Motley Fool Staff, The Motley Fool
19 min read
In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool retirement expert Robert Brokamp discusses the following:
-
The S&P 500 is near all-time highs, but small caps and international stocks are doing even better so far in 2026.
-
A new study finds that retiring before 65 may accelerate cognitive decline.
-
The U.S. government’s debt-to-GDP ratio is now over 100%, nearing the all-time high set after the end of World War II.
To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you’re ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.
Will AI create the world’s first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on a little-known company, called an “Indispensable Monopoly,” providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need.
A full transcript is below.
Should you buy stock in Morningstar right now?
Before you buy stock in Morningstar, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Morningstar wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $469,293!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,381,332!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 993% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 207% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
*Stock Advisor returns as of May 16, 2026.
This podcast was recorded on May 9, 2026.
Robert Brokamp: Making the most of your 401(k) and does retirement make your brain decay? That and more on this Saturday’s Personal Finance edition of The Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing podcast. I’m Robert Brokamp. This week, I lay out 11 steps to making sure you’re maximizing the value of your work-based retirement plan, but first up, some headlines that caught my eye this past week.
The S&P 500 is up 6.4% so far this year, while the S&P 600 index of Small Caps is up 15.7%, and the FTSE Global All Cap ex-US Index of international stocks is up 10.6%. I came across a couple of articles this week, and both of these asset classes that I thought were worth highlighting. The first was published on wealthmanagement.com and comes from Larry Swedroe. He points out that the so-called small-cap premium, and that’s the amount that small companies have historically outperformed large companies, seems to have disappeared in recent years, and many have questioned whether it actually ever existed. Larry cites a study from the Bridgeway Capital Management Group, which argues that the problem isn’t the premium itself, but how we define small cap.
