Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
5 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 1-23-25
Thu, 23 Jan 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker discusses five key stories shaping the private equity and business landscape.
Chapter 1: What are the key market cap stocks being discussed?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're going to talk today about five different stories that we're watching currently in the sort of private equity world, the business world. And thank you for listening. We try always to make sure you're learning and that we're learning it and a lot more.
Chapter 2: What investment possibilities are being considered?
So the first thing is the big market cap stocks, NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft have already done a reshuffling this year. NVIDIA is back to the number one spot. It's up 7% year to date. Apple's down 11%, falling to number two. And Microsoft is rising again. It's up 5%, but still a little bit behind Apple in the ultimate sort of market cap race. So it's NVIDIA 1, Apple 2, Microsoft 3.
Chapter 3: How has NVIDIA performed this year?
Second is an investment possibility. We're constantly looking this year at NVIDIA, Apple, and American Express. And always this question of whether we've missed the boat on this or it's too late. So we've already talked about Apple down 11% this year, NVIDIA up 7% this year. We're not direct investors in them. We're largely index investors.
Chapter 4: What is the performance outlook for American Express?
AmeriExpress, which is another one of the stocks that we watch for this purpose, is up 8% year-to-date. And, of course, as we look at this, of course, as we start the year, we wish we had invested in NVIDIA and Amex, not Apple yet, but I'm not sure that that's good long-term thinking. We'll see how it goes. Third.
Yesterday, we did a podcast on sort of the different index investing versus individual stocks. And just to keep this as simple as possible, we did it on an individual journey basis, meaning my own individual journey. We went through six of the positions. We have an individual stocks versus the index funds. What we essentially found was no great argument to not stick to the core of index investing.
The six individual stocks, some were above the indexed. Some were losing money. Some were right about the index. But at the end of the day, very hard, unless you're highly diversified, to be a better stock picker than an index investor. And for 99% of us, particularly myself, I'm far better off just largely being an index investor, the S&P indexes, versus trying to pick individual stocks.
But again, to each one's own. Fourth, we had a near record month of advertised revenue in the Becker Pivot Equity and Business podcast last month. We're hoping for a record revenue month in January. We specialize here in business-to-business webinars. Let us help you get in front of your audience.
Finally, fifth, an absolute great piece in Yahoo Finance on why all the tech CEOs are showing a lot of people with display of affection toward President Trump. Basically, the concept is it's all about defense. And Julie Hyman does a remarkable job of describing this, what's going on in Silicon Valley and this, and why people are so prone to trying to stay close to President Trump.
And they really talk about that it's largely defense versus offense. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Again, you can always reach Scott Becker at 773-766-5322. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you.
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