Markus Andrews

Retail investors put more than $562 million into Nvidia shares on a net basis on Monday amid the chipmaker’s historic sell-off, according to Vanda Research.
That marked a record for net inflows into Nvidia, showing everyday investors bought the dip while institutions dumped shares.

CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Retail investors rushed into Nvidia on Monday, signaling Main Street support for the chipmaker despite the emergence of an artificial intelligence model from China that battered its shares and caused a historic, $600 billion loss in market value.
Everyday traders bought more than $562 million worth of Nvidia shares on balance Monday, according to data from Vanda Research that subtracts total outflows from inflows. That marked a record for daily net inflows into Nvidia as mom-and-pop investors bucked their institutional counterparts, who dumped the stock en masse.

The buy-in from individuals came as Nvidia suffered its biggest one-day loss, tumbling around 17%, since the onset of the Covid pandemic in March 2020.
Monday’s plunge came in the wake of news that an AI model from Chinese startup DeepSeek scored high performance marks more cheaply and in far less time than Western counterparts.
The development raised doubts about the U.S. strategy of spending huge sums on AI and the data centers they require, just as President Donald Trump last week announced a multi-billion dollar AI project called Stargate. The sudden rise of DeepSeek also rang alarm bells that America may not lead in AI technology, offering chilling reminders of what some described as a “Sputnik moment” at the dawn of the Space Race.
Nvidia told CNBC on Monday that DeepSeek’s model was an “excellent AI advancement.” DeepSeek’s offering reportedly outperformed the best models of OpenAI and other U.S. competitors, further stoking concerns about the status of the U.S. in AI.
For their part, however, individual investors were unfazed. Data from Vanda shows the chipmaker was the most-purchased security by average investors on net in 2024 — surpassing even the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500.

Arrows pointing outwards

One of the buyers on Monday was Nirav Patel. The technology manager said he spent hours testing DeepSeek’s model and concluded that, while development costs have come down, more chips will be needed to handle the increase in demand that should accompany growing affordability.
“In my opinion, you will see much higher adoption of reasoning AI models,” Patel said. “With adoption, you need more compute, and so you’ll need more Nvidia chips basically.”
The show of support from small-scale traders is the latest example of retail investors diverging from monolithic Wall Street, as happened during the meme stock craze that captivated U.S. markets during the pandemic. The difference now being that individuals can’t swing the price of Nvidia, with a market value Tuesday near $3 trillion, the way they could small-cap stocks such as video game retailer GameStop or movie theater chain AMC four years ago.
Despite the contrast in size, there were similar overtones on Monday, however. Nvidia was the most-mentioned stock on the popular WallStreetBets Reddit forum over the past 24 hours, with mentions surging more than 175% as its shares plunged, according to Quiver Quantitative data as of Tuesday morning.
One Reddit user posted a photo of their Nvidia position on the WallStreetBets forum with the title “in Huang we trust,” a reference to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Another said Monday’s moves were a “classic overreaction” and “missed the bigger picture.” More

A certificate of deposit offers a guaranteed interest rate over a specified term. Consumers can get their money early but generally with a penalty.
Consumers often come out ahead by buying a long-term CD and paying an early withdrawal penalty, instead of picking a CD with a shorter term, research suggests.

Boonchai Wedmakawand | Moment | Getty Images

You may be leaving money on the table when it comes to certificates of deposit, some research suggests.
CDs have a set term, ranging from a few months to five or more years. Upon maturity, banks return the depositor’s principal plus interest.

Consumers who want their money early must generally pay a penalty, losing out on months of interest. However, paying that withdrawal penalty may be worthwhile for many savers who adopt the right strategy.
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That’s what is suggested in a recent research paper from Matthias Fleckenstein, associate professor of finance at University of Delaware, and Francis Longstaff, finance professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Rather than pick a short-term CD, consumers often get a higher return by choosing a long-term CD and paying a penalty to pull money out early, they found.
Consumers who are unaware of the strategy may get “shortchanged” by banks, Fleckenstein told CNBC.

‘The rule rather than the exception’

Here’s an example: If an investor puts $1 in a five-year CD with a 5% interest rate and cashes it out after one year with a penalty equivalent to six months of interest, they would receive about $1.03, which is slightly more than the $1.01 they would get from a one-year CD with a 1% interest rate, despite the penalty incurred for early withdrawal. 
Banks frequently price CDs this way, Fleckenstein and Longstaff wrote in their paper, published in October in the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The researchers examined weekly CD rates offered by 16,891 banks and branches — ranging from small community banks to big nationwide institutions — from January 2001 to June 2023. Rates were for accounts up to $100,000.
About 52% of CDs offered during that period had such “inconsistencies” in pricing when comparing a given term against a longer-term CD cashed in early, they found.
“It’s the rule rather than the exception,” Fleckenstein said.
“There are banks that do this all the time,” he said, and “there are some that don’t do this at all.”
At banks where this happens, the difference in returns “is not tiny,” Fleckenstein said. In fact, the pricing inconsistency is about 23 basis points, on average, over the roughly two decades they assessed, he said.
Given that disparity, the average investor who invested $50,000 could have gotten an extra $115 of interest by picking a longer-term CD and cashing it in early, their research suggests.
The average size of that pricing difference rose as interest rates began to increase during the Covid-19 pandemic, Fleckenstein said.

CDs often for ‘safety and liquidity’

Households that save in CDs are generally looking for “safety and some liquidity” for a chunk of their assets, said Winnie Sun, co-founder of Irvine, California-based Sun Group Wealth Partners and a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.
The typical CD buyer has a goal in mind, like saving for a home down payment, and wants to earn a modest interest rate without subjecting their money to much risk, Sun said.
About 6.5% of households held assets in CDs as of 2022, with an average value of about $99,000, according to the most recent Survey of Consumer Finances.
Like any investment, there are pros and cons to CDs.
For example, unlike other relative safe havens like high-yield savings accounts or money market funds, CDs offer a guaranteed return over a set period with no chance of market-based losses. In exchange, however, CDs offer less liquid access to your cash than a savings account and lower long-term returns than the stock market.

“Shop around for the best CD rate across banks, but also look within banks at whether it actually may pay off to accept a longer term but pay an early withdrawal penalty,” Fleckenstein recommended, based on his research findings.
The option may not be as prolific in the current market environment, though.
Long-term CDs typically pay a higher interest rate than shorter-term ones, Sun said. But average rates for one-year CDs are currently higher than those for five-year CDs: 1.7% versus 1.4%, respectively, according to Bankrate data as of Jan. 20.
Households can pursue other CD strategies, Sun said.
For example, instead of putting all savings into a long-term CD, consumers might put a chunk of their money into a long-term CD and with the remaining funds build a “ladder” of shorter-term CDs that mature more quickly. They can then buy more CDs if they’d like once the shorter-term ones come due. More

Constellation Energy, Vistra Corp., Talen Energy and GE Vernova tumbled as China’s DeepSeek AI lab debuted, scaring investors with a lower-cost business model.
Constellation, Vistra and GE Vernova were leading the S&P 500 this year as investors speculated on AI’s power needs.
Now, the arrival of DeepSeek is raising questions about how much power will actually be needed.

The cooling towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania, Oct. 30, 2024.
Danielle DeVries | CNBC

Power companies that are most exposed to the tech sector’s data center boom plunged Monday, as the debut of China’s DeepSeek open-source AI laboratory led investors to question how much energy artificial intelligence applications will actually consume.
Vistra closed nearly 30% lower, erasing its gains for 2025. Constellation Energy, Talen Energy and GE Vernova tumbled more than 20%, with the latter two stocks also giving up this year’s gains.

Before Monday’s selloff, Constellation, Vistra and GE Vernova had surged to top of the S&P 500 as investors speculated that AI data centers will boost demand for enormous amounts of electricity.
Natural gas stocks also fell steeply Monday, suggesting some investors believe the sector might get as big a boost as expected from data center demand. Producer EQT Corp. lost nearly 10% while pipeline companies Kinder Morgan and Williams Companies fell more than 8%.
DeepSeek released an AI model on Christmas Day that Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang described in an interview with CNBC last week as “earth shattering.” Scale AI provides training data for AI applications.
DeepSeek followed up last week with the release of a reasoning model named DeepSeek-R1 that competes with OpenAI’s o1 model. DeepSeek has since risen to the top of mobile app stores. Wang said DeepSeek has essentially caught up with OpenAI.
“Their model is actually the top performing, or roughly on par with the best American models,” Wang told CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin in a Jan. 23 interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has described DeepSeek as “super-compute efficient.” Bank of America analysts said in a Monday note that DeepSeek is “challenging the notion of U.S. leadership in AI and raising doubts about the high expectations for cloud capex, chip growth and power requirements.”
The tech companies have anticipated needing so much electricity to supply data centers that they have increasingly looked to nuclear power as a source of reliable, carbon-free energy.
Constellation, for example, has signed a power agreement with Microsoft to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Talen is powering an Amazon data center with electricity from the nearby Susquehanna nuclear plant.
Vistra has not signed a data center deal yet, though investors see promise in its nuclear and natural gas assets. GE Vernova has soared this year as the market believes its gas and electric grid businesses will benefit from AI demand.
The Bank of America analysts said grid investment in the U.S. and Europe is still required.
“Electrical grids in Europe and the U.S. remain under-invested and one of the critical bottlenecks in terms of meeting load growth requirements,” the analysts said.

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When it comes to money, couples face a big question: yours, mine or ours?
A new survey takes a look at how couples are managing their finances.
Experts say there generally isn’t a wrong answer — as long as you communicate.

Jeffrey Hamilton | DigitalVision | Getty Images

When it comes to money, couples face one question: should we keep our money separate, combine it or some combination of both?
A December Bankrate survey finds 62% of couples who are in a committed relationship keep at least some money separate from each other.

Of those couples, 38% rely exclusively on joint accounts they share, the survey of 2,217 adults found. Meanwhile, 34% of couples have a combination of joint and separate accounts and 27% keep their money completely separate.
Younger couples tend to be more in favor of some separation for their money, Bankrate found. The survey found 88% of Gen Zers keep at least some money to themselves, versus 70% of millennials, 59% of Gen Xers and 52% of baby boomers.
Younger couples may gravitate more toward separate accounts because they are marrying later and become used to managing their own incomes, said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate. Moreover, now that it’s easier to complete banking and shopping transactions online, that has also encouraged separate accounts for younger couples.

Communication is key

Keeping money separate but equal can work, so long as couples agree on the parameters ahead of time, Rossman said.
“That’s really the key for people is you need to communicate about what you’re doing with your money,” Rossman said.

Many financial advisors say the best choice comes down to a couple’s personal preferences, and what works best when it comes to fulfilling their financial goals.
“Unless there’s reason to separate them, it doesn’t much matter,” David Zavarelli, a certified financial planner and financial advisor at LPL, said of how couples manage their accounts.
However, Zavarelli said he is working with a couple who insist on separate accounts for everything, down to his and her vacation and Christmas club accounts. In total, they have 27 accounts, which can be cumbersome to maintain with the firm’s financial planning software, he said. But he’s not worried about the couple’s financial arrangement.
“They’re both on the same page,” Zavarelli said. “We do just kind of have a chuckle and then move on with the plan.”

For all couples, whether or not money becomes an issue comes down to communication, experts say.
Research from Cornell University suggests that a couple’s attitude toward money — whether or not they see problems as solvable — influences how well they communicate about finances. If they don’t feel there’s a solution, they’re less likely to talk about it.
That lack of communication can contribute to financial infidelity, when one or both partners lie about or hide financial information.
Bankrate’s survey found 40% of adults who live with their partners are committing or have committed financial infidelity. Some examples of the secrets they keep include spending more than their partner would want, having secret debt, or keeping a secret credit card, savings account or checking account.
To help prevent that, it helps to take the time to communicate with your partner about both short- and long-term financial goals, according to Rossman.
“I would urge people to set up regular money discussions or dates,” Rossman said.

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By many measures, millennials are doing remarkably well.
Still, very few millennials would consider themselves wealthy.
The disconnect between being rich on paper and feeling well off has been referred to as “phantom wealth.”  

Millennials have come a long way since their days of being called lazy or entitled. Despite reaching key milestones later than their parents once did, they are now wealthier than previous generations were at their age.
“Younger families in the U.S. made remarkable gains,” according to an analysis of 2022 data by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

Collectively, millennials are now worth about $15.95 trillion, up from $3.94 trillion five years earlier, according to Federal Reserve data. 

Still, very few millennials would consider themselves wealthy. The disconnect between being rich on paper and feeling well off has been referred to as “phantom wealth.”  
For example, gains in the value of a home or a retirement plan can feel like phantom wealth because they are illiquid and have no bearing on day-to-day cash flow. 
Boosted by a strong jobs market and rising wages, many in this age group have purchased homes and benefited from soaring home values. To that point, the St. Louis Fed report found between 2019 and 2022, home prices jumped 44%.
Largely driven by real estate gains, the “median wealth of these younger people more than quadrupled” during this three-year period, the report said.

However, homeownership does not offer the same sort of safety cushion other investments do, noted Michael Liersch, head of advice and planning at Wells Fargo.
“Unless you are willing to downsize, you are really not going to monetize the increase in that asset,” said Liersch, especially in the case of a primary residence. “Millennials, in particular, haven’t been able to use that wealth.”

Millennials have ‘phantom wealth’

“Phantom wealth is a nonsensical term: assets either exist or they don’t,” said Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School. However, there is a very real phenomenon at work.
As it turns out, “millennials experienced a sharp swing in their relative standing,” the St. Louis Fed report found.
The median wealth of older millennials, between the ages of 36 and 45, was 37% above expectations. The wealth of younger millennials and older Gen Zers, or those aged 26 to 35, exceeded expectations by 39%.
Compared with other generations, millennials are also more likely to say that their income went up over the last few months and that they expect their earnings potential to increase again in the year ahead, according to another report by TransUnion.
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But even as households became wealthier, inflation and instability have left more people in the bucket of so-called HENRYs — “high earners, not rich yet,” House said.
And “the ‘HENRY’ phenomenon isn’t limited to millennials or Gen Z,” he added.
“It’s harder for every generation to feel financially comfortable when the management of so much risk related to employment, healthcare, retirement pensions, insurance, and other components of economic well-being has been shifted to individuals during a period of rapidly rising prices,” House said.

‘There is so much more to achieve’

Many millennials also say it’s harder today to make it on their own than it was for their parents when they were starting out.
They have higher student loan balances, bigger mortgages and car payments, and more expensive child care costs, explained Sophia Bera Daigle, founder and CEO of Gen Y Planning, a financial planning firm for millennials.
“Cash flow has been tight,” she said.
That makes it more difficult to set extra money aside or make long-term plans, said Bera Daigle, a certified financial planner and a member of CNBC’s Advisor Council. “While they are making significant progress on reaching some financial goals, it still feels like there is so much more to achieve.”
However, feeling financially secure is often less about how much money you have and more about the ability to spend less than you make, experts say.

In part, higher prices have fostered the feeling of being overextended, according to CFP Kamila Elliott, co-founder and CEO of Collective Wealth Partners.
Elliott, who is also on CNBC’s FA Council, said clients often ask “Where is my money going?”
“If you feel like a lot of fixed expenses are going up, it may mean you need to cut back on the fun things,” she advised, such as eating out or taking a vacation.
“It’s going to take a little bit of an offset to have more money at the end of the month,” Elliott said.

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Tax season opens for individual filers Monday, and the IRS has started processing 2024 returns.
If you’re eager for a tax refund, there are a few ways to get your payment faster, experts say.

Andreswd | E+ | Getty Images

It’s official: Tax season is open for individual filers, and the IRS has started to process 2024 tax returns.
If you’re expecting a refund, there are key things to know, according to tax experts.

“There are some very simple tips to get the fastest refund possible,” said Mark Steber, chief tax information officer of Jackson Hewitt Tax Services.
For most filers, the federal tax deadline this year is April 15 for returns and balances. The agency expects more than 140 million individual returns before the due date. 
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Typically, you’ll receive a tax refund if you overpaid taxes the previous year. But you could owe money if you didn’t withhold enough from your paycheck or didn’t make payments throughout the year. 
As of Dec. 27, the average refund was $3,138 for the 2024 filing season, which was slightly lower than 2023, according to the IRS.

How to get a faster tax refund 

If you’re eager for your refund, the best way to speed up the process is by filing electronically and picking direct deposit for your payment, former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said during a press call in early January.  
“Nine out of 10 taxpayers will see their refund within 21 days, and often sooner,” he said.
You can check the refund status of your current-year, electronic filing with the IRS 24 hours after submitting your return.

Paper refund checks are 16 times more likely to have an issue, such as theft or misdirection, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
However, it’s also important to enter banking details correctly when selecting direct deposit for payment, experts say. You should always double-check routing and account numbers.
During fiscal year 2023, more than 90% of individual taxpayers filed electronically, the IRS reported.  

You need a ‘complete and accurate’ return

While many taxpayers are itching to file early, it’s important to wait until you have all the necessary tax forms, according to Elizabeth Young, director of tax practice and ethics for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
You want a “complete and accurate tax return,” she said. Otherwise, the IRS could flag your filing for mistakes, which causes delays.
While many tax forms arrive in January, others won’t be ready until mid-February to March or later.
Some common tax return errors include missing or inaccurate Social Security numbers, misspelled names, entering information wrong, and math mistakes, according to the IRS. More

Millions of Social Security beneficiaries have received their first benefit checks for 2025.
That includes a more modest 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment, the lowest increase since 2021.
Still, retirees face a higher cost of living.

Sporrer/Rupp | Image Source | Getty Images

Millions of Social Security beneficiaries have now received their first benefit checks for 2025.
The new 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment — which adds $50 per month to retirement benefits on average — marks the lowest increase since 2021, when inflation spiked shortly thereafter.

With prices still high, many beneficiaries are likely feeling the increase “wasn’t quite enough,” though “every little bit helps,” said Jenn Jones, vice president of financial security at AARP, an interest group representing Americans ages 50 and over.
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“When you’re living on a fixed income, when even what some might think are small or mild increases to everyday expenses happen, they can create a real financial burden for older Americans,” Jones said.
One measure, the Elder Economic Security Standard Index — also known simply as the Elder Index — developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, evaluates just how much it costs older adults to pay for their basic needs and age in place.

Social Security alone doesn’t cover adequate lifestyle

Based on a national average, a single person would need $2,099 per month if they are a homeowner with no mortgage, to cover housing, food, transportation, health care and other miscellaneous expenses, according to 2024 Elder Index data.

That goes up to $2,566 per month necessary for single renters, and $3,249 per month for single homeowners with a mortgage.
An older couple who own a home without a mortgage would need $3,162 per month, according to the index. That increases to $3,629 per month for a couple who rents, and $4,312 per month for a couple who has a mortgage on their home.

Those amounts exceed the average Social Security retirement benefits Americans stand to receive. In 2025, individual retired workers receive an average $1,976 per month, while couples who both qualify for benefits have an average $3,089 per month.
To be sure, those Elder Index thresholds are based on national averages, and in some areas of the country retirees may be able to stretch their incomes further than others. Yet the data typically shows it’s difficult to live just on Social Security benefits.
“What we find with the Elder Index is that there isn’t a single county in the country where the average Social Security benefit covers an adequate lifestyle,” said Jan Mutchler, professor of gerontology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, of comparisons that were run prior to the 2024 data.

‘Prices might be rising faster’

As a record number of baby boomers turn 65, research from the Alliance for Lifetime Income has found 52.5% of that cohort will rely primarily on Social Security for income in retirement since they have assets of $250,000 or less.
The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment aims to track inflation. Yet because those adjustments are made annually, they come with a lag, according to Laura Quinby, associate director of employee benefits and labor markets at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
As inflation spiked, reaching a peak in 2022, Social Security’s COLAs also reached four-decade highs. In 2022, Social Security beneficiaries saw a 5.9% boost to benefits, which was followed by a higher 8.7% increase in 2023. That subsided to a 3.2% increase in 2024, followed by a more modest 2.5% bump for 2025.
The Social Security COLAs largely made up for the inflation surge that happened in 2022, Quinby said. However, inflation is now ticking up again, she said. The consumer price index rose 0.4% in December, slightly above what had been estimated for the month, and was up 2.9% for the year.
“We’re in another period where prices might be rising faster than the Social Security COLA,” Quinby said.

How much retirees are affected by inflation varies based on three factors — how much their assets keep up with rising prices, the amount of debt they have at fixed interest rates and whether they change their savings, investment or work behaviors, the Center for Retirement Research has found.
Mary Johnson, a 73-year-old independent Social Security and Medicare analyst, said her Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for 2025 has mostly been consumed by rising costs. While Social Security represents about 40% of her income, much of her other retirement assets are invested in stocks, which saw record growth last year.
Still, Johnson said she’s grappling with increases to her homeowner’s insurance, home heating and cooling bills, food costs, and drug plan premiums. One bright spot is that she did see her auto insurance decline last year.

‘Biggest game changer this year’

A notable change retirees have to look forward to in 2025 is a new $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket Medicare Part D prescription drug costs, that was enacted with the Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden.
“That’s the biggest game changer this year for older Americans,” said AARP’s Jones.
More than 95% of Medicare Part D beneficiaries will benefit from that new out-of-pocket cap, AARP’s research has found.
Before the change, the amount of money Medicare Part D beneficiaries spent on their medications was unlimited, with potentially thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs, according to Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at KFF, a provider of health policy research.

The change provides real financial relief and peace of mind, she said.
“If they’re not taking expensive medications now, but they do in the future, they won’t have to potentially go bankrupt or just simply not fill their prescriptions because they cannot afford the out-of-pocket cost,” Cubanski said.
To be sure, Medicare beneficiaries still face other rising costs, particularly with regard to monthly Part B and Part D premiums. Because those payments can be deducted directly from Social Security checks, they may affect just how much of a COLA increase beneficiaries see.
In 2025, the standard monthly Part B premium is $185 per month, while the average standard Part D premium is $46.50. Notably, higher-income beneficiaries pay more expensive rates, though that may not be as noticeable in their household budgets, Cubanski said.
“For others, the fact that they’re paying premiums for Medicare coverage certainly takes away from the amount of money that they have for other essentials,” Cubanski said. More