Which Stocks Scott Galloway Is Bullish on for 2025

0:00I recently went on a quick beach trip with my husband for a little couple's time. and it was perfect. We sat in the sun, swam in the ocean and generally just tried to get to that place of deep relaxation where your shoulders actually drop a few inches. Do you know what else can give you that feeling? Co-hosting with Airbnb. Trust me on this one. Hosting your home on Airbnb while you're away from home is a great way to make some extra cash and make sure your home is working as hard as you do. But knowing where to start can feel overwhelming. That's where co-hosts come in. These are local experts who can help make hosting even easier by taking care of all the little details back home while you're off enjoying yourself.

0:40Co-hosts can handle everything from staging your space to communicating with guests to offering on-site support so nothing interferes with your time away from home. Whether you're living the digital nomad life or just taking a well-deserved reset, I love this for you. Looking to get started? Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. I once interviewed the CEO of a credit bureau and he confessed that his assistant has a better credit score than he does. Why? Because she's more organized. Yep, even the head of the credit bureau can use a little help in the credit score department. If you can too, then listen up because Chime has a card that can help you do just that.

1:19Chime turns everyday spending into real rewards and progress. Not like old school banks that charge you overdraft and monthly fees. Built for you, not the 1%. Imagine cash back and credit building with your own money, finally on the same card. No annual fees, no interest, and no strings attached. And when you get qualifying direct deposits, you get 1.5 % cash back on eligible Chime card purchases. Chime is not just smarter banking. It is the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to Chime.com slash MNN.

1:54That is Chime.com slash MNN.

2:16Your financial journey shouldn't be a solo mission. Am I right? I am. You need a banking partner who's genuinely invested in your success story. U.S. Bank gets it. They don't just show up for your account opening and then ghost you. If you're saving for that engagement ring, they're cheering you on. If you're buying your first home, they're right there with you. If you're planning for retirement, they're still your biggest supporter. It's about having a financial teammate who believes in your potential and backs it up with real tools and real people who actually care. See what genuine partnership looks like at usbank.com because together we're unstoppable.

2:53That's the power of us. Equal housing lender. Member FDIC. Trademark 2025 U.S. Bank. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab.

3:15All right, welcome back, fam. Today, you're going to hear the second part of my interview with business and finance expert Scott Galloway. If you missed yesterday's conversation, please check it out next. Scott debunks some common money myths that I think anyone mapping out their next financial move should take to heart. Today, Scott and I talk stocks. Scott was first on the show last January when he talked about buzzy stocks like NVIDIA, Alphabet, Tesla. And in that interview, he told me if he was bullish or bearish. Well, we are looking back at those predictions and talking about the ones he got spot on and the ones he missed and why.

3:48Then we go through his updated predictions for 2025 and beyond. Last time you were on the show, Scott, we talked about a lot of different stocks and you told us whether you were bullish or bearish. Your predictions, we're going to grade the professor now. No fair. Yes, fair. You were bullish on Nova Nordisk, Disney, Warner Brothers, and Alphabet. You were bearish on McDonald's, Nvidia, and Tesla. You were neutral on Meta. So let's see how you did. Oh, this is going to be rough. You got two very correct. Nova. Two out of six. And Alphabet both had huge years. You were finally correct on Tesla. Mazel Tov.

4:33You said you'd been hating Tesla for years. so that paid off at long last. What happened at Tesla that made the company catch up to your high expectations? Well, it's trading at seven times revenues. It's not growing as fast as Toyota. And it trades at 0.9 times revenues. I think it's a great company. I had a Tesla and I liked it a lot. It's a car company. Auto companies trade between 0.2 and 1 times revenues and this is trading at seven to eight times revenues. And I don't know if you saw the shit show that was their iRobot thing a couple days ago. It was the most ridiculous product release. Basically, it's like when you rent out something for your birthday two years ahead of time and you have no choice but to throw the party.

5:18The robo-taxi or whatever it's called, the cyber-taxi, they couldn't even release any specific data on when it's actually going to be in production. Waymo's already out there. And so they said, okay, this sucks. Let's create a weapons of mass distraction with robots that it ends up we're being controlled by people in the theater. They're not even autonomous robots. And let's bring out something called the Reboven, which is cute, for RoboVan. It's a concept car, which we'll probably never make. They basically said, okay, we have over-promised and under-delivered, and we're going to continue to over-promise and under-deliver with the cybertaxi, so let's create distraction with these stupid robots that are technology in search of a problem and a concept van.

6:01And the next day, Uber and Lyft were up 11 and 6 % and Tesla was down 7%. And either Toyota is the most undervalued company in the world or Tesla is the most overvalued company in the world. And I'm betting on the latter. This is not financial advice. As evidenced by my stock picks, you should just buy an index fund. Because I like to think I know more than your average bear about companies and corporate governance and valuations. But Tesla, that just makes no goddamn sense. I also want to say I think SpaceX is going to be one of the most valuable companies in the world at some point. So I'm not a total Elon hater, but Tesla just makes no sense.

6:37And whenever you try to have a rational conversation with someone around the valuation, they pivot and go, oh, it's an energy company. It's a software company. It's not. They're wrapping steel around an axle, which makes it an auto company, which makes it capital intensive, risky, and a difficult business that trades between 0.2 and 1 times revenues, not 9 times revenue. Thank you for my TED talk. I love your TED Talks. Just to be clear, it wasn't just two that you got right. You got four right. You got two very right. So you were correct on Alphabet. It was up 27 % year to date. Disney up 4%, probably more room to grow.

7:11Nova Nordisk up 16%, Tesla down 29%. You were incorrect on Warner Brothers Discovery down 4%. McDonald's up 17 % and Nvidia up 84%. 84%. Let's talk about the funnest one, the NVIDIA, up 84 % from when we spoke. You were bearish. Yeah, I just, look, this company continues. And what's scary is, the earnings for us haven't kept up with the stock price. It's not, I think, trading at 80 or 100 PE. But this company has effectively a 90 % share of the hottest technology market in history. Just as there was the Wintel monopoly in the 80s and 90s, there's a new duopoly forming, and I call it the OpenVIDIA monopoly.

7:58And that is OpenAI and NVIDIA control 70 % and 90 % share of what is the hottest market in the world. Now, Aswad DeModer and my colleague at NYU, who, by the way, would be a great guest on your show, he's called the Dean of Valuation. Literally wrote the book on valuation, and every year wins the Best Teacher Award at Stern. God damn him. I want that thing so bad, Nicole. I've been nominated and I never get it. How do we get it? Because I'm not as good as them. Is it a vote thing? It's not. It's totally rigged. It's by the faculty. And anyways, I'm going total Trump and saying it's a rigged election.

8:32But effectively, the valuation baked into NVIDIA right now assumes, according to Aswath, that they're going to dominate a market. and to the same extent they dominate the AI GPU market of another market that will be just as big as AI. So invest in index funds because nobody knows. But this stock, I think as of today, is it the most valuable company in the world. My favorite stat is that Jensen Huang is personally worth more. As we sit here today, Jensen Huang is worth more than Intel. So you want to talk about a stock that has just gone crazy, right? And this is a great thing about being index funds.

9:12Is it, is Scott right and it's overvalued or is this thing going to continue to go to the moon? Well, in an index fund - Yeah, you have exposure to it. You get exposure to it. That's right. You get 27 cents on the dollar. We're going to the Magnificent Seven. So if they continue to skyrocket, you're fine. But if the other 493 stocks in the S &P finally get their day in the sun, you're protected. You get to recognize that appreciation as well. McDonald's was another mixed one. If we had spoken in July and not January, you would have been right. But the stock has recovered and is trending toward ending the year up.

9:44So what do you think happened there? Recession fears? I think as people are, and to a certain extent, inflation helps them because inflation eats into the household budget, meaning you have to eat at McDonald's more versus other places. So what is that called? A Giffen good? I would stay the hell away from McDonald's or any drinks company or any fast food company. I think GLP-1, every year I make a prediction on what's the most seminal technology of the year. In 2022, I said it was going to be AI. In 23, I said it was going to be GLP-1. I think GLP-1 is going to just hammer these companies because no one walks out of McDonald's and thinks, wow, that was a good decision.

10:26And basically, GLP-1 drugs are scaffolding on our instincts. When we came off the savannah. We had a dearth of access to salty, sugary, and fatty foods, a dearth of free play, a dearth of mating opportunities. So now that we have institutional production of those things, we've become addicted to trans fats, addicted to gambling, addicted to porn. And GLP-1 is just striking. 60 % of people on GLP-1 drugs say they're drinking less. They're reporting biting their nails less and their consumption of fast food is dropping dramatically. Now, right now, GLP-1 is mostly a ladies of lunch drug. It's for rich people who want to lose 10 or 15 pounds.

11:05But at some point, the dam will burst and it'll move into communities that really need it. And I think it's going to kick the shit out of fast food. So are you ready to redeem yourself? Do you want to do another round of bullish or bearish? Oh, gosh. I've salted your wounds. Vanguard index funds, bullish. Well, let's start with the GLP ones that you are bullish on. So Eli Lilly, bullish or bearish? I'm just neutral because I think - Because you're scared of when we grade you next year? The potential is sort of baked into this thing. So I can see it going up with the momentum, but I can also see it getting cut in half.

11:40I'm just neutral. Wow. Pass out of the gate. All right. It's private. You mentioned it, but OpenAI? Oh, it's the best value in tech right now. It's trading at eight times forward revenue. Next year revenues are estimated at 12 billion. It's trading at 150 billion after going up from 80 or 90. That's 12 times revenues. The average SaaS company trades at six. The average AI company is trading anywhere from Anthropic, which does a fraction of the revenue, has a$40 billion market cap, has a multiple of revenues. It's actually one of the cheapest AI stocks and it's got a 70 % leadership position. I would buy open AI all day long right now.

12:17Amazon. I own Amazon, so I guess technically I'm bullish. A good long-term hold. Sweet green. No idea. NVIDIA. Gosh. What animal sound was that? I just don't see how it can hold that type of valuation. I'm going to go bearish on NVIDIA. It's the most valuable company in the world right now. Uber. Really well managed. I'm probably bullish on Uber. I think that they have everyone's credit card, this incredible user interface. I think they're a pretty powerful platform. They could extend into other things. They have an interesting but weak number two. It just doesn't have the scale of them. They basically have a monopoly on ride hailing.

13:01Everyone was worried about the cyber taxi, which is a big thud, big head fake, big mixed reality headset, Oculus headset kind of head fake. so they're good management great platform monopoly power yeah i like uber so i guess lyft would be bearish no i wouldn't be bearish on lyft because it's only got a market cap of five billion and for me it's a pretty interesting acquisition candidate that also is a well-managed company and they have a little bit of a niche or cult following you know how there's just some people who just think of themselves as alternative that goes to every brand purchase and occasionally you'll be with someone like i only heard lyft and like oh aren't you different and cool so i think it has a little bit of that there's always i think room for the number two and i don't know what uber's market cap is but lyft is a fraction of it and i a little bit of bias here because i like the ceo i think he's a really bright guy yeah it's like a statement that i don't stand for the shenanigans of travis and whatever happened at uber on my podcast today i had brian chesky from airbnb and I said, you're at$83 billion market cap.

14:11You're good at monetizing fallow assets. You're at 83 billion. Lyft's at 5 billion. Why wouldn't you take a 8 % or 10 % dilution and buy Lyft? I think Lyft has some downside protection because I can see an automobile company or Airbnb or Uber snapping them up if it gets too cheap. So I think on a risk-adjusted basis, it's a good bet. Damn, Brian gets around. He was on our show earlier too. Who? Oh, he's a total fucking whore. And I can say that because I like him. He's a total whore. All right. Airbnb. That's one of my largest holdings. The stock is underperformed. It went public. It priced at 68 bucks a share and opened at 150.

14:50But the problem is, unless you're an institutional investor or a big client of Goldman's, the stock's been flat since then. It's 130, 133. Its valuation just got out in front of its skis, but its revenues are up 11%, really strong cash flows. It's the most dominant player in the space. If I read into what Brian said on my podcast today, they're planning to go into some other verticals, whether it's creating a platform for tradespeople to rent out their skills, commercial real estate. Like TaskRabbit or Angie's List. Yeah. I told him you should start Airbnb Plus, a membership program that I get.

15:27Concierge, access to tables at cool restaurants that are curated. I was just in Munich and I spoke there, done at 3 or 4 p.m., nothing to do. And I'm like, I'd love to meet some other academics, entrepreneurs who could take me to a cool beer hall tonight. I think the Airbnb community is a friendship slash dating site in an apartment sharing thing. I think the epidemic really hurting America right now is loneliness. One in seven men doesn't have a single friend, one in four men can't name a best friend. And I like the idea of turning on, toggling something at Airbnb when you're in Madrid that says, hey, who's in a group of eight or 12 Airbnb-ers are going out for dinner that night?

16:06I think there's a lot of potential for that brand. It's flat for the next three or four years, but I'm bullish on it for the next couple of years. All right. Now for some ones that you were wrong about last time, what do you think now, Warner Brothers? I think it's gotten so cheap that there's more upside than downside. I think the CEO will probably be replaced at some point. And if it goes much lower, they'll break it up and have HBO and Warner as the good bank. And they'll have all the cable assets as bad bank, which are still big cash flowing assets, but in decline. I think this conglomerate structure just doesn't work and it needs to be broken up.

16:45And also, I think generally speaking, the consolidation in the streaming space is doing what it's supposed to do. It's creating a smaller number of more powerful players. And also they've stopped this arms race around content spending. For the first time in its history, Netflix has not increased content spending in two years. So they're spending less, consolidating. Netflix has been raising their prices, which creates cloud cover for the HBOs of the world to raise their prices. And Disney. So I'm actually, at this point, Disney's at a 10-year low. Warner Brothers Discovery has lost 70 % of its equity value, despite the fact they paid their CEO of a third of a billion dollars.

17:23So I think Warner Brothers probably attracts an activist in the next 12 months if it doesn't recover. So again, I see more. I think it's more likely to be at 14 than at three and a half. I think it's more likely to be at 16 than at four. It's trading at about eight bucks right now. Just took less money. Oh, big fucking deal. It's taken 300 million. Thanks, Dave. So how about general overall 2025 predictions for the economy, inflation, interest rates, the economic impact of the election?

17:56Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.

18:09so how about general overall 2025 predictions for the economy inflation interest rates the economic impact of the election i don't know tell me who gets elected if it's trump and he wants 100 tariffs and cramped down on immigration to me that's the ultimate nitro and glycerin for inflation. I think the economy is going to struggle under a Trump administration. I think the Harris administration would probably stay the course. By the way, just that one comment will get a ton of hate in your feed because people get triggered if you don't line up behind their candidate. I think that inflation is going to come down.

18:48I think AIs and technology are very deflationary. I think housing prices are going to come down despite, I think interest rates are going to come down, but housing, which will free up liquidity in the housing market. Because I think there's a lot of people that have these unexploded devices called a 2.5 % interest rate mortgage that didn't want to leave. But there's a pent up amount of death, disease, divorce, disability where people need to move and they haven't because they didn't want to give up their mortgage. So as interest rates come down, the delta between what they're giving up will decline.

19:20So I think you're going to see a lot of, despite the conventional wisdom that when interest rates go down, housing prices go up, I think it's actually going to create more supply, which will put housing prices down. I think we're going to see a freeing up of more housing permits, more supply finally. I think you're going to see housing prices and interest rates come down, similar to the way interest rates and housing prices went up over the last three or four years. And do you think some of the wealth porn that we talked about earlier is contributing to this disconnect between the vibe that people are feeling in the last few years that we're living in a recession despite the economic numbers that are telling us we're not?

19:58Yeah, you've used this term, by obsession. Look, it's just insane. People feel really bad about the economy and like the idea of a new administration and they cite the economy. So just some numbers. The U.S. since 2020, since Biden took over, has grown its GDP 8.5%. That's the highest in the G7. The Eurozone is three and a half percent. Germany is like two percent. Britain's one percent. We've had the fastest growing economy. We've had the most robust growth of any mature economy. Maybe the exception of India, a robust, mature economy or the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but the strongest growth of any G7 nation while having the lowest inflation.

20:40That's almost impossible to pull off. Now, inflation, people still go into the grocery store and see diapers and foodstuffs 20-25 % more expensive than it was three or four years ago. But our inflation has been less bad than almost any other G7 country. And there's this weird phenomenon, Nicole, where right now wages are growing 4 % and inflation's like two and a quarter. So purchasing power is growing. But when people get a raise, they credit their character and their grid. Oh, I deserve that. Whereas when costs go up, they blame the president. So the president doesn't get any credit for rising wages, but he gets all the blame for rising costs.

21:19So there's this sort of phenomena where they're kind of screwed no matter what. But actually the economy in the U.S., there's 190 nations. I'll ask you this, 190 distinct nations. What nation has a stronger economy than ours right now? Exactly. Yeah. We're number one out of 190 and people feel bad about the economy. Yeah, why are we feeling bad? Is it because we're comparing ourselves to other people so much? Like, why do we feel like we're in a recession even though we're not? I think it's two things. One, I keep quoting him, and I can't remember who it is, but there's this technology quote that the future is here.

21:56It's just not evenly distributed. Prosperity is here. It's just not evenly distributed. There's a large portion of America that is really struggling, and that goes more to public policy and fiscal and tax policy. right but there's just a lot of people who are struggling there's just no getting around it great scott we've grown at eight and a half percent yet i can't pay my bills that doesn't mean anything for me if i can't afford to gas up my car i can't afford my kids preschool and the other thing is what you reference i think 210 times a day young people are reminded or taught to believe this myth and it is a myth that everyone's vacationing at the beverly hills Hotel or is driving a brand new car or has a ridiculously hot boyfriend.

22:39And what you're seeing is all this faux life. So first off, guys, anyone who has a picture of a jet on their Instagram does not own a jet. That's right. Scott, you stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel all the time. I know this. You've never posted from the Pink Palace, have you? Well, you and I had lunch there. It's funny you say that because I just had a birthday party and I was really excited about and I had great pictures. And I was about to post my pictures. I'm like, I live a very privileged life. I'm not embarrassed about it. I'm very open about my money. I was broke or economically strained the majority of my life.

23:12I've been super fortunate and I'm not humble. I think I'm a monster. I work hard. I think I'm talented. But the last fucking thing I want to do is rub my good fortune in other people's face. I just find it obnoxious. And I can just tell you people with real wealth, the last goddamn thing they're going to do is put pictures of their house on Instagram. That's just, it's just so tacky. And my new thing is I really wanna help, I really wanna help young men and also be a voice for young people. You need to be a class trader. I think my generation has weaponized DC to stuff more money into my pockets and take it away from a younger generation that's 24 % less wealthy than they were 40 years ago.

23:55And my generation is 72 % wealthier than they were 40 years ago. And that was my accident. We have weaponized government and figured out all sorts of tax cuts for me that don't apply to young people who are earners, not owners, if you will. Social media that gives people the impression every day that they're not as wealthy, they're not as hot, they're not as mentally fit as the guy or gal. It's like you just believe that everyone around you is successful but you. And I think it's just got to be depressing and humiliating. So, yeah, I think this constant fake benchmarking that everyone around you is killing it, but you.

24:32No, that's not true at all. Have a real conversation with your friends and you're going to find out they're worried, they're struggling. They got problems in their relationship. All the shit that you think is unique to you is not. And Instagram is not the real world. That is everyone's representative for some reason trying to signal something. But I find it all obnoxious and worse. I find Instagram just begins from it's all porn. It's either wealth porn or it's straight up porn. And the fact that anyone under the age of 16 is allowed on social media makes no sense. I was talking about big tech.