Suze Orman’s Hottest Take on Investing — Is She Right?

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American author, financial advisor and businesswoman Suze Orman has had plenty to say about investing over the years. For example, Orman has discussed on her website at length the benefits of saving for retirement using a Roth Individual Retirement Account (IRA) and investing that money in exchange-traded funds (ETFs). About a year ago, she also shared her belief on CNN that bitcoin will become more valuable than gold.

But recently, she put out a YouTube short in which she gave one of her hottest takes of the year: The future of investing is in AI stocks. More specifically, she said that those who want “true diversification” should invest in ETFs by the symbol SMH and the QQQs.

So what exactly does this mean and does her advice have merit? Here’s what the experts think.

What are these ETFs?

Orman advised purchasing two different exchange-traded funds, but what are they and why?

The first one is NASDAQ:SMH, which is the symbol for the VanEck Semiconductor ETFs. Established in 1955, this ETF strives to mirror the performance of the MVIS U.S. Listed Semiconductor 25 Index (MVSMHTR). For context, the MVSMHTR is designed to track the performance of semiconductor production and equipment companies.

The SMH is considered highly liquid with the companies involved being industry leaders. It includes both domestic and U.S.-listed foreign businesses for a more worldwide scope. Per Yahoo Finance, over the past 12 months (ending at close on Aug. 25, 2025), the SMH has gone up 293.92 USD. Its all-time performance has risen by over 613% (also as of Aug. 25, 2025).

As for the other option, Orman suggested investing in Invesco QQQ, established in 1999 by Invesco PowerShares. This ETF tracks the performance of NASDAQ-100 companies, including Microsoft, Google and Apple. Over the past decade, its cumulative performance is up 445.15%.

“Those two ETFs, if you were to invest, especially if you were to dollar-cost average into them, in the long run, I think they will make you far more money than anything else that you could be invested in,” Orman said.

Is Orman Right?

In her video, Orman acknowledged that she could be “100% wrong” or “100% right.” So as with any investing advice, it’s important to take Orman’s with a grain of salt.

“Suze generally does the best she can and I have no doubt her advice here is well-intentioned,” said Sloane Ortel, founder and chief investment officer at Ethical Capital. “There’s a strong factual basis to her contention that a small number of stocks is likely to produce the majority of long-term returns.”

To illustrate, more than half of stocks had negative cumulative returns from 1925 to 2023, according to a S&P Global Market Intelligence Report. On the surface, this supports the idea of focusing on currently compelling opportunities. But dig a little deeper and you’ll see that the stocks with the highest cumulative returns primarily achieved this through consistent, modest annual returns over time (13.47% on average).

So what does this mean exactly?

“It’s likely wiser to seek companies with well-established growth trajectories. In other words: avoid taking speculative positions based on vibes, which is what most individuals would be doing by taking advice from a nice lady on TV,” Ortel said.

Now, both the SMH and QQQ have been around for a while — since 1955 and 1999, respectively. So they could be worth considering from that angle as well.

But that doesn’t mean these two ETFs will automatically net you massive returns.

“Suze Orman is a great entertainer. Like many other financial personalities they’re able to make a lot of statements about different sectors or securities over the course of a period of time so there’s always something to point back to and say, ‘See, I was right.'” said Matthew Hale, certified financial planner (CFP) and partner at Make the Memory Financial Planning.

“It’s easy to point to your wins when you ignore your losses. I would give someone who is seeking to follow the advice of Ms. Orman that unfortunately when it comes to investing what appears to be the obvious answer almost never is,” Hale added.

Your investments could still include AI stocks or the ETFs Orman proposed. But rather than simply following such advice, focus on creating a well-diversified portfolio that still aligns with your financial goals while minimizing the risk involved.

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