Politics & Power Quote by Maria Bartiromo

Bartiromo is doing more than pumping up the retail crowd; she is quietly renegotiating who gets to claim legitimacy in market narratives. By leading with “far more powerful than anyone gives them credit for,” she casts individual investors as an underestimated bloc - not just participants, but a constituency. The statistic that follows (85 million) is rhetorical scaffolding: it converts what Wall Street likes to dismiss as scattered “dumb money” into something legible to power, like a voting population. In a media ecosystem that runs on scale, numbers are authority.

The intent is also defensive. “Collectively” does a lot of work, smoothing over the obvious truth that any single investor is tiny, exposed, and late to information. The subtext: if markets are moving, don’t reflexively blame shadowy institutions alone. A mass public now has enough coordinated gravity - through apps, ETFs, social platforms, and meme-stock dynamics - to create volatility, headlines, and political anxiety.

Context matters here: post-2008 mistrust of finance, the zero-commission revolution, pandemic-era stimulus and at-home trading, and the GameStop/AMC moment that made “retail” a cultural identity. Bartiromo, as a business journalist, is speaking to elites and newcomers at once. She validates ordinary investors’ agency while subtly warning that a democratized market isn’t automatically a calmer or fairer one. Power, in her framing, isn’t wisdom; it’s impact.