In this episode, Scott Becker shares five key updates, including a market upswing, Microsoft’s climb past Apple in market cap, Apollo’s mixed earnings, and more.
Chapter 1: What are the current market trends as of May 2nd, 2025?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. These are five of the stories that we're following today. It's Friday, May 2nd, and thank you for listening. First, the markets point way up today so far. They're up almost 1.5% at the S&P, a little bit more at the NASDAQ. Ultimately now, through the end of April, the start of May, the S&P 500 is now down around 4% or so.
Chapter 2: How did Microsoft’s market cap change recently?
After today, maybe a little less than that. That's not very bad after the year started so horribly, so that's good news. Second, Microsoft jumped 7.6% yesterday and now has a market cap that's up to $3.16 trillion. Apple was down about 3% pre-market, but China and the U.S. are starting tariff talks. Maybe that'll help Apple. Apple's down about 14% year-to-date.
Chapter 3: Is Microsoft poised to overtake Apple in market capitalization?
It opened the day with a market of $3.2 trillion. I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of the day, Microsoft, again, takes a top spot for the highest market cap company from Apple. There's been a lot of trading around the last year where NVIDIA at one point was way up there at number one.
Third, Apollo Global Management, the massive private equity fund, had solid earnings, but it remains down about 16% year to date. So far, it's doing well essentially on fees, but not so well on true deals and exits, which is applicable to the market as a whole. Fourth, Astera Labs is the single biggest loser in our own portfolio this year. It's down 47% year to date.
So whenever I think I'm a genius, I just remember my investment in Astero Labs, which is down 47% year-to-date. Fifth, just very quickly, the big EV stocks, Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian. Tesla remains down 30% year-to-date. There are plenty of people that are bullish on Tesla in the long run, others that are bearish but fascinating.
Lucid Motors is down 16% year to date and Rivian's up 3% year to date. We'll see how that finishes out. Again, those are five of the quick stories we're following today. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.