Transcription
Now we got to talk Tesla, we got to talk Palantir, we got to talk SoFi, my THX mug here, okay? And let's talk about these stocks. These are obviously all big positions for me in the public account. Tesla is a pretty big position for me, and we're now up 2,929. Palantir is a pretty big position, up 963, and SoFi's a pretty big position, up 10% in regards to that.
Okay, so let's tackle Tesla first, and then we'll get to Palantir, and then we'll get to SoFi.
Okay, here's the deal with Tesla. I got to be honest with you guys, there was a lot of, I think, kind of negative publicity that came out toward the end of the year and in the beginning of this year so far. Some of it's fair, some of it's not fair. It depends, as many things do, with Tesla, right? But this is troubling, and I got to be honest with you guys because we're seeing this lead by BYD.
Now, keep in mind this does include, just to be clear, this does include electric and plug-in hybrid sales. But at the end of the day, I don't like the trend I'm seeing here. BYD continues to run further and further ahead of Tesla, right? This is unit sales we're looking at, and, you know, Tesla obviously has been stagnating for many, many, many quarters now. It's not like this is a new stagnation; we've really been kind of stagnating for like two years as far as quarterly sales go, which is not ideal.
But meanwhile, BYD continues to just put up numbers, right? And it's fascinating. You go back a few years ago, and Tesla had a massive lead over BYD, and BYD just continues to put it up, including this latest quarter. I mean, you know, explosive to the upside—no pun intended from the next article we're going to get into here—but I don't like that. I don't think that's a good look for Tesla. It does worry me as a Tesla investor.
You know, we've got to get things back together in 2025, man, because if we don't do it this year, when are we going to do it? We got to get—we got to do better. We got to do better.
Okay, now also this brought some other, I think, kind of negative to Tesla, and I see this becoming more of a negative publicity situation here. Okay, so obviously I'm sure you guys saw the situation that happened with the Cybertruck and the guy, you know, and that whole situation, right?
So, but what happened after that was pretty fascinating, right? Because now people are talking about, like, "Oh, your car is spying on you." And the reason being is, you know, Elon Musk basically in Tesla, they released all this information about where the car had gone and did this and did that and did this and did that, right?
And you see things like this. It says a quote: "I have to thank Elon Musk," specifically said Las Vegas Metro Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill to reporters. "He gave us quite a bit of additional information."
Now, for some people that don't really care that much about privacy, they'll have no issue with this, okay? They'll be like, "Sweet, you know, good, give all the information about that." But for the people that don't trust the government, they're going to have a lot of problems with this, okay?
And with these sorts of cars spying more and more, it's another one of those things that if you are of the realm of the thought process of, like, "I—you know," because you got to understand the way driving has always been seen in the United States of America. It's seen as freedom, right? And one of the best feelings, you know, as a kid is when you get that driver's license, right? And that sense of freedom of, like, "I can drive anywhere, and this is awesome," right?
When you're talking about your cars having all your data, they know exactly where you're going, and then they could release that data to the government, right? Not everybody, like I said, some people don't care about that, like, "Whatever, release my data to the government, you know, show whatever." Some people don't like that, okay?
They like more the old-school feeling of cars. You could just—oh, by the way, did I show you that? Holy smokes! Some people like the old-school way of just being able to drive and not having everybody keep track of you, right? Because you kind of go down a slippery slope, and you're saying, "Okay, you know, some people could look at this and say, 'Well, it's a bad guy; they shared information like this; that's good,' right?"
But then you could take it a step further. You say, "Okay, why not put cameras on all the roads, and then every time you ever run a red light, you're going to get a ticket for that? Every time you speed over five miles an hour over the speed limit, you're going to get a ticket for that," right?
Because you start going down the slippery slope, and the next thing you know, you're in China, okay? So that's why it's important, and I need to explain that to kind of both sides because sometimes people that don't care about privacy and the government being in people's stuff, like, they don't quite get it.
And so I want to explain, you know, from the other frame of thought because you start going down more and more of a slippery slope where next thing you know, you know, there's this situation. So some people may not have a problem with this, like, "Okay, somebody runs a red light," or, you know, something like that. They're turning, and the light's already red; they should get a ticket for that. Or they go seven miles an hour over the speed limit; they should get a ticket for that.
Some people feel like that; other people are like, "What? This is crazy! Like, you serious? I'm going to get a $300 ticket because I went eight miles an hour over the speed limit? Like, what? What?"
So you go down a slippery slope. So this is going to be a bigger subject that's going to get talked about a lot, and it could bring, I think, some negative publicity to Tesla because this is going to be bigger than Tesla.
At the end of the day, all these new school-type vehicles are going to start tracking every place you go, all your data, right? It's all going to start being collected, and then people are going to have questions about, does that data end up getting fed to the government, right?
So just a little food for thought in regards to that.
Now, a bigger issue for Tesla, though, is obviously the valuation. I mean, you know, the P/E ratios are ridiculous right now. We know that the forward P, the two-year forward P, the trailing 12-month P, it doesn't matter which way you look at it; it's all sky-high, right?
And the main issue is with these high P/Es is the revenue growth has been awful, right? Trailing 12-month revenue growth of 1%.
Now, the good—so that's all the negative in regards to Tesla. But the good news for Tesla is this is what's expected to happen, right? This is looking at THX here. The revenue expected trends for Tesla, based upon analyst expectations, is we're supposed to kind of trough revenue, and things are supposed to get better and better throughout 2025 and 2026.
And if that happens, you know, I think Tesla is still a hard stock to bet against. I'm not—I have bet successfully against Tesla stock in the past as a Tesla long, right? And made some pretty good money there.
And there are certain opportunities that I sometimes see in regards to Tesla that it makes sense, but you usually need it to be in a time period where it's not just high valuation. You need a time period specifically where, like, revenue is downtrending or the business is downtrending.
The issue with betting against Tesla right now is all you really have is, like, some negative stuff around it, but there's always negative stuff around Tesla, right? And you have valuation, but if the business trends up, if deliveries trend up in 2025, right? And there's more confidence they'll continue to trend up in 2026.
If you see revenues getting back to double-digit growth in 2025, if you see earnings per share growth even faster than that, it gets to be really tough to bet against Tesla stock, right?
Doesn't mean you have to bet on Tesla stock and go long; it just becomes a more and more difficult bet against Tesla stock.
Now, if you guys don't know, I own two Teslas, right? I own a Model S Plaid, I own a Model X, and my first Tesla ever was back in, like, 2019, I think it was—a Model 3. Still love that Model 3 Performance Edition, by the way; it was a great car.
I own these two cars, and I've tested the full self-driving on them many times, right? And seen, like, the improvements over time, and they have made phenomenal strides, right?
With that being said, I was in San Francisco for New Year's, right? And I took probably at least five Waymo rides, if not ten Waymo rides, while in San Francisco.
Now, what I can tell you as somebody that experienced that several times and as somebody that's experienced Tesla full self-driving whenever I want, right? I can tell you I felt more comfortable in the Waymo. I did. I felt like the Waymo did a better job of driving around San Francisco.
Now, some other place, I don't know; I can't comment on that, right? I've only tested Waymo in San Francisco, but I can tell you if I had taken my Tesla to drive me around San Francisco or the Waymo, I felt safer in the Waymo, no doubt about it. I felt the Waymo just did a better job overall, right?
So something to kind of keep in mind there, right?
Now, in regards to Tesla, I got to be honest; I really don't like the setup in the stock for the next three to four years. And so, not to say there can't be some money made there, but I just don't love the setup, right?
And this is why I've taken my, you know, insane profits. I sold the far, far, far majority of my Tesla shares. I only hold 1,000 shares in the public account now, and the reason being is I don't love the setup for the next few years.
You know, we're going to get, hopefully, back to nice growth here, but I'm worried about how much market share we're really losing. And if you look at what's going on in China, it's not good. If you look at the market share trends, right, we're losing lots of market share; that's just facts, right?
And we don't have the next new model in the market, and I don't know when that model hits that's really going to get us back to much bigger market share, right?
Additionally, there's been a lot of faith put in full self-driving and Robo-taxi, right? Which is a big opportunity, but I have to warn people. The issue where we run into here is I was looking at, like, pricing a Waymo versus, you know, which Waymo is owned by Google, like one of the most profitable companies in the world.
So if there's somebody that could really afford to cut prices significantly and be willing to lose a fortune, it's certainly Google, right? And from my understanding, they've always lost a fortune on Waymo.
But when we looked at pricing—and I'm going to do a very extensive deep dive in my private stock group on the subject, actually tomorrow. I release a whole video because I screenshot it—Waymo versus Uber, all these different rides throughout our trip, right?
But what I noticed was, if I put a, like, an umbrella on it, Waymo was competitively priced with Uber, but there were a lot of times where if you had Uber, Uber beat the price. And that's kind of an issue because I feel like Google has so much money to invest, like they're willing to take losses.
So what I believe is going to happen here is I believe that the profitability of the ride-sharing platform will not be there in its first few years. I believe it's going to take several years of scaling that business up to really get it to start pouring in profits and really start helping Tesla margins.
I believe it's actually, in its first year or two, I believe there's actually a decent probability it hurts Tesla's margins. And believe it or not, it hurts the profitability in its first couple of years. Long-term, I think it could be great; short-term, I don't think so.
And so there's a lot of people into these conclusions that it's just going to be like overnight, and just Tesla's going to be making so much money, and it's going to be a gold mine. I'm like, "Slow your roll a little bit here."
And so that's why I don't really love the setup. With that being said, I'm going to still hold my thousand Tesla shares, right? And I hope I'm wrong, and I hope Tesla has a Robo-taxi fleet come out, and I hope it's just a huge success overnight, and I hope it's just, you know, the margins go flying, and the profitability goes flying, and all those sorts of things.
But I'm not feeling super confident about that, I can tell you that much.
Okay, Palantir. So, Palantir, you know, this is a difficult one. I think this is much more difficult than Tesla. And the reason being is we're at a weird point with Palantir where I think it's still hard to tell if Palantir is going to make a run to $100 to $200 a share in the next 12 to 24 months.
And you saw it up, you know, 6% plus on Friday, up $155,000 there, right? But here's the deal with Palantir, right? I think their pro—I think analyst estimates are likely pretty, pretty low for the earnings per share.
So I think Palantir is probably going to come in and crush earnings per share next year. So that's going to be interesting to see how the market reacts to that.
Additionally, we've seen the revenue continuing to increase, increase, increase in terms of the percentage growth, right? We don't know, is that going to start, you know, stall out now, and they're going to kind of stall out around 30%, 33%, something like that?
But what if hypothetically they go all the way to 40% plus, and then they sustain 40% plus revenue growth, right? Shoot, like Palantir's probably going even higher if that's to happen, right?
If they only get to 30% and stagnate there, then I think we're probably staying here for a while. And when I say a while, I'm talking the next couple of years.
But if we also go up to that 40% number or go to like a 50% number, I'll tell you we got more to climb here.
Now, additionally, you're going to likely see big expansion in that net margin for Palantir for the next three to four years here, okay?
Now, with that being said, I think it makes sense to take some chips off the table if you've made—if you're up huge on Palantir, right? And that's what I've done. I took over 2,000 shares off the table.
So basically, the amount I took off so far exceeds what I ever put into Palantir stock; it's not even funny, right? And so now I'm in a position where I'm happy, like, whatever happens with Palantir.
Like, let's say the growth just goes 30%, and then that's it, right? Cool, like that's fine. Palantir stock goes back down to $40 to $50 a share, like, "Oh, you know, sweet, took a lot of profits in this one; that's cool."
And I don't mind holding my shares I currently have. Additionally, if there's a situation and we do get that major, you know, 40%, 50% growth, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, like things are even way better than I both myself expected," I'm fine with that as well.
I hold 3,000 plus shares in the public account, so I'll prosper in that sort of environment, right? And so I feel like now I'm happy with whatever happens with Palantir from here.
If we go up to 40%, 50% revenue growth, or if we just stay at 30%, whatever the dynamic is, I'm happy. I can't complain; like, it's all good for me; it's all gravy.
I would feel very differently if I hadn't taken any profits on Palantir here, and then let's say they only hit 30% growth, and that's it, and then the stock goes back down to $40 to $50. I'd be kicking myself, right?
And then let's say we stagnate at $50-ish a share for several years; I'd be kicking myself. But now I took those profits; I feel good, man. I feel good. Whatever happens with Palantir, we go to 150, I feel good. We can go down to 50 bucks; I feel good. Like, whatever happens, happens there.
So this is an interesting one, right? Up 109% on this one; that was up another 5% on Friday there, right?
Now, it was a weird opening to 2025 for SoFi because the very first trading day of the year, the stock plummeted.
Now, the main reason I believe the stock plummeted on that day—some people said, "Oh, it's because of downgrade, this and that." I believe the real reason that stock plummeted on that particular day—and let me get this out of the way; my battery's a little low—there.
I believe the real reason is retail was looking to take profits. Like, no one wanted to take profits on SoFi at the very end of the year, right? Because you have to worry about paying taxes. So people were kind of like, "I'll wait till the first day of January; I'll take my profits then." And that's exactly what happened.
Like, that first day, the stock just plummeted, right? And retail took profits. And so, like, I get it; like, that was what it was, right? And since then, the stock's obviously come back, come back, and come back.
Now, with that being said, I think SoFi could set up for like a triple-digit year in 2025. Am I betting on this? No, in terms of like short-term calls or something like that, no, because it's not worth it. It's not worth it; it might not happen, right?
But I wouldn't be surprised if SoFi ended up being a triple-digit gainer, kind of like Palantir was this past year, right?
Now, do I expect SoFi to have that sort of year, like a 300% type gain? No, no, no. But could I see SoFi having a great year? Yeah, I mean, if you look at SoFi's setup, the real only acceleration that happened in SoFi stock was at the very end of the year, right?
And so I think more and more people are starting to understand SoFi, starting to understand the growth rates, what this company has going forward, how they're really just going to, you know—if you look at SoFi, it looks like a company that's just going to continue to gobble up market share in the banking space for years and years and years to go in the future.
And so you have to start thinking about SoFi as long as this company never gets over-leveraged, Anthony Noto gets them through future recessions and things like that. You have to start thinking about SoFi in terms of becoming a banking giant.
Now, they're more than a bank; they also have their tech side, their fintech side of their business as well, right? But I think that's how people really got to start thinking about this one, kind of like they used to think about Tesla.
You know, they would think about Tesla as like, "This is going to be a massive automaker someday." And I'm talking about when Tesla was a niche automaker. And now you look at Tesla today, and you're like, "Dang, they're a pretty big automaker," right?
But, you know, and obviously, if you think Tesla's going where it's going over the next 5, 10 years, you're like, "They're going to become an auto giant; they'll start selling 5 million cars a year, 10 million cars a year, or something like that," right?
People got to start thinking that way in regards to SoFi. Like, the more time takes on here, the more members they attract, the more scale they get, the more and more people I think are going to realize, like, "Oh my gosh, like SoFi is going to become a banking giant."
And you start to begin to think a little bit differently because then you're not thinking about SoFi as a $10 to $20 billion type market cap. You start thinking about SoFi as like, you know, a potential hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap over time, right?
And if they emerge more profitable than the old-school banking models emerged, right, then we could be talking about a company that maybe is a trillion-dollar market cap long-term, right? Super long-term, like if we're thinking like 20 years out or something like that, right?
So those are just kind of things to consider there. But, yeah, I think SoFi sets up pretty good for this upcoming year.
And with that being said, I like to keep my risk a little smaller in regards to SoFi. That's not—I'm willing to, you know, risk the bank. I do own SoFi in other portfolios as well, right?
But, you know, I've always kind of wanted to get to 5,000 shares in SoFi, and, you know, maybe I get there in the public account. But once again, I do own SoFi shares in other portfolios as well, right?
Now, I cover SoFi quite a bit on this channel, which, by the way, I haven't released a video in almost two weeks on that channel. I'm going to get it back up and rolling this week, baby! The reaction channel, Jeremy LEF Makes Money, I cover a lot of SoFi on that channel.
So if you care a lot about SoFi stock, definitely follow me on the reaction channel; you'll definitely enjoy that.
Okay, now 2025, we're going to have a lot, lot of drama this year, right? There's going to be a lot of drama, a lot of upside drama and downside drama.
There's going to be some moments in this market this year where, you know, it's just full risk on. It's just, you know, everybody's thinking about, you know, they're going to be the next trillionaire and billionaire and all that stuff, right?
We're going to have some tough moments this year as well. We're going to have some very volatile moments. We're going to have some moments where people question things very, very quickly.
And so in a year like this, don't get caught up in the short term about, you know, "I want to be a billionaire tomorrow." Don't get caught up in the short term of like, "Oh my gosh, everything's going to zero." Don't get caught up in all that crap.
Focus on the long term. Make sure you're adding companies that you are going to be happy with way past 2025. The stocks I'm going to be buying in 2025 are not really for 2025; they're stocks that are for 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, right?
No different than the stocks I was buying in 2024 are really for 2026, 2027, 2028, right? You got to be thinking years out in regards to so focused long-term.
Don't get caught up in all the short-term crap because you're going to have a lot of drama this year, right? You're going to have a lot of drama. We have a change, obviously, in the White House; it's going to be a lot, okay?
And just don't get caught up in all that short-term crap. Just focus on the long term. Let the short term be what the short term's going to be. You get any major corrections this year or crashes this year, take advantage of those, right?
The future you will thank you five years from now. Don't get caught up; don't get into too much FOMO in the market in those periods when, you know, it just seems like week after week after week, things are just going up and up and up.
Just focus long-term, be even-keeled, be steady in this market. And, you know, I hopefully am a pretty good guide for that, you know, year after year, you know, for you guys to kind of look at somebody that, you know, just kind of looks at the stuff practically and like, you know, there's a great opportunity here; this is not such a great opportunity; this one stretched valuation; this is where, you know, pretty good risk-reward is here, and those sorts of things, okay?
Hey, it's Jeremy. I hope you really enjoyed that clip here today. Listen, there are three main areas a long-term investor has to understand. You have to understand financial statements, income statements, balance sheets, cash flows. You have to understand and master portfolio management, and you have to have the ability to project what is possible for companies in the coming years—bearish scenarios, bullish scenarios.
All these skills can be learned, and that's the good news. And I'm still just a regular guy who's out here. I just have a lot of passion for the market. I've learned a lot over the last 15 years. I had a tremendous amount of success, and I have a dedication to teaching people everything I have learned in the past 15 years.
I can do it; you can do it too. You can learn all that's required to become a great investor in my private group. The application is going to be down there in the description area. You can click on that application, join us in the private group, get access to all my best course curriculums, teaching you everything that I got in my head.
And you get the ability to join our six-figure, seven-figure Hall of Fame. We have such a tremendous Discord; it is incredible. So once again, description area down there, there's a link you can apply to join my private group in there.
SoFi Technologies—on this one, SoFi Technologies. The way I would think about SoFi Technologies is, one, they're a fintech company, and two, I would think about them as a new-age bank that's digital-first, not branch-focused like the old traditional banks of like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan, those sorts of older bank companies, right?
They're digital-first; they really attract a lot of the Millennials, Gen Z, and I think they're very well positioned that when Gen Alpha goes to get bank accounts, I think there's going to be a whole lot of them that are going to be signed up for SoFi Technologies. They set up phenomenal when it comes to that.
Now, when you look at SoFi here, right? Look at the revenue chart of this company over the last number of years on a trailing 12-month basis. We're looking at THXstocks.com right now, right? Look at that. I mean, the moral of the story is, if you don't know much about stocks, usually when you buy companies that their revenue just goes up and up and up and up and up and up and up, you're usually going to do very well on that company over a 5 to 10-year span.
Like, I don't know if I've ever seen it where a company's revenue just continues to climb quarter after quarter after quarter after quarter, and their trailing 12-month revenue looks like that, and the stock doesn't perform tremendous over a 5 to 10-year span. Like, they all pretty much do; that's incredible.
But it's not just about the top line, the revenue; it's also about the bottom line, earnings per share. We just very recently had the flip happen, right? This is where we're at right now on a trailing 12-month basis. We have now flipped to positive earnings per share for this company, which is a monumental moment for SoFi.
And the reason being is this company was nothing but a money loser for the longest time on the bottom line. They lost a fortune, right? People would always point that out, and there was definitely a very big negative. But I've gotten involved with SoFi in 2024, and I'm still excited about the stock in 2025, mainly because of this flip happening.
I look at the revenues; I look at the way the business is trending. I look at the next 5 to 10 years with this company, and I'm like, they just flipped into profitability. I think this one has a long way to run over the next several years.
Now, one of the most important metrics you can have a look at for something that's banking-related—remember, SoFi is not just a bank; it's also, you know, really fintechy, right? But shareholder equity is always going to be very, very important. Where's the balance sheet at? And shareholder equity is looking better than it's ever looked in regards to SoFi Technologies.
Now, to push back against SoFi, somebody might look at this, and they might say, "Yeah, you know, exciting; they flipped into profitability; revenues continue to climb and climb and climb and should climb for the next decade, if not several decades, right? That's exciting."
But you would say, "Look at the forward P/E—65 forward P/E on the stock." Keep in mind they'll probably do better than what analysts expect, so maybe the forward P/E is like 55 or 60 or something like that, right?
But you look at it against Bank of America; it's at 12, and Wells Fargo is at 13. So you look at something like that, and you say, "SoFi is very richly priced; it's overvalued," those sorts of things.
But the thing you got to understand here, okay, that's very, very important: look at a company like Wells Fargo. Does it look way cheaper than SoFi? Sure, right? You know, we can say SoFi's at about four times the valuation of Wells Fargo, right, in terms of forward P/E.
But look at Wells Fargo, right? Next year, earnings per share growth at Wells Fargo is supposed to be 3% versus SoFi is supposed to be over 60%. Yeah, I think that's about 20x.
Look at the current year expected revenue growth for Wells Fargo—basically flat, next year 1%. And you look at SoFi; it's at 23% and 177%, right?
So you look at it from that standpoint, and you're like, "Okay, I can understand why SoFi is obviously a much richer forward P/E." The main thing I would be asking is, should SoFi be trading at a much higher forward P/E given the fact that the growth rates are so far ahead of these other companies?
Right now, as far as me personally, what am I planning on doing with my SoFi stock? Well, I'm planning on adding more SoFi stock in different portfolios, right? This is a position I have in the public account—3,700 shares, up 125% on that now, up $33,000.
So basically, I'm up more in the stock than I put into the stock. I put 26,000 in, up 33,000, right? But I have no desire whatsoever to cash any of my shares that I made profits on here in the public account.
Anthony Noto has done a heck of a job running this company—like, top-tier job, incredible job Anthony Noto has done in getting him through everything they had to get him through: the student loan pause, interest rates, inflation, everything he had to get this company through, Rona. I mean, it's incredible.
And to get this company out to the other side and now emerging as a profitable player in a fast-growing fintech space and banking space, right? That's special.
So, moral of the story: SoFi is looking really, really good. Happy shareholder and looking forward to the future in regards to SoFi.