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Becker Business
9 Stories We Are Following Today 9-22-25
00:03:53
In this episode, Scott Becker covers 9 key updates, including market movements, Apple and Tesla’s rebounds, Palantir’s surge, and more.
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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business. In the Becker Private Equity Podcast, we cover investing, startups, private equity, and a lot more. We hope you enjoy this. These are nine stories that we're following today. First, the markets point down this morning after hitting record highs on Thursday and Friday. Second, NASDAQ is currently up 17% year to date. The S&P is up 13.27% year to date. We regularly look at these numbers partly to understand how we're doing against those. It is what it is. Third, Apple is on the amend. Apple, after being way down all year, is now down just 2% year to date. Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple. The firm has some momentum with its new iPhone 17 release. Apple still the worst performing stock of Magnificent Seven. We'll have a separate podcast with each of the year to date. Results of the Magnificent Seven Fourth, also speaking of a Magnificent Seven stock, Tesla has had quite a resurgence. It's now up 5.5% year to date after it was way underwater most of the year. It's Tesla and Apple benefited from the markets rising. Tesla just benefited also from Elon Musk purchasing a billion dollars in company stock. Fifth, the three biggest holdings of the Gates foundation are Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft and Waste management. Of those three, Microsoft up 23% year to date, Berkshire Hathaway up almost 9% year to date and Waste Management up 7.24% year to date. One of the things that we find fascinating is Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway seem to show up on most investment list. Increasingly we also see Waste Management is a stock that people talk about as one to sort of buy and hold. 6. The H1B action we'll have a separate podcast that goes through this in more depth. The President asked to impose $100,000 fee on new H1B visas just to give people context. There's about 700,000 or so H1B visa holders in the US and up to 85,000 are issued. A My biggest problem with this whole thing is the signaling that we don't want to attract the very best and brightest to the us. That's horrendous in my view, and I'm going to be preachy. We need to be a beacon for the best and brightest and to be the most entrepreneurial country in the world. So that's that. 7th Palantir technology has been surging. Well, I wasn't watching that closely. It's back 141% year to date. Their founder Peter Thio, like him or hate him, is Brilliant. His book Zero to One is really instructive on VC and on startups. Alex Karp is the CEO of Palantir. 8th When I choke or miss a shot in golf, as I did in epic fashion on 18th hole on Saturday, my first instinct is of course to blame the club and run to the PGA Store or the Golf Galaxy. Then I reflect and I generally realize the problem is me, not the club. Finally, even though I realized it's it's me, not the club, I'll often run to the PGA Store. Anyways, it is what it is. I really need a 12 step program for golf and buying golf clubs. That's where we're at on that ninth in terms of the Magnificent Seven, I'll give you a quick round roundup of each stock year to date. First, Alphabet, Google is up 34%, Amazon and Tesla are also up 5.5% each. Apple is down around 2%, Meta Platforms is up 33%, Microsoft is up almost 23% and Nvidia is up 33.5%. So at the end of the day, Alphabet leading the pack. But Nvidia and Meta Platforms right there with it. Apple is the least of the Magnificent Seven, down 2% year to date. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity podcast. Thank you very, very much.