From game highlights to cold cases to political pontificating, podcasts provide the stage for public conversations in 2026. But are we learning anything from all that chatter?
When it comes to investing, the answer seems to be yes.
Terry research suggests that retail investors do better because of the information they glean from financial podcasts.
“More and more Americans are listening to podcasts each day, and investing podcasts represent a growing segment of this industry,” says Braiden Coleman, co-author of the study and assistant professor in the J.M. Tull School of Accounting. “We wanted to see if the podcasts actually influenced investor trading activity and whether that helps or hurts capital markets from an information asymmetry standpoint.”
They found that in the three days after an investing podcast discussed a company’s earnings, trading activity significantly increased, especially among retail investors.
But what they found especially exciting was that these surges didn’t seem based solely on name recognition or social media buzz but on well-considered information.
“One of the main takeaways of the paper is that podcasts don’t seem to lead to purely speculative-based trading,” Coleman says. “We don’t see any return reversals or big price corrections following podcast coverage.”
Adios, asymmetry
Usually, when earnings news is announced, stock prices bounce around as investors digest the new information.
In cases of meme stocks or other hyped-up stocks, prices often surge as investors rush to buy, then fall when everyone comes to grips with that company’s fundamentals and starts to sell.
Information asymmetry — when one party in an economic transaction has more or better information — causes this rush and retreat. It’s the enemy of retail stock traders who may not have as much time to evaluate firm announcements or the background to process the information accurately.
The research team found that podcast discussions help retail investors reduce information asymmetry by 22%.
“There’s more information out there than ever, but with a lot of these platforms you have to be actively consuming — looking at your phone, reading your computer screen,” Coleman says. “With podcasts, you can listen to them while you are driving to work, exercising or cleaning the house.
“There’s a bigger reach because you can consume the content while you’re performing other activities.”
Expert voices drive value
The other benefit is the number of experts invited to speak on podcasts. Most segments are structured as conversations between hosts and industry or sector experts. The researchers found that podcasts including multiple viewpoints further reduced information asymmetry in the markets.
“These appearances really appear to drive value,” Coleman says. “Listening to podcasts that include guests and expose you to new ways of thinking, fresh insights and fresh perspectives can really help investors process information better.”
Good info, fast
The researchers turned to a podcast metadata library to gather the names of all investing podcasts between 2008 and 2022. They used artificial intelligence to identify episodes that included discussions about publicly traded companies.
That resulted in a sample of 1,782 shows and 49,772 episodes. The number of episodes per year grew over time, with approximately 2,000 in 2016 to more than 11,000 in 2022.
They mapped several trends in coverage over the years.
First, retail stocks — those with less of their shares owned by institutional investors — are covered more by podcasts than other stocks. Publicly traded stocks usually saw a pickup in coverage around each firm’s earnings announcements.
Coleman’s team also found podcasts that spent more time discussing the fundamentals of a company’s performance improved investor performance. Podcasts with tighter delivery (discussing more information in a shorter timeframe) had the same effect.
The overarching message is that the more high-quality data points an investor can get before making a trade, the better off they are. Podcasts, Coleman said, seem to be a great way for people with limited time to take in information.
Published by the Review of Accounting Studies, the publication was co-authored by Texas A&M University accounting professor Brady Twedt, Terry doctoral student Matt Hall and Terry doctoral graduate and Texas Christian University professor Karson Fronk.