Top Healthcare Stocks & ETFs To Watch

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart. Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high. And the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

0:35That's right. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike De La Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you.

1:14Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring, and sure, they definitely can be. But understanding a professional's routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little, day after day. It's like banking with PNC Bank. It might seem boring to save, plan, and make calculated decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is what helps you live a more happily fulfilled life. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865.

1:53Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association, member FDIC. Earners, what's up? You ever walk into a small business and everything just works? Like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square. We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just feels seamless, whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop-up market, or even one of our merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system.

2:36If you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down one of the best tools out there to help you start, run, and grow. It's not just about payments. It's about giving you time back so you can focus on what matters most. Ready to see how Square can transform your business? Visit square.com backslash go backslash EYL to learn more. That's square.com backslash go backslash EYL. Don't wait. Don't hesitate. Let Square handle the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward. So if you want to create a two tech, two index version. Let's get into this.

3:16centered around healthcare. Let's get into this. What two would you recommend for this combination? I think this is a great question, but one thing I do want to stress is I want you guys to stay focused on what you have in the portfolio at the moment because I think too many people, once again, take their eyes off the main thing. I would do VO, VTI, Eli Lilly, and strike. We've talked about before. I know it's not, and this is where men, not trying to belabor a point on brother shatner but i think too often times as men we look for the new exciting thing opposed to the thing that's working there's a reason we don't have trading thirst market mondays is working right too many people like try and create too much diversity in their portfolio and you end up selling the thing that's great or something that's good where if you just kept pouring money into the thing that's working you'll be a-okay so uh great question if you have currently been investing in the future to index some change but if i was focusing on a healthcare version i would be striker and normally and hold forever striker literally and hold interesting i i chose specific etfs in healthcare and so i went with Vanguard as well.

4:41VHT and spider, you know, we always talk about XLK and we talk about XLY. Their one is XLV. And I told people in our class, especially if you're not familiar with sectors, right? ETFs and indexes are probably the best way. But inside of those ETFs, you should go look at the holdings and go look at the largest allocations inside those ETFs. and for XLV, you're going to, I mean, for VHD as well, Lily is usually number one, right? And then number two is UnitedHealth. And so we've watched UnitedHealth take a back, obviously with healthcare plans, it's skyrocketing and really no rhyme or reason for it.

5:20So I said, I knew you would probably go traditional with Striker. I know that's one of your favorite companies. And I think we were both, you know, Lily. And so I threw two wild cards in there, in terms of the healthcare space. And one, we're probably not going to think healthcare, but. Madonna? No. CVS is a company that I've spoken about plenty of times and they kind of have this like soul survivor syndrome that is interesting. When we think about growing up in the past, maybe five to 10 years, there was a Rite Aid. That's it. It used to be a Walgreens in your neighborhood. Good luck if you can find it.

5:57And CVS is still here. 9 ,000 locations and they have vertical integration, which is very unique in the sense that they have insurance. They bought Aetna, so they have the insurance. Right. They have prescription delivery and they have direct patient care. Yeah. You have all those things in one, whereas UnitedHealthcare doesn't quite have it. They're the largest provider of health insurance. They don't have all three verticals. So when you think about it in that sense, I'm like, all right, people still look to find out each one of those verticals from different places. Then my wild card came in and I said, well, who can disrupt them from the retail space and who can also disrupt them from the primary care space?

6:41And then I came to this company called Amazon. And I thought, damn, 9000 locations is great until you can have same day delivery straight to your house. Now you got a billion locations, right? Because everybody, if you're going to get it delivered, you have to have an address. I'm like, all right, well, that could kick in the door for them from a retail standpoint. But as soon as they have AI agents, and Argentic is a big thing for Amazon. And we saw this kind of during COVID when you couldn't go to the doctor, but you had that telehealth situation where you call and you can get the symptoms and the doctor would call you.

7:18as we get further along in this AI space, especially with the Gentic, and we saw industries that will be disrupted, law for sure, healthcare is going to be another one. If Amazon has the Gentic AI in the healthcare field with the direct-to-consumer retail space, I think they become the number two in the healthcare ETF funds going forward. Okay. I got a question for you. This is my first pushback I've had for you ever. How do you pick CVS and Amazon in the second class? No, no, no. CVS is a wild card. Amazon is what I really do. Got you. Got you. I'm okay with that. Got you. You know why it's a wild card?

7:59It's because it's one of these sleeper companies that is in your neighborhood. You probably frequent there, but you're not thinking of it as a company that you can invest in. But you look at it year-to-date, it's up 46%. Even in the midst of all these tariffs, year-to-date, it's up 46%. has it come down from its highs of 111, I think maybe 10 years ago, and it hit another peak of 106. It looks like it's on that upward momentum again. We'll see. But it's just an interesting company when you think of vertical integration inside of healthcare that makes it very unique. Yeah. But there goes my Amazon again.

8:36I know y 'all are going to say I'm biased. But here's the part about the bias and being upset about a pit. there are only certain companies that are generational companies. Apple was that for a long time. NVIDIA is having their moment. Microsoft has found a way to put themselves back in the conversation. Tesla had a chance. Amazon is one of those ones. Every generation, you may get maybe 10 companies or 12 companies that are going to have the 20 or 30 year run. and they keep finding what let's be very honest, Amazon has found ways to innovate better than Apple. It's just not saying because they don't have a Tim Cook at the moment.

9:17But over the last three or four years, they've done a better job. Sure. And all those companies are still relying on it. And when we talk about AWS, we could say like, yes, Google is on its way. And yes, Microsoft is in terms of cloud. But they're still a leader. Yeah. They're still a leader. And they have the capex to actually spend to innovate. So I know that their profit margins aren't as wide as a company like NVIDIA. There's a reason for that. They're continuously building and they're not just doing it in one industry, which makes them so unique and is why they become so dominant. And so they enter this from an AI standpoint with the lead of having cloud, having infrastructure, having their own GPUs.

9:56They're going to be doing that for a reason. We had this conversation in Virginia. We were talking to a gentleman, 73 years old. He was talking about he owns land in Richmond. and he was like, I used to sell lumber for like 10 to 15 years, but it's not that fruitful in the sense where you make maybe six figures, but it takes time to grow the trees. He was like, there's a new thing that we're going to be doing soon. I'm like, what is it? He was like, these companies keep coming in, and they want to build data centers on my land. And I was like, tell me more. Tell me more. And as we started speaking and he started sharing his knowledge, she was like yo it's everywhere it's everywhere and you can hear it i mean you can hear the rhetoric saying people are going to slow down spending and some of that will be true but the the mega caps they're in a race to beat each other for sure please know that please know that well if you hear microsoft saying they did something just know that and was not they're not looking like race they're thinking like no we need to do more an illegal alien from guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts, an MS-13 gang member from El Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man, a Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan.

11:16These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Kristi Noem, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded. and over 100 ,000 illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, you're next. You will be fined nearly$1 ,000 a day, imprisoned and deported. You will never return. But if you register using our CBP Home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally. Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws, border, and families will be protected.

11:59Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Hey, it's Joel. And Matt from HowToMoney, if your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Each week, we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to HowToMoney on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

12:32What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

13:13This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward. Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

13:45This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.