. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. The content of this podcast represents the opinions and viewpoints of Fisher Investments and should not be regarded as personal investment advice. No assurances are made we will continue to hold these views, which may change at any time based on new information, analysis, or reconsideration. Copyright Fisher Investments.