Market MakeHer Podcast

We're continuing our deep-dive into one of the most fascinating moments in market history: the dot-com bubble - and what happened after it burst. 
[This is part 2; listen to episode 101 for part 1!]
  
You’ve probably heard of companies like Pets.com, the infamous dot-com failure, and Amazon, which somehow survived a 90% stock collapse and went on to become one of the most powerful companies in the world. But what actually separated the companies that failed from the ones that survived?
Jess Inskip walks us through the key lesson investors learned the hard way: growth alone isn’t enough. Companies need a real “path to profitability” and “free cash flow.”
And here’s why this matters today:
Every time a new AI breakthrough hits the market, whether it’s DeepSeek, Claude, or the next big model, investors start asking the same question they asked during the dot-com era: Who will actually survive this technological shift?
Together we unpack:
The rise and fall of Pets.com, the poster child of dot-com excess
How Amazon survived a 90% crash and became a dominant company
Why investors became obsessed with free cash flow and burn rate after the bubble
How the crash reshaped the tech industry and investing behavior
And why the ghost of the dot-com bubble is still haunting today’s AI boom
If you want to understand why markets react the way they do to revolutionary technology, this episode will give you the historical context that is showing up in markets todaaayy!
Make good choices. ;)
 
 Episode note:
About 23 minutes in, Jess mentions "bar codes," but she meant "QR Codes" - FYI. 
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Ask Us a Question, Leave a Review, Follow, Subscribe:
🔗All Market MakeHer Links
✨ Jess Inskip: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
✨ Jessie DeNuit: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
 
About Us 🌚🌞   
Market MakeHer is an investing education podcast taught by a 15-year finance expert to her friend, a beginner investor. Our mission is to demystify the stock market and make financial literacy accessible to all self-directed investors! We teach complex investing topics in a different way - from "Her" perspective.
  
Important Disclosures:
Investing involves risk. There is always potential to lose money when investing in securities. Market MakeHer LLC provides educational content and resources for informational purposes only. We are not registered financial advisors & do not provide personalized investment advice. Consult with a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.

Don’t Beat the Market; Be the Market.

You hear about index funds everywhere…on TikTok, from your finance friends, even on our Market MakeHer merch (yes, the “Index Funds and Chill Shirt” is real). But what are they, really? And why do people say we should have them in our portfolio?
In this episode, I asked Jess to break it all down for us, starting with the jargon. We dig into why index funds are the simplest way to invest and why they’re considered the foundation of most long-term portfolios.
Plus, we take a quick trip back to the 1970s for the surprisingly dramatic story of how the first index fund was created and why people once called it “Bogle’s Folly.” Spoiler: it changed everything. Spoiler from the spoiler: markets are constantly innovating and changing. 
If you’ve ever wondered where to start with investing, this one’s for you. By the end, you’ll understand exactly how index funds work and why just “being the market” can sometimes be the smartest move of all.

EducAction To-Do List:
Check your 401(k) or IRA: Do you already own an index fund? Many retirement plans default to them.
Compare expense ratios: If you own mutual funds, look up their fees. Are index funds cheaper?
Think about your goals: Do you want broad exposure (total market) or focused exposure (like a sector)?
Try dollar-cost averaging: Start small and invest consistently, instead of worrying about timing the market.
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Support the show
Ask Us a Question, Leave a Review, Follow, Subscribe:
🔗All Market MakeHer Links
✨ Jess Inskip: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
✨ Jessie DeNuit: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
 
About Us 🌚🌞   
Market MakeHer is an investing education podcast taught by a 15-year finance expert to her friend, a beginner investor. Our mission is to demystify the stock market and make financial literacy accessible to all self-directed investors! We teach complex investing topics in a different way - from "Her" perspective.
  
Important Disclosures:
Investing involves risk. There is always potential to lose money when investing in securities. Market MakeHer LLC provides educational content and resources for informational purposes only. We are not registered financial advisors & do not provide personalized investment advice. Consult with a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.

Yes, we’re back down “The Fed” rabbit hole, err um, history lesson that we can learn from as self-directed investors. Okay, so this one surprised me. There was actually a time when the U.S. economy was… chill? From the mid-’80s to the mid-2000s, inflation stayed low, growth was steady, and recessions barely made a dent. Jess Inskip calls it The Great Moderation — basically the Fed’s calm era, when they learned that communication and credibility could stabilize the economy just as much as interest rates.
In this episode, we dig into how Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke helped turn “don’t panic” into policy, from the first-ever Fed statements to the now-famous dot plot. But (you knew there was a “but”)… that long stretch of calm also created a little too much confidence, setting the stage for what came next: the Great Financial Crisis.
So grab your coffee — we’re talking about the era when the Fed made it look easy… right before it got really hard.

Support the show
Ask Us a Question, Leave a Review, Follow, Subscribe:
🔗All Market MakeHer Links
✨ Jess Inskip: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
✨ Jessie DeNuit: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
 
About Us 🌚🌞   
Market MakeHer is an investing education podcast taught by a 15-year finance expert to her friend, a beginner investor. Our mission is to demystify the stock market and make financial literacy accessible to all self-directed investors! We teach complex investing topics in a different way - from "Her" perspective.
  
Important Disclosures:
Investing involves risk. There is always potential to lose money when investing in securities. Market MakeHer LLC provides educational content and resources for informational purposes only. We are not registered financial advisors & do not provide personalized investment advice. Consult with a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.

This week’s episode is for our newbies, our beginner investors, and those who might need a little refresher check-in on their basic personal finance goals. Welcome to your investing education 
If you feel completely in the dark when it comes to investing, or you're just getting started in your investing journey, this episode will illuminate you! ✨✨✨ We’ll give you “the why,” “the how,” and “what to do first.” 
 
We start with why investing matters (prices rise over time, so your dollars lose buying power if they just sit). Then we zoom out to what the market actually does, more up years than down, and why the long-run average (~10.65%) only works for you if you stick around (remember that “time in the market is better than timing the market” thing). 
 
You’ll see how compounding interest and dollar-cost averaging can turn into real progress over 5, 10, 15, and 20 years. We finish with the prerequisites: crushing credit-card debt (because you can’t out-invest it), building an emergency fund, and steps you can take to set yourself up for success.
By the end, you’ll have a simple, confidence-building checklist you can start today – you’ve got this!

If you want extra learning goodies, like a glossary of terms, or Jess and Jessie’s extra thoughts for the week: Sign up for our Newsletter!
Related Episodes:
12. How to Invest in the Stock Market (a step-by-step guide)
2. Understanding the Stock Market
24. Pay Yourself First
56. How to Construct and Manage an Investment Portfolio
Support the show
Ask Us a Question, Leave a Review, Follow, Subscribe:
🔗All Market MakeHer Links
✨ Jess Inskip: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
✨ Jessie DeNuit: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
 
About Us 🌚🌞   
Market MakeHer is an investing education podcast taught by a 15-year finance expert to her friend, a beginner investor. Our mission is to demystify the stock market and make financial literacy accessible to all self-directed investors! We teach complex investing topics in a different way - from "Her" perspective.
  
Important Disclosures:
Investing involves risk. There is always potential to lose money when investing in securities. Market MakeHer LLC provides educational content and resources for informational purposes only. We are not registered financial advisors & do not provide personalized investment advice. Consult with a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.

We're back! And since everyone keeps comparing the AI boom to the dot-com era (and asking if we're in a similar bubble) we decided to kick off Season 3 by taking us all down another rabbit hole to see what really happened.
In this episode, Jess and I take you back to the 1990s — when optimism was sky-high, money was cheap, music was great, and anything with “.com” in its name could send Wall Street into a frenzy. We unpack the perfect economic storm that built the dot-com bubble, the wild timeline of events that burst it, and the investor psychology that led even the smartest people to think "this time was different."

Why Does This Matter To Me?
As we said in Episode 100, sometimes history haunts us, but there are lessons to learn from the past. As we release this episode heading into "Eclipse Season," we're reminded that time is cyclical, spiraled, and layered.

What can we learn as self-directed investors from the Dot-Com Bubble? We explain the details of this week's lesson and how it parallels the AI Boom of today in our Free Newsletter! ;)

Key Takeaways:
The 1990s were the perfect setup for a bubble: Low inflation, low interest rates, and a booming economy gave investors confidence (and cheap money) to chase risk. The Internet fueled the fire. Interesting timing as we ride into the year of the Fire Horse! 
Technology changed everything - and everyone wanted in: The fast rise of Internet companies made it feel like endless growth was guaranteed. IPOs exploded, valuations skyrocketed, and nobody was looking at profits - sound familiar?
FOMO and vibes replaced fundamentals. “Irrational exuberance” described the collective hive-mind that pushed prices higher simply because they were already rising. Everyone was hyped up on optimism and greed, leading to risky investing, and proving that markets run on emotion as much as data. 
The media amplified the mania: Financial news networks turned investing into entertainment. Analysts became influencers before social media existed, and market updates sounded more like sports commentary than financial analysis. 
Support the show
Ask Us a Question, Leave a Review, Follow, Subscribe:
🔗All Market MakeHer Links
✨ Jess Inskip: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
✨ Jessie DeNuit: ⁠TikTok⁠  ⁠Instagram⁠
 
About Us 🌚🌞   
Market MakeHer is an investing education podcast taught by a 15-year finance expert to her friend, a beginner investor. Our mission is to demystify the stock market and make financial literacy accessible to all self-directed investors! We teach complex investing topics in a different way - from "Her" perspective.
  
Important Disclosures:
Investing involves risk. There is always potential to lose money when investing in securities. Market MakeHer LLC provides educational content and resources for informational purposes only. We are not registered financial advisors & do not provide personalized investment advice. Consult with a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.