Though to be fair, Kyla Scanlon doesn't care for the term.
Kyla Scanlon is hardly your typical markets commentator—but then again how many 16-year-old girls growing up in Louisville traded stock options on the weekend. “It was just something interesting to do.
My parents were supportive,” she says. “My dad dabbled in it and so he was like, ‘this is a cool way for you to explore mathematics and understand how markets work.’” Scanlon, now 26, is one of the most prominent of a new breed of financial pundits who ply their trade on social-media platforms such as YouTube , Substack , X , and especially TikTok Using just an iPhone 11, tripod, microphone, and a whiteboard, she posts six or seven videos a week. Her company, Bread, garners revenue from ads on social media and brand deals from the likes of Bloomberg, , shareholder advocacy group We The Investors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Just don’t call Scanlon an influencer. Why not? “It’s really the connotation with the word influencer. I don’t feel like I’m influencing people to purchase things. The whole goal is financial education, to help people understand the economy.” Better to describe Scanlon as an astute, driven entrepreneur with serious financial acumen, strong, original thinking and digital know-how. On camera she is intense, with piercing blue eyes, but also easygoing, sometimes rocking a Carhartt beanie. Based out of Denver, Scanlon has a purview as wide as the sky; from Jay Powell , to Tesla , to the future of work. A polymath in the making, she delves into Keynes, Fischer Black and the CPI, sprinkling in references to Jackson Pollock, Plato’s Cave, and biking across France. Unsurprisingly, Scanlon was no slouch at Western Kentucky University , where she majored in financial management, economics, and business data analytics. She launched a finance blog and podcast, managed a $500,000 portfolio as part of the TVA Investment Challenge Program, founded the Women in Business organization, and received the top undergraduate academic award. She also published a paper on the ‘Effects of Terrorism on the U.S. Stock Market: Evidence from High Frequency Data,’ where “price level variability was examined using the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model.” After school she moved to LA to work for Capital Group but left after less than two years. She went to work at a tech startup, building out their investment education arm, which she realized was her calling. Then in January 2021 GameStop happened. “And I was like, ‘Oh, this would be a cool thing to explain.’ So I just started making these videos and posting them and it worked out.” Now, she’s interviewing San Francisco Fed Chair Mary Daly. What was that about? “I think the Fed is starting to focus on how do we get young people to pay attention to markets? How are they going to communicate to young people about what’s going on in the economy?”“The Fed has a very difficult job,” she says. “They have a very limited tool kit; raising rates, the balance sheet and Fed speak. I think the Fed has gotten kind of lucky with how fiscal policy has gone. Fiscal policy has essentially saved us from recession. Bidenomics happened, the Chips Act happened, IRA happened, all of these things have been really supportive to the economy. I don’t think that we’ve seen rates really take hold in the economy except for housing, with mortgage rates now at 8%. So I’m not sure if their tool kit is effective in achieving their goals. I don’t know if the goal should be 2% inflation, this arbitrary-ish number. Why potentially sacrifice the labor market for that?”“It’s an interesting time for the stock market, because now you have the bond market, working at 5%, essentially, risk free. I think stocks are looking less and less attractive for a lot of people. They’ve totally like not traded on fundamentals forever, right? So they’re just sort of speculative tools. But I think that can be considered pricey, especially if you think about reconciling the valuations relative to fundamentals.”“Oh, my gosh, I think everything. I’ve been really thinking about this lack of ‘beginner mode.’ The Mitsubishi Mirage is one of the last cars selling for under $20,000. And they’re discontinuing it in 2025, and so now there aren’t a lot of cars under $20,000. We have a housing crisis—it’s really difficult to get a starter home. Think of starter jobs, the struggle to find a job that will pay a wage that matches your lifestyle inflation, or keeps up with rent and inflation.” You may see Scanlon as just another talking financial head—albeit the latest digital incarnation. And that’s true to an extent, but remember that thousands of young people are now getting market news and knowledge from sources like Scanlon, who has distinguished herself as a cut above the rest.
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