Best Idea(s) for 2025

[Malmqky]

On 12/17/2024 at 8:39 AM, Malmqky said:

Still Nintendo.

 

Everything else I like needs a longer timeframe than one year.

 

Up 26.50% (33.85% for the ADR) so far.

 

If only everything was this easy.

[Xerxes]

**Bump**

 

It is that time of the year.
 

To review 2025 predictions, right or wrong, and hopefully extract something from them.

 

One can be right yet for the wrong reasons. And one can be wrong, but also be wrong for the wrong reasons. They both count wrong I think. 
 

And of course make new predictions for 2026 and stay humble.

….  in a new thread hopefully …

 

 

[frommi]

Thanks for bringing it up again. BTI/IMB/EVO were my picks. While BTI and IMB were just chugging along nicely with a total return of 60% and 40%, Evo was a bad pick with -20% (in USD). Maybe a good lesson could be that momentum is not such a bad indicator, because in the previous year the returns looked similar. So maybe the lesson is to not buy fallen knives, but increase positions that are still cheap and are already in the upswing?

Edited November 24, 2025 by frommi

[brobro777]

Nintendo, JOE (which was down -20% in 2024) and tobacco all turned out good in 2025

 

But da real money maker for me in 2025 was going long stock index futures from the tariff sell off in April, which I didn't expect coming into the year, so as always it's better to be lucky than good

 

 

[Spekulatius]

2 hours ago, frommi said:

Thanks for bringing it up again. BTI/IMB/EVO were my picks. While BTI and IMB were just chugging along nicely with a total return of 60% and 40%, Evo was a bad pick with -20% (in USD). Maybe a good lesson could be that momentum is not such a bad indicator, because in the previous year the returns looked similar. So maybe the lesson is to not buy fallen knives, but increase positions that are still cheap and are already in the upswing?

Wasn’t BTI a fallen knife at that point early this year also?

[frommi]

14 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

Wasn’t BTI a fallen knife at that point early this year also?

No, it was at the start of 2024, but when you look at the chart, it only really began to rally mid 2024, at that point it was roughly flat for a year. And beginning 2025 it was up like 30% on the year.

[thowed]

I was very taken by the idea of TPL under 1200, which somebody here put, which didn't work out so well!  My cost base is much lower from the past, but I added gradually on the way down to (what I hope is) the bottom.

[SafetyinNumbers]

Has anyone compiled the returns from these ideas?

[Red Lion]

On 12/17/2024 at 7:14 AM, Cod Liver Oil said:

Pair trade:

Long Joe at $47

Short MSTR at $405.

 

All the btc skeptics have capitulated (myself included) and Saylor needs a lot more fiber in his diet. 
 

Not investment advice

 

 

This has got to be the best result. Did you put this trade on? At least I had JOE. 

[Cod Liver Oil]

@Red Lion  Ha!!!!! Yes, still very long Joe but covered Saylor quickly for about 100 point profit. 

Edited December 29, 2025 by Cod Liver Oil

[ranimo]

On 12/16/2024 at 7:03 PM, formthirteen said:

ASML and CELH.

Good call!

[formthirteen]

5 hours ago, ranimo said:

Good call!

 

Thanks. 

[CorpRaider]

On 12/16/2024 at 10:41 AM, CorpRaider said:

I'll take a shot: $MODG spin or sale of Topgolf; Callaway etc. re-rates to more acushnet-like multiple (which I think gives you a little more than total current market cap).

+49.36% 2025 YTD but man was it bumpy

[Saluki]

I think as a thesis, profitable small caps (not story stocks) will have a great 2026. As the SP500 index continues to do well and the PE is higher and higher, the cap weight feature means that the 10 biggest stocks will continue to suck the oxygen away from small caps. 

 

I'm seeing some really cheap stuff, below $100mm and profitable. 

 

I also notice that a lot of stuff that is has hair on it but looks great long term (Venture Global, Crox, Nintendo) continues to be down because people won't buy it because it's down. Even though it looks less risky than it did a year ago. Weird.

[Marco Van Basten]

18 minutes ago, Saluki said:

I think as a thesis, profitable small caps (not story stocks) will have a great 2026. As the SP500 index continues to do well and the PE is higher and higher, the cap weight feature means that the 10 biggest stocks will continue to suck the oxygen away from small caps. 

 

I'm seeing some really cheap stuff, below $100mm and profitable. 

 

I also notice that a lot of stuff that is has hair on it but looks great long term (Venture Global, Crox, Nintendo) continues to be down because people won't buy it because it's down. Even though it looks less risky than it did a year ago. Weird.

Would you mind sharing the names of the really cheap stuff below $100MM and profitable?  Thank you.

[Saluki]

2 minutes ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Would you mind sharing the names of the really cheap stuff below $100MM and profitable?  Thank you.

 

Two that I have small positions in (and are illiquid, so don't buy without a limit order) are TableTrac and Progressive Planet Solutions. I started posts on them. 12PE, no debt, insider ownership, moats, and the first one has a ton of cash so the p/e if you back out the cash is more like 9. 

 

POWW is a little bigger, $200mm, but bad management is ousted and it should look a lot better in a year once the lawsuits with past management is behind them. Best in class in their niche, and the most likely competitors (Amazon, Meta, eBay, Craigslist etc) have no interest in selling guns. POWWP is a great trading sardine. I wouldn't buy here unless you have no other ideas, but it will probably get called at par ($25) and you get a nice dividend (+9%) while you wait. I bought around $21 and sold recently, and collected dividends along the way.  Forward P/E of 10, founder owns a huge % of company, no debt, lots of cash. etc. 

 

I'm an open book and I discuss these on the forum and on my YouTube channel (The Underdog Investor) that no one watches 

[treasurehunt]

On 12/27/2025 at 5:52 PM, SafetyinNumbers said:

Has anyone compiled the returns from these ideas?

 

Here's a sheet with the picks and returns. Not too many errors, I hope; the dividend column likely has mistakes though. For calculating returns, I assumed that dividends are paid out at the end. Also, I omitted Cod Liver Oil's excellent short MSTR pick, as I wasn't sure how to calculate the return on this.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x7GjWA6524jZG2JRvVa3qRZxYwBgZb98qjrx08AhjkQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

Average Return	35.29%
Median Return	17.69%

 

Picks with returns > 100%. The SNDK start price is from March 15, 2025 because that's when kh812000 made the pick.

 

Security	Ticker	Proponent	Current Price In USD	Price on 12/31/2024 In USD	Dividends Paid Per Share (USD)	Total Return
SanDisk Corp	SNDK	kh812000	$244.25	$54.82	$0.00	345.55%
Micron Technology Inc	MU	Longnose	$294.37	$84.16	$0.46	250.32%
Zegona Communications PLC	LON:ZEG	kab60	$18.37	$5.32	$0.00	245.18%
Federal National Mortgage Association	FNMA	sleepydragon	$10.33	$3.28	$0.00	214.94%
Liquidia Corp	LQDA	whatstheofficerproblem	$34.75	$11.76	$0.00	195.49%
Mako Mining Corp	CVE:MKO	SafetyInNumbers	$5.80	$2.41	$0.00	141.07%
Millicom International Cellular SA	TIGO	jefke	$55.31	$25.01	$4.50	139.14%
Grupo Mexico SAB de CV	GMBXF	KPO	$9.49	$4.69	$0.27	108.10%
Heidelberg Materials AG	ETR:HEI	Dinar	$262.80	$133.13	$3.89	100.32%

 

 

[SafetyinNumbers]

13 minutes ago, treasurehunt said:

 

Here's a sheet with the picks and returns. Not too many errors, I hope; the dividend column likely has mistakes though. For calculating returns, I assumed that dividends are paid out at the end. Also, I omitted Cod Liver Oil's excellent short MSTR pick, as I wasn't sure how to calculate the return on this.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x7GjWA6524jZG2JRvVa3qRZxYwBgZb98qjrx08AhjkQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

 

Average Return	35.29%
Median Return	17.69%

 

Picks with returns > 100%. The SNDK start price is from March 15, 2025 because that's when kh812000 made the pick.

 

 

 

Security	Ticker	Proponent	Current Price In USD	Price on 12/31/2024 In USD	Dividends Paid Per Share (USD)	Total Return
SanDisk Corp	SNDK	kh812000	$244.25	$54.82	$0.00	345.55%
Micron Technology Inc	MU	Longnose	$294.37	$84.16	$0.46	250.32%
Zegona Communications PLC	LON:ZEG	kab60	$18.37	$5.32	$0.00	245.18%
Federal National Mortgage Association	FNMA	sleepydragon	$10.33	$3.28	$0.00	214.94%
Liquidia Corp	LQDA	whatstheofficerproblem	$34.75	$11.76	$0.00	195.49%
Mako Mining Corp	CVE:MKO	SafetyInNumbers	$5.80	$2.41	$0.00	141.07%
Millicom International Cellular SA	TIGO	jefke	$55.31	$25.01	$4.50	139.14%
Grupo Mexico SAB de CV	GMBXF	KPO	$9.49	$4.69	$0.27	108.10%
Heidelberg Materials AG	ETR:HEI	Dinar	$262.80	$133.13	$3.89	100.32%

 

 

Thanks! That’s very helpful.

[Rainier]

2 hours ago, treasurehunt said:

 

Here's a sheet with the picks and returns. Not too many errors, I hope; the dividend column likely has mistakes though. For calculating returns, I assumed that dividends are paid out at the end. Also, I omitted Cod Liver Oil's excellent short MSTR pick, as I wasn't sure how to calculate the return on this.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x7GjWA6524jZG2JRvVa3qRZxYwBgZb98qjrx08AhjkQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

 

Average Return	35.29%
Median Return	17.69%

 

Picks with returns > 100%. The SNDK start price is from March 15, 2025 because that's when kh812000 made the pick.

 

 

 

Security	Ticker	Proponent	Current Price In USD	Price on 12/31/2024 In USD	Dividends Paid Per Share (USD)	Total Return
SanDisk Corp	SNDK	kh812000	$244.25	$54.82	$0.00	345.55%
Micron Technology Inc	MU	Longnose	$294.37	$84.16	$0.46	250.32%
Zegona Communications PLC	LON:ZEG	kab60	$18.37	$5.32	$0.00	245.18%
Federal National Mortgage Association	FNMA	sleepydragon	$10.33	$3.28	$0.00	214.94%
Liquidia Corp	LQDA	whatstheofficerproblem	$34.75	$11.76	$0.00	195.49%
Mako Mining Corp	CVE:MKO	SafetyInNumbers	$5.80	$2.41	$0.00	141.07%
Millicom International Cellular SA	TIGO	jefke	$55.31	$25.01	$4.50	139.14%
Grupo Mexico SAB de CV	GMBXF	KPO	$9.49	$4.69	$0.27	108.10%
Heidelberg Materials AG	ETR:HEI	Dinar	$262.80	$133.13	$3.89	100.32%

 

 

Thanks for doing this work, it is very interesting to see how things play out during the year.

 

I was working on this as well and came up with an estimate of roughly 43%. Your calculation is more accurate and by the book (although I think you may have left out hasilp89, who also had ZEG as well as GLV). I think the main differences between your calculations and mine are:

• I was trying to get a weighted average for the thread, so I allotted each person who had an idea with a total of $10,000. The $10,000 was then spread evenly across all of that individual's ideas. So, in the case of kh812000, all of the $10,000 went to SNDK since that was his only idea. Others might have $2,000/idea if they had 5 ideas. I was thinking of the overall return from the mindset of the thread being a fund of funds type of thing.
• I used ADR's whenever possible and I think some of them had slightly higher gains.
• For the MSTR short, I just inverted the gain calculation using the specified $405 price. I'm sure this is not how it would actually work, but I am not an expert in shorting. So, I had it at a 60% gain. Didn't know how else to do it.
• I had hasilp89 picking ZEG and GLV. I didn't see those in the google doc (but I may have missed it, I am not great with google docs).
• I included the Strathcona special dividend (see below on my more liberal take on picks) and the ZEG special dividend. Otherwise I just used the forward dividend from Yahoo Finance as of 12/24/25 (so the dividend component of the return was slightly inflated due to any dividend growth that happened during the year).
• I was also more liberal with what constituted an idea/pick. If someone said they were going to hold something they already owned or if they were generally positive about the future of a stock (even if they didn't specify it as a pick), I just threw it in and weighted it. I don't think there were any ideas in this group that were home runs (it was stuff like JOE, FRFHF, NTDOY), but they largely had some level of gain.
• I had the same +100% list as you with just slight variation in the returns due to the ZEG dividend and using ADRs for Mako and Heidelberg.

 

 

[treasurehunt]

2 hours ago, Rainier said:

Thanks for doing this work, it is very interesting to see how things play out during the year.

 

I was working on this as well and came up with an estimate of roughly 43%. Your calculation is more accurate and by the book (although I think you may have left out hasilp89, who also had ZEG as well as GLV). I think the main differences between your calculations and mine are:

• I was trying to get a weighted average for the thread, so I allotted each person who had an idea with a total of $10,000. The $10,000 was then spread evenly across all of that individual's ideas. So, in the case of kh812000, all of the $10,000 went to SNDK since that was his only idea. Others might have $2,000/idea if they had 5 ideas. I was thinking of the overall return from the mindset of the thread being a fund of funds type of thing.
• I used ADR's whenever possible and I think some of them had slightly higher gains.
• For the MSTR short, I just inverted the gain calculation using the specified $405 price. I'm sure this is not how it would actually work, but I am not an expert in shorting. So, I had it at a 60% gain. Didn't know how else to do it.
• I had hasilp89 picking ZEG and GLV. I didn't see those in the google doc (but I may have missed it, I am not great with google docs).
• I included the Strathcona special dividend (see below on my more liberal take on picks) and the ZEG special dividend. Otherwise I just used the forward dividend from Yahoo Finance as of 12/24/25 (so the dividend component of the return was slightly inflated due to any dividend growth that happened during the year).
• I was also more liberal with what constituted an idea/pick. If someone said they were going to hold something they already owned or if they were generally positive about the future of a stock (even if they didn't specify it as a pick), I just threw it in and weighted it. I don't think there were any ideas in this group that were home runs (it was stuff like JOE, FRFHF, NTDOY), but they largely had some level of gain.
• I had the same +100% list as you with just slight variation in the returns due to the ZEG dividend and using ADRs for Mako and Heidelberg.

 

 

 

Yes, I did miss hasilp89. I didn't add the Zegona special dividend because it is being paid in 2026, but I see that the ex-dividend date is in December, so I should have included it. Both of these errors have been corrected now. The average return moves up to 38.7% and the median to 18.5%. Your method of calculating the average return also makes sense. By that definition, I calculate that the average return is a whopping 50.3%! The median works out to 31.5%. Both numbers are way higher than I would have guessed.

 

[backtothebeach]

Thanks for that work @treasurehunt!

I would take FRFHF for Fairfax, since it is already in USD. Its closing price 2024 was around $1400 (FFH was C$2000), not sure why you get $1513.40 with the currency conversion.

[Rainier]

5 hours ago, treasurehunt said:

 

Yes, I did miss hasilp89. I didn't add the Zegona special dividend because it is being paid in 2026, but I see that the ex-dividend date is in December, so I should have included it. Both of these errors have been corrected now. The average return moves up to 38.7% and the median to 18.5%. Your method of calculating the average return also makes sense. By that definition, I calculate that the average return is a whopping 50.3%! The median works out to 31.5%. Both numbers are way higher than I would have guessed.

 

Yeah, no matter how you slice it - it was a really good batch of picks overall.

[Marco Van Basten]

8 hours ago, Rainier said:

Thanks for doing this work, it is very interesting to see how things play out during the year.

 

I was working on this as well and came up with an estimate of roughly 43%. Your calculation is more accurate and by the book (although I think you may have left out hasilp89, who also had ZEG as well as GLV). I think the main differences between your calculations and mine are:

• I was trying to get a weighted average for the thread, so I allotted each person who had an idea with a total of $10,000. The $10,000 was then spread evenly across all of that individual's ideas. So, in the case of kh812000, all of the $10,000 went to SNDK since that was his only idea. Others might have $2,000/idea if they had 5 ideas. I was thinking of the overall return from the mindset of the thread being a fund of funds type of thing.
• I used ADR's whenever possible and I think some of them had slightly higher gains.
• For the MSTR short, I just inverted the gain calculation using the specified $405 price. I'm sure this is not how it would actually work, but I am not an expert in shorting. So, I had it at a 60% gain. Didn't know how else to do it.
• I had hasilp89 picking ZEG and GLV. I didn't see those in the google doc (but I may have missed it, I am not great with google docs).
• I included the Strathcona special dividend (see below on my more liberal take on picks) and the ZEG special dividend. Otherwise I just used the forward dividend from Yahoo Finance as of 12/24/25 (so the dividend component of the return was slightly inflated due to any dividend growth that happened during the year).
• I was also more liberal with what constituted an idea/pick. If someone said they were going to hold something they already owned or if they were generally positive about the future of a stock (even if they didn't specify it as a pick), I just threw it in and weighted it. I don't think there were any ideas in this group that were home runs (it was stuff like JOE, FRFHF, NTDOY), but they largely had some level of gain.
• I had the same +100% list as you with just slight variation in the returns due to the ZEG dividend and using ADRs for Mako and Heidelberg.

 

 

There were several holds that did extremely well.  Safran, GE, and Tel-Aviv stock exchange for instance, up 88%, 60.6% in USD, and up 165% in USD respectively.  

[hasilp89]

9 hours ago, Rainier said:

Thanks for doing this work, it is very interesting to see how things play out during the year.

 

I was working on this as well and came up with an estimate of roughly 43%. Your calculation is more accurate and by the book (although I think you may have left out hasilp89, who also had ZEG as well as GLV). I think the main differences between your calculations and mine are:

• I was trying to get a weighted average for the thread, so I allotted each person who had an idea with a total of $10,000. The $10,000 was then spread evenly across all of that individual's ideas. So, in the case of kh812000, all of the $10,000 went to SNDK since that was his only idea. Others might have $2,000/idea if they had 5 ideas. I was thinking of the overall return from the mindset of the thread being a fund of funds type of thing.
• I used ADR's whenever possible and I think some of them had slightly higher gains.
• For the MSTR short, I just inverted the gain calculation using the specified $405 price. I'm sure this is not how it would actually work, but I am not an expert in shorting. So, I had it at a 60% gain. Didn't know how else to do it.
• I had hasilp89 picking ZEG and GLV. I didn't see those in the google doc (but I may have missed it, I am not great with google docs).
• I included the Strathcona special dividend (see below on my more liberal take on picks) and the ZEG special dividend. Otherwise I just used the forward dividend from Yahoo Finance as of 12/24/25 (so the dividend component of the return was slightly inflated due to any dividend growth that happened during the year).
• I was also more liberal with what constituted an idea/pick. If someone said they were going to hold something they already owned or if they were generally positive about the future of a stock (even if they didn't specify it as a pick), I just threw it in and weighted it. I don't think there were any ideas in this group that were home runs (it was stuff like JOE, FRFHF, NTDOY), but they largely had some level of gain.
• I had the same +100% list as you with just slight variation in the returns due to the ZEG dividend and using ADRs for Mako and Heidelberg.

 

 

thanks for the shout on zeg. Glv is all @changegonnacome though! I just tagged along.

[changegonnacome]

47 minutes ago, hasilp89 said:

thanks for the shout on zeg. Glv is all @changegonnacome though! I just tagged along.

 

And my big mistake was not following @hasilp89 into Zeg....even though he brought it to my attention and I kinda knew he was right but I'd thrown European telcos in my mental trash can (shame on me!).