Some weeks last a year, and some years feel like they last a decade. 2025 has brought us ten years’ worth of news that has reshaped the global economy and financial markets at a breakneck pace. A tariff war, the AI of everything and the stocks tied to it, the proliferation of sports betting and the prediction markets, the entrance of cryptocurrencies into our federal banking system, and a relentless bull market were just some of this year’s headlines.
Investopedia’s ever-curious readers stayed on top of all of these market-moving events as they circulated through our articles and financial terms that helped define these dynamics. Some events drew more interest and attention from our readers than others, demonstrating what was truly on the minds of educated investors in 2025.
Here are Investopedia’s top terms of this year:
Investopedia
Investopedia
Affordability was top of mind for many Investopedia readers this year.
No other word has captured the attention of our readers and most consumers this year. Inflation, although lower than the 2022 highs, remained persistent throughout the year and was amplified by the White House’s aggressive tariff policies. Food prices, health care, and home prices remained persistently high, pushing consumer sentiment to lows not seen since the Great Financial Crisis. More Americans felt priced out of the so-called “American Dream,” with the lack of home affordability among their top concerns. While some political leaders called the use of the word ‘affordability’ a ‘hoax’, many Americans who feel trapped in the bottom leg of the K-shaped economy felt its real effects in mounting debt and lack of savings.
Tariffs dominated the headlines in 2025 and for the better part of 2024, making it our top term last year. Still, 2025 was shaped more by the impacts, or concerns about the impacts of tariffs on issues such as affordability (see above). That said, investors, consumers, and business owners needed a calculator and a good eraser to try to quantify the impact of tariffs on the real cost of goods, given how many times they were imposed, reduced, or reciprocated by the White House in 2025. There is no doubt that tariffs have become one of the key instruments of economic policy in the 2020s, and we should expect this term to remain popular.
Among all the major asset classes in 2025, none shone brighter than gold. The precious metal surged more than 60% year-to-date, as investors, from global central banks to retail investors shopping at Costco on a Sunday, clung to it as the safe-haven asset it is known to be. Even as the stock market and Bitcoin steadily rose throughout most of the year, gold’s allure was too strong for those investors looking for a buoy to cling to in the tumultuous seas of tariffs and stock market uncertainty. Record gold prices spilled over into other metals, such as silver, which also hit record-high prices throughout the year.
2025 may be remembered as the beginning of the super-scaling of the Artificial Intelligence ecosystem and infrastructure, and the stocks that took off with it. While companies like Nvidia (NVDA), have been benefitting from the build-out of AI for several years, 2025 was the year we saw companies like Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), and Alphabet (GOOGL) blow out their CapEx budgets to the tune of $380 billion, and pledging to spend even more over the next several years. The more they spent, the more their stock prices climbed, until, that is, the last quarter of 2025, when investors and executives began questioning whether these AI stocks are in a bubble. According to Investopedia’s most recent sentiment survey, our readers agree.
The Trump administration came into office pledging to make America the ‘Crypto Capital of the World’. It began that process by passing the Stablecoin Act of 2025, also known as the Genius Act. That established the first federal framework for payment Stablecoins in the U.S. Our readers wanted to understand what a Stablecoin actually is, how it compares to Bitcoin, and why our federal government wants to introduce a digital asset pegged to the U.S. dollar into our banking system.
2025 will also be remembered as the year that sports betting, event betting, and predictive markets went mainstream. Americans are expected to wager over $150 billion in 2025, and with more states legalizing sports betting, bet on that number to grow. As it does, our readers wanted to learn more about the high-risk, high-reward parlay bet, which links together two or more individual bets, known as legs, but only pays out if every leg wins.
While there weren’t any major convictions or charges of insider trading in 2025, our readers were searching for what it actually means and whether it was happening in front of us on several occasions this year. This term received extra attention in early April following the so-called “Liberation Day,” as the U.S. imposed reciprocal tariffs on hundreds of trading partners, leading to a near 5% selloff in the S&P 500. As the stock market went on to fall as much as 19% in the subsequent days, the President’s post telling Americans to “Buy Stocks” just before he lifted or paused many of those tariffs on April 9th raised more than a few eyebrows, especially as the market roared back to record highs. Reports of government officials selling stocks before Liberation Day surfaced soon after, but charges were never filed.
While technically not a financial term, Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, better known as ‘Bad Bunny,’ got as much attention for his business acumen and net worth as he did for his latest best-selling album. 2025 was a good year for Bad Bunny’s money, as he was Spotify’s most-streamed artist, sold out arenas around the world, including a residency in his home country of Puerto Rico, hosted SNL, and was selected to be the headline act at the Super Bowl in 2026. His net worth, according to our latest report, is $88 million, and climbing.
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
Bad Bunny accepts the Best Urban Music Album award during the 26th Annual Latin Grammy Awards, another boost to his net worth.
The private markets, which include private capital and private equity, were once an exclusive playground for institutional and well-heeled accredited investors. Inherently opaque, often risky, but tempting with upside potential, private markets have received a public reception from the new administration, which is lowering regulatory hurdles to allow them into defined contribution plans, such as 401(k)s and IRAs. In August, President Trump signed an executive order to ‘democratize’ access to alternative investments, such as private markets, paving the way for their inclusion in retirement plans. Our readers sought to learn everything they could about private markets and their potential impact on their portfolios.
One of the simplest strategies to generate income in the stock market this year was through covered calls in the options market. The strategy involves an investor who owns a stock with no intention of selling it, does not expect the price to move significantly, and sells a call option that generates a premium for the option’s term. If the stock rises in price, the investor gets their premium payment plus the increase in the stock price, up to the strike price. If the stock falls, the investor still gets the premium, which offsets some of the loss. As the stock market has been churning sideways since September, more of our readers have wanted to learn and use this strategy.
