Investing Unscripted Podcast 132: Reckless Predictions 2025

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​Jason Hall: Hey everybody. Happy holidays. Welcome back to Investing Unscripted. I'm Jason Hall joined as usual by my good friend, the voice of the people, Jeff Santoro.

Happy holidays, buddy. 

Jeff Santoro: Happy holidays to you. We're in between holidays. We're in between Thanksgiving and and the Christmas Hanukkah ones So well, I mean that's when you can that's when you can say happy holidays, I guess if this is like the war on Christmas, I guess you're right. Yeah. Well, Merry Christmas.

I don't really care. I've never, I've never had a hard feeling about that, that whole argument. 

Jason Hall: It's, it's weird. It's weird. I don't know. How did, how did saying whatever you celebrate, I hope it's awesome. And that includes Christmas get turned into. 

Jeff Santoro: It's sad, really. It's just a nice, nice greeting. Happy holidays. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jeff Santoro: Anyway, that's not why we're here. 

Jason Hall: Hey, [00:02:00] everybody. Welcome to Investing Unscripted, Are you really starting over? No, I'm not starting over. It is that wacky time of the year where we're doing our Reckless Predictions episode. This is our third one, Jeff, and I think this is the first one that it's just going to be me and you.

Jeff Santoro: Yeah, we had guests on for the first two years of Reckless Predictions and, uh, no one would come on with us this time. So the listeners are stuck with just you and I, but we are going to, one thing we are going to do, which I think is different than past years is we're going to spend make fun of the people that wouldn't come on with us.

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna make fun of people's incorrect reckless predictions, which were mostly wrong I feel like just scanning over our our list of last year's predictions here and then what we'll talk about next year as well and you know, I don't know how reckless our predictions will be but it is fun to look back and see How right and or wrong Yeah, 

Jason Hall: this, this is fun.

And it, it reminds me of the, and I think this is the important thing. I want to start with this before we even get into, um, our [00:03:00] housekeeping is the whole idea about predictions. There's a couple of quotes out there. The first time I read it was in Nate Silver's, um, book, the signal and the noise pundits don't make predictions because they know. They make predictions because they were asked.

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. 

Jason Hall: And that's the bottom line. That's what, that's why shows like this exist. You know, people want to hear predictions about stuff that people that are making them just make them. They don't really know, but it's also the whole idea of planning. You, a lot of times you're making plans based on expected outcomes, but also steps that you need to take to get there.

And the plan never survives contact with the real world. Of course. Right. It's not so much about the plan, but the actual act of planning, right. Having a process. And I think that's the important part about it is as we go through this and we make fun of our friends and ourselves. Uh, for being incredibly, incredibly wrong with last year's predictions.

A lot of the conversation is just going to be around some of the things that we talked about around the idea of the predictions and how the predictions generally, there were clear reasons to justify why those [00:04:00] predictions were being made. Um, but we'll also talk about Jeff, how a lot of this is your, your biases kick in when you're making these predictions and biases just are innate wiring.

Often get in the way of success when it comes to things like investing. So going on your gut and your feelings and what you're predicting in the near term usually is a good way to hurt your, hurt your, hurt yourself if you're 

Jeff Santoro: actually investing that way. Yeah. And I mean, by virtue of the fact that we call them reckless predictions, they're meant to be things you don't really think will come true, but you'll look really cool if they do.

That's the, that's kind of the way I think about it. The other thing I think that it's interesting about this kind of a show is when I think back to when we made these predictions a year ago. It's fun to remember what the investing world was like a year prior. For example, at the end of 2023, we had just gone through, remember how crazy the market was like November and December of last year.

It just ripped for two straight months. And it, it turned what would have been a nice year into a great year for the market. [00:05:00] And. It would be impossible for us to have not had that in our minds as we looked ahead, you know, probably some level of recency bias is, well, this can't last, right? Like that kind of thing.

And here we are a year later in the markets up close to 30% for the year. And in the past six weeks, as we approach the end of 

Jason Hall: the year, the market has been ripping, 

Jeff Santoro: right? Almost the exact same thing as last year. It's really interesting. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. 

Jeff Santoro: No, that's exactly right. So before we dive into it, though, um, I, I do think we should just do a couple of reminders.

We don't do these every week, but been a little slow out there, Jason, on the ratings and reviews side of the house. So if you're listening right now and you've been enjoying our podcast and you could give us a five star rating on whatever podcast app you listen to, or a comment on Spotify or a review on Apple podcasts, that would all, that would be great.

We'd really appreciate it. And also share the show. Take an episode you enjoyed and send the link to a friend that you think would also enjoy it. We're just trying to get the show out there. 

Jason Hall: Like send it to, uh, an enemy. 

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Jeff Santoro: [00:06:00] Yes. Send the show to friends and enemies is the bottom line. Yes. And then check out our, our YouTube channel and also our website InvestingUnscripted.com where you can subscribe to our newsletter. 

Jason Hall: Yes, do do all of those things. Also. I'm going to make I'm going to promote our our savvy trader too here. It's you know, we're still pretty early in we started in in april. And it's been a really fun experiment so far Really working and being methodical about picking the stocks together to build a portfolio basically from scratch with the goal of long term market meeting and returns, and also building a diverse, diversified portfolio over time in a way that I think a lot of other people are actually investing where you take a certain amount of money every month and you try to make the best decisions you can each month.

Within the, the, uh, constraints of the capital you have to work with and your, your long term and short term goals. And it's going really well. So I encourage people to check that out. The link is in the show notes, uh, SavvyTrader. It's just the Investing Unscripted portfolio. Check it out, please.

That costs money. We get some of that money, so, definitely [00:07:00] check it out. 

Jeff Santoro: And just building off of that, keep tuned in to the podcast over the next couple of weeks, cause we will be revealing what the, the 2025 version of our portfolio contest will look like. We're going to, we're thinking through that over the course of this month.

And we'll, we'll have news about that at the, uh, the end of the year or maybe even early in 2025. All right. Let us dive in here, Jason. So you were kind enough to go back and listen to last year's reckless prediction prediction show to put together some notes about what us and our guests predicted and also how they turned out.

So let's dive in the, the first one that you put on the outline here. So first of all, we should mention you had Ryan and Brett from Chit Chat Stocks on last year's show as two of our guests, and we also had Simon Erickson from 7Investing on the show and. And then it was you and I making our predictions.

And if, if you want to find 

Jason Hall: the show in our back library, it's episode 84 wherever you find your podcasts, it's worth a listen.

We're going to [00:08:00] talk about the predictions and some of the conversation we had. It was a fun conversation. And it's really interesting because you get like the feel and the vibe for why people made those predictions and there was, uh, some pretty good banter. I had forgotten before we get into Brett's prediction that the show almost turned into the Jason telling Brett while he's wrong about everything episode.

Jeff Santoro: That's par for the course with you. You like to tell people that they're wrong. So you're wrong. That's not true. Maybe we should, you know what? Maybe we should run. Run the episode again, like later in the, in the month, just so people can go back and listen to it. Maybe that's a something we can do like on a weekend or something.

Jason Hall: Keep your eye on the feed folks. We'll, uh, we'll probably schedule it as a, uh, as a bonus holiday weekend episode, something to listen to when you're out there doing. Christmas shopping during the holiday season. See, we say happy holidays, but we call 

Jeff Santoro: it Christmas shopping, right? Yeah. And if you don't want to listen to that episode, cause you don't want to hear it again, that's fine.

Just turn it on volume down, let the ads run. All right. So the first prediction we [00:09:00] had was from Brett from Chit Chat Stocks, which is a great podcast. You should check that out anywhere you can get podcasts. And he predicted that Amazon would end the year. As the largest company. So Jason, how did that, how has that turned out so far as we record this after the market close on December 5th?

So the preface, 

Jason Hall: first of all, uh, he, he said this was actually, because they do kind of a reckless predictions thing on their show too. And he said in 2020. Two, he had predicted that it would end 2023 as the largest us company by market cap. He's wrong. Two, two years in a row here, Jeff. 

Jeff Santoro: Maybe he'll go, maybe he'll go for the trifecta.

We'll have to tune in and see if they do another show this year. 

Jason Hall: He could, here here's the numbers. So it's the fourth largest company. . Worth more than 2 trillion, but it's still trails the third largest company, which is Microsoft by about a trillion dollars, right?

These numbers have just gotten kind of bonkers NVIDIA [00:10:00] and Apple kind of go back and forth for a lot of the past few months over, which is the largest, is about three and a half trillion and Apple's like $3.6 trillion So that that's happened. Here's the thing though, like directionally, I mean, it's not like he was making a terrible call because the things he was talking about with their, their, their hyperscaling business, um, AWS getting larger, the eight, the AI stuff that they're doing, that they're selling more of on AWS, uh, continuing to grow, The stock's up almost half this year, uh, NVIDIA just like almost tripled again though, right?

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Jeff Santoro: I haven't gone back and listened to that episode yet, because that was your job to prepare for today. I, oh yeah, we never are both prepared. That's why there's two of us. Why would we both need to be prepared? No, that's ridiculous. No, but the thing I'm, I'm wondering, I, if I remember correctly to, to, to where my head was at least a year ago, I think we were in the ball, the ballpark with NVIDIA of like, well, this can't keep going.

Right. No, it was up like 300 and something percent the year [00:11:00] before. And here we are a year later and it has not slowed down. It has not slowed down. It has kept going. So 

Jason Hall: yeah. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. Not a bad. Amazon had also just come off of a pretty good year. Yeah. Turnaround year, right? Because it was the end of 2022 when it was, all of its operating income on the e commerce side of the building of the business was negative and people were starting to question if they had lost it and, All of a sudden, a year later, they had had this big turnaround, so I could see why Brett felt that that might continue.

But, alas, 0 for 1 on predictions. Alright, what was the next one you wanted to talk through here? 

Jason Hall: We're actually going to do two here together. We've got, uh, Simon Erickson. And I'm going to give Simon a lot of props because he was actually, and I'm going to say this before we do his two predictions, he was 2 for 2.

Cool. 

Jeff Santoro: Jeff. Yeah. He got both. And he, I'll give him more credit too. He put a lot of thought and hard work into this. Unlike the effort that you and I put into this podcast just generally. Correct. Yeah. I want to give him credit for trying really hard on our behalf. [00:12:00] 

Jason Hall: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. And but that's Simon.

That's, that's, that's how he's wired. He doesn't yeah. Uh, do anything halfway. So his first prediction was that the cyber truck, uh, would outsell the Ford F one 50 lightning. So the F one 50 lightning had already been in the market since 2022. And the cyber truck had gone through all kinds of typical, like the typical Tesla Musk delays, not meeting deadlines and goals and that sort of thing.

And it was really, here's the interesting thing about it. Again, he got it right that Cybertruck would outsell the F 150 Lightning. This is so far. This is through the end of the third quarter when we have complete data for both companies. We still have three months of unreported data. But you gotta remember it wasn't really until the third quarter.

That cyber truck production really started coming up to like relatively serious levels, uh, sold over 28, 000 year to date, uh, versus about 22, 000 of the F one fifties. [00:13:00] And, uh, the vast majority of the cyber truck sales were in the third quarter. So just based on that, like it's in the market now and it's still early and meeting the initial demand.

It's almost certainly going to outsell the F one 50 which has seen pretty weak demand and, and the fourth quarter, here's the thing to what he was predicting, he got it. Correct. Here's the problem. The cyber truck and the F one 50 lightning are both so far unsuccessful product launches. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. here's the thing. I'm not trying to denigrate Simon's pick. He did a great job and nailed it at least so far. But the thing that I. The hindsight we have now that maybe we didn't have a year ago is that I, I would not have predicted that the overall Evie market would have cooled off to the degree that it did. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. 

Jeff Santoro: I, that feels like, unless I have my timing off, cause it still feels like time is a flat circle sometimes.

But it feels like it was really over the course of 2024 that we started to see EV demand decrease. And I even remember [00:14:00] recently seeing a headline that Ford was like dialing back on production of the F 150 because of slow demand. And I, I don't think that that's a, I don't think that that is because of the F 150 and it's not a good vehicle, it just, I, I, I assumed that that was part of just the general markets sort of pullback on EVs, like It's the tide that is lowering all all boats.

But I could be wrong about that Yeah, but I I have a sense that I know I it seems to me from a observer's point of view that simon's a pretty He's a tesla bull just generally Yeah, so I wonder if that prediction was If, if, if him getting it right was more because of the F 150's lag versus the Cybertruck's success, if that makes sense.

But who knows? 

Jason Hall: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I think, I think you're directionally, you're right there. I mean, there were some signs, um, last year. The, the EV market was slowing down. Yeah, we got to remember Tesla had lowered prices in multiple countries. And there, there were [00:15:00] a lot of things that they were trying to do to try and, uh, kind of reignite demand.

We've actually seen demand start to recover for Tesla. Their sales started growing again last quarter, total units. And, and everybody, nobody else is really doing all that particularly well, um, in EVs. I mean, the numbers are still year over year growth. Uh, for, for some of these companies, because again, newer products and they're starting from extremely low numbers, but overall, yeah, sales have kind of stagnated a little bit in the U S I want to be very clear about that.

China EV sales continue to grow because it's such a priority. For the Chinese communist party. But 

Jeff Santoro: and they're building good vehicles. I mean, everything, everything I'm hearing about BYD is that they're actually the best cars out there. We just can't get them here. That's everything. My point 

Jason Hall: is that the, the, uh, Chinese economy and market is far more Controlled than the market is in, in the U S particularly.

And we just haven't seen EV demand take that next [00:16:00] step at all. We haven't at all. And we certainly haven't seen it happen in trucks. The here's the last thing I want to say again, we're not, we're not, we're not speaking for any of our guests for last year. We're just kind of interpreting maybe a little bit here.

But one of the things that Simon really talked about is you got to remember the truck market is massive in the U S it's huge and it's really GM, Ford, uh, they make. The bulk of their profits in North America selling trucks and big SUVs and the idea that this was going to kind of be the beachhead and like the next big disruptive market taking move for Tesla into a really important part of the automotive market.

And that hasn't materialized so far again. This isn't a binary. It's a flop. It's a bad product. It's so far that part of like the vibe of this prediction. We haven't seen that happen yet. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. But the other thing too, is the cyber truck is not meant to steal truck demand that it's not a truck. That a truck driver a person who drives a truck would want to have it's a truck.

It's a truck in quotes for Tesla. Superfans. That's at least my Interpretation of it [00:17:00] and I will say this just before we move on. I'm glad you pointed out that we might just be At the beginning or like end of the beginning of the ramp up of the cyber truck, because I've noticed around me and I live in Tesla ground zero, like they're everywhere around where I live.

And I would say last spring, it was like when you saw a cyber truck, you'd stop and take a picture because it was like, Oh my God, there there's a cyber truck. And now it's you see them every day. Not a lot. It's still not, as prevalent as like the model three and the model wise are around here, but certainly a lot more than.

Six day months ago. So Jeff, you're in a liberal bastion though. Of course, you're gonna see more and you're liberal. It's liberal central New central, New Jersey. Well, actually, I actually It's more about infrastructure like there's there's no absolutely it's a crowded part. I mean, we are a dense state There's more places to charge more people.

Yeah, you are in houses with garages and you know You could put a charger in and that kind of stuff 

Jason Hall: So my, my anecdote, I have some interesting anecdote data. So I'm in Massachusetts against the state. There's [00:18:00] lots of, uh, things to support EV sales, renewables, that kind of thing here, but I live in a pretty rural part of the state.

It's, it's close to Boston, 30 minutes, 30, 30, 30, 30 miles from less than 30 miles from Boston, but it's a rural where I live. There isn't any infrastructure in the town. It's relatively conservative, uh, broadly. I was talking to a buddy yesterday. He was driving somewhere through town and he just kind of stopped talking for a second and I asked him, I said, Duke, okay, what's up?

What's up, bud? And he's like, that was really weird. I just saw two Cybertrucks at the same time in town. So, Yeah, it's, it's still, it's early in the game. I think that's, that's, 

Jeff Santoro: that's the story. All right. So what was Simon's other prediction that you wanted to piggyback with this one? 

Jason Hall: Yeah. So I wanted to do this one second because he absolutely nailed it.

Like the vibe, the, like the specifics, the vibe and like directionality with what he was talking about. [00:19:00] And the key kind of the core of this was what we're seeing happen in the finance, financial world with more FinTech companies. Traditional banking, how we're seeing more companies like do some of the things that banks have done, but not all of the things that banks have done.

And he expected that he would see some outperformance kind of from those companies.

So he, he built two baskets. The first basket basket was like the FinTech, which was upstart, um, Affirm Holdings and sofi, which is a bank now they have a bank charter, but they also do a lot of kind of more FinTech stuff too, would outperform, A basket of three of the largest banks, uh, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America by at least 10 percentage points.

So again, I've already said that he got it right, but let me say this part first, because this is the part, if I said this was what these banks were going to do, I think you, you would expect that he would have been wrong here. On average, these three banks are up 46% 

Jeff Santoro: and the S and P S and P is up.

What, [00:20:00] just shy of 30? Just shy of 30. 

Jason Hall: It's remarkable, it's absolutely remarkable. The 61%, so he got it. By a pretty good margin. 

Jeff Santoro: Outperforming by 15 percentage points. Alright, question though, how much of that is just Upstart from the past two months or six weeks. Uh, not, not, 

Jason Hall: not none of it. So the interesting thing about it, and I'm glad you ask that question because if we had have ended this in, uh, beginning of October, even like mid October, honestly, anytime before, before the election, uh, he would have gotten wrong, uh, because the, the banks were clearly outperforming.

And as a matter of fact, if you look at the, uh, the FinTechs. They were down they were doing terribly for the, for most of the year. And it wasn't really until, uh, late summer that we saw them start to really recover and ramp up, but since the election they've really just absolutely rocketed, rocketed [00:21:00] higher.

Uh, but directionally, I think he's gonna continue to prove to be right over 

Jeff Santoro: the long term. Yeah, I, I don't know what I thought about this a year ago, but I probably would have agreed with it, but it would have been, More about the banks under, underperforming than it would have been about, you know, I would not have guessed JPMorgan chase or city bank was a JPMorgan city and bank of America would have been up 46% on average.

I never would have guessed that. 

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Jason Hall: I think, I think you have to remember though, a year ago we were still nine months removed from, a pretty serious banking scare. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah, so they might've been on, they were, they were cheap. They were still pretty cheaper than they probably should have been because of that.

That's a good point. Yeah, yeah, okay. You ready to move on to Ryan's predictions? Yeah. Uh, we did Brett first from Chit Chat Stocks. His partner, Ryan, uh, also had some predictions and they were also wrong. So let's go through, let's go through them. We'll have to make sure that we reach out to these guys before we air this. So they're not taken by surprise.

Jason Hall: Yeah. As the, uh, I can't remember his name, but the, the chief, the chief of, not the chief physician, but from the, you remember the show scrubs [00:24:00] and the, the doctor that was very acrimonious. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yeah. That was, that was Ryan on, on this prediction here. His first prediction, uh, was that in aggregate the magnificent seven stocks, uh, would be, would be down this year.

Not just they would, underperform, but that they would actually 

Jeff Santoro: be down. Yeah. That's a, that did not turn out to be correct. 

Jason Hall: No, no. The worst performer, let's be 

Jeff Santoro: fair. It is December 5th. There's still time,

Jason Hall: but as of today, well, Nvidia did Nvidia things again. It's up 193% so far. This, uh, this year the worst performer is a Microsoft and it's up roughly 18%. This is price change. This is not total return. So it was a few that pay little dividends, but 

Jeff Santoro: here's the way I have a question, since you probably had this up on your screen, if he had predicted that they would lose to the market, how many of the seven.

Are ahead of the S& P year to date of, uh, 

Jason Hall: four, uh, four of the seven. Okay. [00:25:00] So here, but here's the thing, right? We actually talked about that on the show because they basically, if they're, if they're down, they probably lose to the market, but if they move, I guess they drive the market is what I'm trying to say.

They're so big at this point, you know, a third of the S& P 500 at this point. They, they, they, they are the market in some pretty material ways. Yeah, that's a good point because if they there was actually that question came up and my response was if the seven biggest most profitable companies On the market are down the markets down.

How do you think the other companies are gonna do? 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah, 

Jason Hall: right. There's they're not 

Jeff Santoro: gonna do well. It's just it's such a weird It's such a weird thing because are so much of them, of what we call the market in quotes, right? It's just, so what was the, I 

Jason Hall: mean, here's the only pushback I'll have. The only pushback I'll have on that is that really, I guess, with the exception of probably, uh, Apple, which is still, they're, they're just, but they're doing typical Apple [00:26:00] things with AI.

They're, they're never a first to market. They're, they're, I say they're best to market. They wait and they bring out something that's great. We're going to find out if that's going to be true with their AI product or not. Yeah. But all of these other companies, again, it's Amazon, it's Microsoft, NVIDIA, Meta, Alphabet.

Again, ads drive a lot of their revenue now, but the hyperscaling part of their business, the cloud business, is driven by spend for AI compute. Uh, Tesla. These are companies that AI is what is driving their market caps higher. So there, I mean, there is a scenario where the wind comes out of the AI sales.

These companies do poorly, but the economy overall actually does fine. And a lot of other companies do 

Jeff Santoro: perfectly well. Yeah, I, I agree with that. And it's tied to something we'll talk about later. Yeah. It's, it, the question, the question that will be answered by that is how much of their current market caps are AI expectations.[00:27:00] 

Yeah. That's the question. Yeah. So when you went back and listened, what was, what was Ryan's rationale for thinking the mag seven would be down on the year? 

Jason Hall: So the one thing was just kind of a reversion of the mean on multiples, which makes sense. I've, I've, I've been thinking in my head for years.

That we would see multiples come down for these companies. And it hasn't 

Jeff Santoro: every year we're wrong 

Jason Hall: yet. Well, and for good reason, for the most part, because I guess with the exception of maybe apple that it's, and, uh, it's, it's earnings have been a little lumpy and it's kind of hit a certain critical mass and just like a lot of the growth is really paltry.

The rest of them continue to grow earnings per share at really high rates, improving their margins. They've earned those high multiples to a certain extent, at least so far, right? Because they do continue to grow the earnings. So that's, I mean, that's the thing, but getting back to the core question about Ryan's justification was we'd see [00:28:00] some mean reversion there.

We haven't, because we haven't seen in aggregate, we haven't seen their earnings stagnate. Right. We start seeing earnings stagnate, margins come down, that sort of thing. Then we're, then we're probably going to see multiples come down, uh, concerns with Apple and Google, both on some of the antitrust stuff.

It hasn't really hurt either of these companies in any material ways at this point. 

Jeff Santoro: Well, and the funny thing is with that, the seeds have been planted for there to be potential problems down the road, but those are so far down the road when you think about how long this stuff takes. And then who knows how.

Anti regulatory, the new administration is going to be or anti antitrust, 

Jason Hall: you know? No, business friendly, I think, is the best way to describe the incoming administration. Because we've seen, again, their stocks have done well since the election because, again, the expectation that corporate taxes, tax rates are either going to stay where they are or maybe even come down.

So that's that. But probably the main thing I want to talk about with this is, and, and Ryan talked about this. He actually went so far as to say that he [00:29:00] could pretty much just as easily get behind the idea that they would rip again, which they did. And it's that reminder of our biases are so powerful and we can look at things that are like, are just whatever our mental framework is.

We can't like fit it inside. And we think it's going to change to our mental framework instead of. Us needing to adjust our mental framework around whatever that reality is and how that can just absolutely destroy your returns as an investor. And investing, cause I've talked about this before, right?

Like I, I always expect a recession to happen in the next year, but I don't invest that way because, well, the market shows that. That doesn't happen every year. So thinking about probabilities and not just your tendencies these predictions shows are fun, but they're a great way to destroy your returns.

If you actually invest on them. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah, that's true. And I think if we were talking about this earlier, I think Ryan even said, I would never invest this way. Now he did, which is a good thing. All right. He had two more, uh, two more questions. That were also wrong. [00:30:00] So we can go through them kind of quickly, but what were they?

Jason Hall: Yeah. So the matchbook would be a match group would be acquired. It hasn't been acquired. Not much more to say about that. Yeah. I think he's just tired of it not being a great stock and he's been bullish on it for a long time. So I think he just wants it to be acquired. He also, uh, predicted that the average home price would be down 10%.

I challenged that one very early. On that one, and I think this is a non homeowner who wants to eventually own a home that is tired of seeing home prices go up and I get it. But the, the, the challenge with this prediction, we actually, and we did see the coming into the prediction show that home selling is not actual prices of people's homes, this average selling price is what he was predicting had come down But interest rates have gone up and, and supply was kind of a mess and a lot of people had pulled back from the, from the market because there wasn't anything to buy and that's what kind of sent prices down.

Uh, but the thing is [00:31:00] like there's still so much pinup demand, so many people that want to buy a house that can't find a house because there's nothing available for sale. 

Jeff Santoro: And even though interest rates have come down. Mortgage rates are still high by people's memory, you know, it's not like, it's not like interest rates are back down under five, under 5%, where they were maybe 10 years ago.

Yeah. No, they're a little above long term averages. They're not a ton above long term averages. Long term averages. Yeah. But I, so here's, I feel like people's memory of interest rates is like not above, not much above 5%. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. And I'm, look, I'm someone who has owned homes over the past 20 years, right?

So, I'm using like a 20 year lens. I don't remember, I don't think I ever had a mortgage above 5%. I think my first one was like foreign change. And that was in 2003. Yep. Now I was able to refinance in 2021 for 10, 000. Under three, right. Cause it dropped near zero at that one point. But, so I feel like, yeah, historically, [00:32:00] my parents got mortgages in the teens, right?

Like back in the eighties. 

Jason Hall: So, but we all, I mean, we all want to get 5% yield on our savings and pay 2.7% on our mortgage that way. That's, that's not how banks, that's not how borrowing money works. That's, that's exactly right. So here's the thing. So back to the prediction, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Average selling price is actually up about five or 6% so far this year. 

Jeff Santoro: All right, let's, let's get to our predictions so we can make fun of each other in real life. so I predicted that the market would be down 20% and that it would be worse than the 2022 bear market. Your response on our planning sheet here is ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Jason Hall: Yeah. So do you remember the, the, uh, uh, the, you remember Vizzini from, uh, the princess bride? Yes. The scene where he just starts laughing and laughing and laughing and then dies. Just imagine me laughing like that, but not dying. And that's what, what I was doing. [00:33:00] When I read your prediction. So, yeah, no.

So here, so I did the numbers because I wanted to be very precise, uh, with how wrong you are here. 

Jeff Santoro: Thank you. I appreciate that. 

Jason Hall: So the, the S and P 500 started the year at roughly, roughly 4750. So from here, where we are now, which is, uh, just under 6, 100, it would need to fall to 3, 800 to be a 20% decline from the beginning of the year.

Uh, Jeff, you've got roughly 16 market days here to drop 40%, 30, 38%. Yeah. 30, 38. Saying there's a 

Jeff Santoro: chance 

Jason Hall: that's right. Lloyd. that's, that's exactly, I don't think, I don't think you really expected it. I just think you talked a lot about wishing you could buy stocks when they were 

Jeff Santoro: cheaper. I don't know what I was thinking.

I, I know I was very proud of myself. Okay. After when we did the first prediction show two [00:34:00] years ago, I predicted that there would not be a recession in 2022. And I was right. I, or in 2023, whatever year that was. So I was probably just figuring I was a macro genius at that point. And, uh, but yeah, I, I did want it to go down so I could buy cheaper stocks.

That is for sure. All right. My, I had another one, which, uh, Was ridiculous and reckless, but I thought it was creative and I really was proud of it. I said that Elon Musk would IPO X Twitter and take the, take the, uh, the ticker symbol for a U S steel, which was X to do it. That was like, he would, I don't even know how he worked that out.

And it's funny that U S steel is actually in the news because of an acquisition attempt by What's the company, the, the Japanese company, Nippon Steel, Nippon Steel, right? Well, no, 

Jason Hall: that was in the, 

Jeff Santoro: that 

Jason Hall: was in the works 

Jeff Santoro: last year. Oh, was it? Was that part 

Jason Hall: of that deal? Yeah. That deal is still still in purgatory.

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. 

Jason Hall: So that was the whole, this was easily Jeff. This was easily my [00:35:00] favorite reckless prediction from last year's creative. If nothing else, Not just creative, but it's a little bit like the, uh, everybody's seen the meme from it's always sunny and sunny in Philadelphia with the, the conspiracy theory.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It, like you could follow the threads and like, see, it makes sense. 

Jeff Santoro: Well, it's like if, if you had told me before it happened that Elon Musk was going to spend 42 billion to, to do this. To our 44 billion, whatever it was to buy an unprofitable social media company. And the way it would have gone down with all the drama where he tried to get out of it, I would have been like, that's crazy, but once that could happen, why not this, 

Jason Hall: right?

But this is somebody, this is somebody that has named his first four, like full commercial production cars, the S the three, the X and the Y. So it spells sexy, right? So this is very much the kind of thing you would do. 

Jeff Santoro: But what the. The what is [00:36:00] Department of Government Efficiency Doge everything he does is silly and ridiculous.

So 

Jason Hall: that's one of the things that makes it so much fun. So I'm going to do this. I'm going to insert my first reckless prediction into this before we get to My, my reckless prediction, my prediction for 2025, because again, this deal could still 

Jeff Santoro: happen, it's 

Jason Hall: in 

Jeff Santoro: purgatory. The market's going to fall 38% and he's going to IPO his company and take X.

Jason Hall: Well, but it's, but here's the thing. So both the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration, Biden and Trump both have pledged to not let us steel be acquired by a Nippon steel, the Japanese steel company. My prediction is that the entire reason that insinuated himself into Trump's inner circle is to get Trump to change his mind, make sure that deal happens.

So then he can IPO Twitter under the symbol [00:37:00] X. That's my 

Jeff Santoro: prediction. So you're, you're building off of my prediction and making it just a level crazier. 

Jason Hall: But the re, but the, here's the thing. There's a second level prediction because there's no guarantee that it's going to happen. If Trump doesn't change his mind, And causes the, the, the acquisition of U.

S. Steel to be blown up. That's going to be the thing that creates the acrimony that everybody expects will eventually happen. That breaks them up? That will eventually be the wedge in between Trump and Musk. That's going to be the thing. That's my reckless prediction right there. I love 

Jeff Santoro: this. I love it. I hope when that happens, we get booked on some pretty big deals.

TV shows to explain our, our collective genius. It doesn't matter how many predictions you make. You only have to be right one time and your future is set. All right. We went through my, we ridiculed me. Uh, what were your reckless predictions for this year and how did they turn out? It's only made one. Lame.

It was, it's no, it's fantastic because it was [00:38:00] 4D chess, baby. Explain 

Jason Hall: this to me. I I'm not following. I predicted. So what have we, what has been our constant threat about these reckless predictions? They're going to be wrong. I predicted that your, your actual portfolio, your money that you actually invest, your portfolio would do better than mine.

Oh, so that it wouldn't happen. I was 

Jeff Santoro: setting myself up for a better year than you. Well, we've, we've never, we have not actually checked to see who, who won this to my knowledge. No, we have not, um, measured our portfolios, have we? 

Jason Hall: We'll do that. I'll tell you what, we'll do that on the live stream. For literally everybody.

That's not me or you, Jeff, you will be listening to this after we did the live stream our first Friday in December. So you will have heard the answer to this. If you've listened to the live stream, if you haven't listened to the live stream, go find it. And we'll actually, uh, we'll do some measurements.

Right there live and you'll be able to listen to the report 

Jeff Santoro: live portfolio measurement. It's on YouTube too. So we could actually do it [00:39:00] on the screen show. All right. I will, between now and tomorrow, when, when, uh, we will do the live stream, I will, uh, I will see how I did this year and, and then lie and say that I beat you.

Okay. Let's move on. Let's move on to this year's predictions. Or at least the way we look back on last year and what we're thinking about this year. I guess a place to start is. As you look back on 2024, what surprised you just generally speaking about the market? 

Jason Hall: The obvious thing is just how well the market's done.

Um, number one, obviously the biggest companies, like how well we talked about the mag seven, how incredibly well they've all done broadly. But then if you start kind of peeling the layers back and looking at a lot of different kind of larger chunks of the market, now there's been sectors that haven't done well.

But again, like the banks, how well banks have done how well a lot of small cap stocks have done. I mean, look, some of those small cap indices are up more than 20%. It's just been generally a really, really good [00:40:00] year. For the market. And I don't think, like you said, there was definitely a lot of recency bias with how well the market finished the year that most of us were expecting.

It wouldn't, wouldn't be a great year, but it has been a remarkably good year. 

Jeff Santoro: Not to be lame, but I, that would be mine too. But for me it was, I mean, obviously I predicted that the market would be down significantly, but I think when I look back on the year, forgetting that, yeah, some surprise that went up, that's clearly not where my head was a year ago.

But I think what makes it more surprising for me is it was a pretty. Uncertain volatile year, just generally, right? You had two wars happening in other parts of the world. You had a full year of crazy acrimonious political nonsense happening. Regardless of where you are in the political spectrum, it was not a year of certainty until.

The election ended up being decisive and quick. I think that was the most certain thing that happened the whole year as it turned, as it pertains to national [00:41:00] politics. And, and then there was also just additional uncertainty about if and when we'd get interest rate cuts. You know, that was, that was the thing that got talked about over and over again until it happened.

And then after it happened, it was sort of like, okay, now we know what's going to happen moving forward. So I just, The thing that I've always sort of believed about how the market works is that uncertainty is the thing that usually makes it the most volatile. And it seems like this was a pretty uncertain year, but clearly.

I guess the interest rates coming down were enough and, and, and maybe the certainty of the election, you know, cause we saw a nice bump after that. So yeah, I think we'd have to both agree that, or we'd, that is the biggest surprise story of the year. I think as it pertains to just the market generally.

Jason Hall: Yeah. Well, I mean, Yes, but the, the underlying thing that, that the market, it was, it was a fairly volatile year. We had a couple of, five plus percent drawdowns. We had one close to 10% drawdown. So, I mean, and it was actually [00:42:00] a typical year in those regards, but it wasn't just an up into the right year.

There were some periods where the market came down a lot, but I think the bigger thing is that within all of those reasons for uncertainty and those concerns The economy just kind of kept chugging along, right? Kept growing. Looked like it maybe was overheating a little bit. They held firm on rates, maybe less rate cuts than we expected.

Which was a good thing because that meant the economy wasn't cooling off right wasn't cooling off quickly And actually some signs of maybe inflation was like so it was maybe heating up just a touch But never got like out of control where the Fed had to raise or reverse course or anything like that 

Jeff Santoro: So I mean we got I mean now that when you say that what it makes me we got this off landing, right?

Yeah, isn't it fair to say? No, I think we got the no landing 

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Jason Hall: For a while, that was the, like, that, that was the thing. It was like, are we going to get the hard landing or the soft landing? And a few people were saying, well, what about a no landing? We got a no landing. The, I mean, the economy never really got soft, never really.

It just kept chugging along and the fed did their mandate with, with, with inflation brought it yet still needs to come down more, but I think 

Jeff Santoro: that's the soft landing, right? Like we. We got inflation under control, at least to a point where they could feel comfortable cutting rates and, and, and did not crash the economy to do it.

That's the soft landing. I feel like we got it. 

Jason Hall: Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think, I don't think that landed though. I think that's my point, is it's just, it's continued to if you look at GDP growth, it's just still been good. There's no periods where it's come down to one, two percent. So, we're arguing the edges at this point.

Jeff Santoro: I'm sure this is riveting to listen to. All right. Let's look back on the year. We both went back to our portfolios and figured this out. [00:45:00] What was your best investment you made in 2024 and what was your worst? And I don't know if we did, but I don't know if we went about this the right way, like the same way I went to find like an individual purchases.

I made that were the exact same thing. So this is not stocks we own that did the best. Right. And 2024, just like an individual purchase you made in the calendar year that did the best and that did the worst. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. So let me, let me say this too, in case we haven't said it earlier. We're recording this stuff, uh, first week of, uh, near the end of the first week of December.

So we've still got a few weeks of, of trading here to go, but so far it's been upstart. I made a couple of investments early in the year. Uh, one that was up 185% that I made one in April. It's up almost 200%. So almost triple, uh, it's done in credit. Like it's up a massive amount since the election.

There's that theme again. I want to add two more that. Like, I think these are the ones that have earned, they've done really well, but also kind of earned it and so far and confluent, so far and confluent. I bought a pretty sizable amount of [00:46:00] both earlier this year and I was pounding the table on confluent.

I think their business results have backed up the stock gains more. So it's been, it's been, the business has done really well, but also the market has come back to the potential, like both of those things with upstart. It's still just a lot of like, we see the potential, the business still has a lot of work to do to earn it.

Jeff Santoro: All right, what about your worst worst one of the year 

Jason Hall: stem? I knew at the beginning of the year the company was kind of a mess. And, and I bought, I bought more since then the long time ceo. It has been basically pushed out the door. There've been some early investors that have left, brought in some outside people and it's a penny stock at this point.

You know, there's a clear, very high probability that the company goes bankrupt or it's just like a scrap heap acquisition to save some pennies. Uh, that some large investors. And the company make happen before bankruptcy actually happens. But bankruptcy is [00:47:00] a real potential. I went into it's, it was down a lot when, when I made this investment earlier in the year, it's fallen another 80% since then.

So it's that reminder. It doesn't matter of whatever percentage it's down when you buy it, it can fall a hundred percent from the day that you bought it. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. Yeah. I, I've seen the same thing without said medical. Like it's, it has fallen 70%, then another 80%, then another 80%, then another 80%.

It's just like constant. Yeah. And it's interesting, like when you go back and look at like purchases made in the year that I've done the best versus What stock that you've owned for the whole year has done the best, right? Those are two different things. Cause like for me, it would be Nvidia for sure.

Cause I, but I haven't bought it in a couple of years now. It's just old positions that have taken off. So for me, purchase I made in the year that has done the wet. The best is on April 10th. I bought Kinsale Capital and that positions up 97%. So I'll take that. That was a, a good lucky buy [00:48:00] right there.

My worst is and you'll, you'll never guess Jason smart by lucky timing. All right, fine. I'll take that. I was being self deprecating. What do you think my worst was? I'll give you one guess. It's probably something that all the fizz has gone out of. No, no. Well, all right. I put two down because so Celsius was my actual worst, like intentional buy.

I bought some in March. That was before it even started the fall. I actually. Was waiting a really long time to buy it. And I was like, fine, I'm just going to bite the bullet and buy a little more. And of course, like the day after I bought it, it fell, it has not stopped. So that position is down 70%. So that's got to be outset medical then it's outside medical.

But the funny thing is the reason I'm not really counting it for this particular thing is because if I remember correctly, the only reason I bought it on June 21st, and the only reason I did was. I had made my buy that I wanted to do that day. And I had like enough money left over to just [00:49:00] round up.

Outset from like the fractional amount to like a whole share amount. And I think I just did that to use up the rest of my cash. Cause I wasn't having 

Jason Hall: three cents in your pocket and being like, you know what? I don't want to carry this money around. I'm just going to throw it in this gutter. 

Jeff Santoro: Well, yeah, it was mostly that, I guess, in hindsight, I guess I'm going to give myself credit.

At least I didn't. Decide during this year while everything was falling apart to add significantly to the position. Yeah. No, that's true I guess that was just 

Jason Hall: an 

Jeff Santoro: ocd bad decision. Yeah. Well, i'll put it this way my june 21st Purchase of outset medical had nothing to do with my conviction in the company It was stupid dumb decision.

Anyway, that's down 71. All right. What is something that You think you got wrong about the year that we didn't talk about on last year's show? Yeah, we, we talked a lot about 

Jason Hall: big companies. Yeah, I expect, I expected, small caps would have a really good year and they're up 20% and by really any reasonable definition, 20% is a really good year, but when [00:50:00] the market's up 30 % and the mag sevens done what it's done, the mega caps have done what they've done.

I would have expected more. So that's probably the biggest thing that. I was wrong about that. Like as an investor and the choice, some of the choices I was making as an investor, I got wrong. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. I, I have two, one that I actually wrote down and one that I actually just thought of, so one is just not so much during the later part of the year when the interest rates started to come down, but.

I, I had been saying ever since rates started going up that I really expected to be a lot of acquisitions of companies that couldn't handle the higher cost of capital or companies going bankrupt. Like I thought we'd see a lot more mergers and acquisitions, things going private. And it didn't happen when I originally thought it would.

And then it didn't happen after I originally thought it would. So I thought at least for the first half of 2024, maybe we'd start to see some of that. Yeah. It just didn't happen. At least not in the world of stocks that I keep my eye on. I'm sure there were those [00:51:00] instances out there.

So that's one. And I think the other one, as I think about, cause what made me think of this was you saying things you got wrong as an investor, I think I'm surprised. That the REITs that I own have not done better in a year when the market has really ripped. I, you know, I have only a few of them partially cause I want the dividend yield, but I'm just surprised that they haven't benefited as much as, some of the other stocks that I own.

Jason Hall: Yeah. It's been a really mixed bag. Like what's the Simon property group, for example, his, like it's doubled this year. It's had a really good year. Of course, one 

Jeff Santoro: of the ones I no longer own that I used to. 

Jason Hall: Probably the, mentioning Reet's probably the one thing. Other thing that I don't say I got it wrong, but I certainly wasn't expecting it. Is everything we've seen again since the election with a lot of the, uh, Trump's policies and the tariffs and things that he's talked about, how much it's affected like a lot of industrial REITs like Rexford, for example, it's very West coast [00:52:00] space.

So a ton of things that are tied to imports and, uh, light manufacturing and distribution of things that are going to be coming in from through the ports of long beach in LA. Um, it's been hit really hard and there's a number of other REITs that have been affected kind of the same way. So, that's very much caught me off guard.

Jeff Santoro: Yeah, that makes sense. All right. What stock do you think will end 2025 with the largest market cap? So, this is a fun one to think about since we had a conversation earlier about Ryan's prediction about the Mag 7 this year. What do you think? A year from now or a little more than a year from now, who's, who's on top as we get to the end of 2025?

the top four, 

Jason Hall: we've got Apple, NVIDIA. Uh, Microsoft and Amazon and like just the mental exercise of kind of thinking through those again with the catalyst of AI. Uh, I feel like Apple has been like the like flight to safety. It's done. So well, because it's just viewed as this big, safe, great, super profitable company.

Uh, but AI is [00:53:00] such a big driver for the other three. It's hard to see like in that rising tide where they all just don't do really well. Or the order really get mixed, but I'll say this, like there's this potential. Where Microsoft really starts to get more monetization of the AI that they're building to sell to their customers, their enterprise customers, where they really started getting some serious leverage there and maybe NVIDIA that maybe demand just flatlines a little bit and.

And video stock just doesn't continue to triple every year where, where maybe Microsoft becomes the biggest winner here. Amazon's so far behind. I just think if, if AI continues to rip, the others are going to do well too. It's hard to see it pass, those other three companies. So I'm going to be reckless and make the prediction.

Microsoft really starts to monetize AI in ways the others aren't built to be able to monetize. Uh, on the software side and it's going to be the biggest company by market cap. What about you? 

Jeff Santoro: All right. I'm going. I [00:54:00] don't know that I believe this is going to be true, but I'll take the contrarian take.

Oh, I don't believe what I said either, but that's not the point. I'm going to take the contrarian AI point of view for this year, and I'm going to say that the AI, some of the air will come out of the AI bubble, and that will pull down Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Amazon to maybe, Regular valuations.

Like I had said earlier, like if, if AI ever fizzles out, we'll find out how much of those companies market caps were AI expectations. Yeah. Um, so I'm going to say that some of the air does come out of that bubble. They, Revert to the mean, so to speak, in some ways and, and simply by just not being as impacted by it as the least to lose has the least to lose.

And because they already are the biggest company, I'll say apple and the year as the largest company. All right. All right. Somehow we're both going to be wrong though. I can't wait a year from now. It'll be fun. All right, let's do some quick lightning round, uh, picks as we end the, as we end up and the episode here.

Uh, What's a stock you think [00:55:00] is a buy in 2025? 

Jason Hall: So this is, this was really hard. I'm so recency bias, the markets rip valuations are up the, the high convictions ideas I had at the beginning of the year, those best performing stocks that we talked about, they've done so incredibly well, and there's so much already baked into them.

I'm going to. Make an extremely reckless prediction here. I was going to say Starbucks because I think, and I believe this, like I actually believe every bit of this is going to happen. I think they've got the right CEO in place operationally. They're going to get their house fixed. That's going to be better customer service.

Customers are going to come back. The brand is going to shine. It's going to be a great year for the stock. But that's too methodical and easy to explain. So instead I'm going to go bottom fishing and I'm going to say that in phase is going to have a big bounce back here just because the expectations are so damn low.

Everybody's convinced that. With Republican controlling both parts of Congress [00:56:00] and a Republican president, and it seems like a lot of momentum around the idea of gutting a lot of the incentives for renewables we, we saw the same thing happen with the affordable care act, which is still the law of the land.

I just don't, I don't believe that a lot of the campaign promises are going to happen. There's too much money. Uh, affecting too many constituencies, I think to unplug all of these incentives and renewable demand is still going to recover. So I think from this like low, this nadir where we are right now, the expectations are so low, and this is a really, really good business.

I think Enphase is just going to rip this year. All right. But I also put it in my 2024 portfolio contest portfolio. 

Jeff Santoro: And I was very, very wrong. Yeah. Well, you know, bottom fishing has always turned out well for investors. So this'll be fun to watch. I'm picking a really good business though. I hope you're right.

I just don't think you will be. All right. I went with a combination of what I think is sticking with the winner's keep winning [00:57:00] mantra, but also hasn't gotten completely overvalued in 2024. And I went with Mercado Libre. I, I still think that it's got a ton of growth ahead of it. And it did not at, at, to this point, anyway, I still look at it and say, I don't feel like it's this inflated valuation that it doesn't deserve.

In fact, I still think in some ways it's not being not given the credit it deserves for the results it has put up. So I'm going to say MercadoLibre is a stock to buy for 2025. All right, flipping the script, Jason, what is a stock to avoid? For 2025, 

Jason Hall: I struggled with this one as much as, as the other question.

And for the other side of the reason that it's difficult right now is because we're seeing so much momentum driving the market. And that can continue as we talked about in the episode, when we were quoting, uh, Jeff Fisher, uh, his blue sky post, uh, we can see momentum continue to drive the market for a lot longer than, uh, maybe we expect, but I'm going to.[00:58:00] 

I'm going to go with a bottom fishing one to avoid. And it's one that I had high hopes for. I actually made a bet on a turnaround a long time ago, sold it because things weren't working and I've continued to watch it and hope, uh, but now Pat Gelsinger's out so it's Intel I'm talking about and the company is a mess.

Gelsinger was probably the best person to take the business and try to just force it into a way forward to be successful. Investors ran out of patience. The board for whatever reason, wasn't willing to go ahead. Give, continue to commit to try and actually see this through they're stopping basically halfway through what it would have taken to build Intel into a separate foundry business.

And, uh, uh, a fabless designer of semiconductors. The it's a company without direction. It's a mess. It's missed every big trend [00:59:00] in semiconductors in the past 20 years, mobile AI. Yeah, I think it's a stock that until there's some real clear directions and answers about its forward strategy, investors should probably stay away.

Caveat, we could see it as, as an acquisition target, like a legit acquisition target at this point. And there could be upside from there, but beyond that, I think there's just more risk.

Hey Jeff, what about your, uh, what about your stock to avoid? Are you going to, are you going to sing a new song or going back to, uh, Uh, an old verse from the same one. 

Jeff Santoro: I'm going to touch the hot stove and expect to not get burned and I'm going to go with Tesla. I can't get out of my head the risk and the volatility that I think that stock could be in for simply because of Musk's decision to insert himself into politics.

And again, this is not a political statement. I would say this, whether I was Republican or Democrat or an independent, I just feel like. It's too close. Those are two very strong [01:00:00] personalities. And my observation of Tesla stock is that it trades partially because of the fundamentals of the business, but mostly because of meme reasons, what Elon says and does and the vibes around him.

So to the earlier point about the potential acronym, acrimonious evolution of the Musk Trump relationship. Um, I, I believe that will happen over the course of this year. And I think the stock will suffer. Because of it. And I don't think that will have anything to do with the business itself and it's and its ability to make electric cars and, and solar roof panels and things like that.

But if we're talking stock price, um, and just avoiding it for what could be potentially a down year, or maybe just a super volatile ride that people don't want to go on, I would say. Tesla is the stock to avoid for 2025. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. I mean, as much as all the other stuff, and again, this, this refrain has been the same refrain for five plus years.

Jeff as much as all the other stuff gets talked about, [01:01:00] it's still a car company, right. And it's a $1.1 trillion car company. So there's, yeah, there's so much expectations of other stuff that has like AI supposed to be a big deal. Musk has a 50 billion. AI startup, right? So there's, yeah, there's just so much, so much 

Jeff Santoro: reason to question.

Yeah. And, and his pay package just got denied again by a judge. So who knows, who knows what impact that has on his decision making process. So anyway, just too much, too much stuff there for me to feel comfortable. All right. Last question. Let's wrap this up. The one we've all been waiting for. What is your reckless prediction for 2025?

Jason Hall: Jeff, I think, uh, the average home selling price in the United States is going to decline in 2025. Do you want this to 

Jeff Santoro: happen just so you can tell Ryan he's wrong? He was a year early.

Yeah, this is just me more, more of me, uh, trolling, trolling Brett. All right. So tell me why. Why do you think that this is the year that we see the average home selling price decline? So I, I 

Jason Hall: [01:02:00] think, so again, Not, it's not about politics, but it's thinking through what could happen broadly in the near term there, there seems like there's a lot of commitments to do a lot of protectionist things with things like tariffs.

I mean, there's a lot, and I, I'll say this too, again, this is not, you know, I'm not making a, a partisan statement in either way here. I understand a lot of the reason why I've covered a lot of industries that have dealt with anti competitive anti free trade things happening from foreign actors. That have really damaged and hindered American, uh, businesses competing against countries that we have free trade agreements with, right?

So countries that have broken the law. So I completely get a lot of the idea of the vibe around a lot of things that, uh, that Trump has talked about. I really, I really do. I also think a lot of those things would be incredibly damaging to the economy. Particularly in the short term there's a view that tariffs instead of sanctions is a more powerful way to leverage the dollar as [01:03:00] the, the global currency, because the more sanctions you create, the bigger pocket you create for forcing bad actors out of the network that is the U S dollar.

So. In the long term, they could be beneficial, but in the short term, I think they would be very damaging to the economy. And if there's anything that will drive housing prices down, it's a weak economy. So, I think if those things happen there's also questions about whether interest rates Are going to fall or climb and a lot of the bets now are on interest rates actually moving up next year.

We'll see if that actually happens or not, but those, those things are all headwinds to, to housing prices. Um, I think we might start to see a little more supply come online too. Builders are starting to kind of get to a point where they can ramp inventory back up again on the new side. And when that happens, then that brings, Prices down on the existing inventory side.

I think you put all those things together and I think it's less that Brett was wrong last year as he was just early. I think it's, [01:04:00] I think it's, we are probably set for prices to come down a little bit, not 10% cause that's like the stock market falling 30%. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Jason Hall: But just down.

Jeff Santoro: All right. I'm, I'm admittedly bad at reckless predictions. Mine are not reckless, nor are they an original or interesting. And I like to make macro bets. I'm going to, I'm going to double down on last year, but a little bit less, a little bit less severely and say that the market will end the year down more than 10%.

Not quite the 20% I predicted for this year. 

Jason Hall: Hey, hang on. Hang on. Before you finish. I just need to go into my brokerage and go ahead and sell all my bonds and just buy stocks before this comes out. All 

Jeff Santoro: of you who want an up year in the market, you're, you're welcome. I think that best case scenario, I think we have like an even year. I don't think we having an up year. That's my, That's where my head is. Yeah. And to me, it's just about, again, uncertainty and volatility that I think we're in for. To your, to your point, you just made about certain things that Trump has proposed being bad for the economy.

I agree. I have a feeling they may not actually come to [01:05:00] fruition because when push comes to shove, I don't believe he wants the negative headlines of. Bad market conditions. But, 

Jason Hall: but I think it's a good, it's a good reminder that most campaign promises never make it to legislation. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. And, but even just like the threat of certain things and the, the, the implementation of trying to do some things are going to, Shake the markets right like not necessarily because it ultimately happened in the worst case scenario But because the threat of it or the potential of it I mean you you saw what happened, you know the day he announced the increased sanctions on Mexico Canada and China Right.

The market reacted to that and he's not even president yet. It's just like, here's what I'd like to do. So I feel like we're in a, we're in for a year of, I'm going to do this. I'm going to try this. I want to do that. And I think the market's going to move every time he does that, which will just stunt runs enough to not have us have an up year.

Yeah, I will probably be wrong and we'll sit here a year [01:06:00] from now and make fun of me, but that's, that's my. Not so reckless prediction for 2025. 

Jason Hall: Well, Jeff, if it makes you feel better, um, one year from now We're gonna sit here and I'm gonna make fun of you whether you're 

Jeff Santoro: right or you're wrong And that's why I will be here a year from now because that's the only reason I do the podcast

Jason Hall: I think we're uh I think we're done here. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. Let's wrap this up. It's been a long episode. It has been a long episode. 

Jason Hall: Jeff. That is a problem that we can fix in post production. Yes, it is. But we are going to wrap this up. So hope you enjoyed our predictions.

Reckless for 2025, the fun that we had reviewing our 2024 predictions, the fun we had making fun of the absent people who can't defend their predictions that were wrong for 2024. Stay tuned for more. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I have no idea what I'm doing here. Just, you know what? I'm just going to end the show.

I'm I think 

Jeff Santoro: we should make the endings shorter in general, because no one's listening at that point. Anyway. Yeah. I'm listening. I think [01:07:00] as soon as they hear the music start to come up, they just skip to the end. 

Jason Hall: Jeff, that is a problem we can fix in post production, but let's end it anyway. And we will end it in our usual fashion. As always these are our predictions, our answers, our thoughts, they belong to us. You can borrow them. You can try them on, but it is up to you to figure this stuff out and make your best decisions for yourself. You can do it. I believe in you. All right, Jeff, we'll see you next time. 

Jeff Santoro: See you next time.