TGIT: 2025 Financial Forecasts (Part 1 of 3)

Our pick for investment theme of the year, Trump's ship-talking, NVO's weight loss, the LMND squeeze, quantum's qubit computing, the poor man's covered call, crude outlooks, Super Bowl picks and more. First time reading? Join other risk-takers, entrepreneurs, traders, investors, data geeks and alpha types. Sign up for free here.

TGI Thursday! (1/9) With the new year upon us, we’ll be serving up our annual market forecast and 2025 predictions throughout the month of January. We’ll also be sharing the insight and forecasts of our readers.

Thanks to all of you who have participated in our reader survey. These comments from Kevin Laska (Aurora, CO) seem particularly prescient: “I think robotics will be dominant in 2025. I believe the deglobalization of factory work is happening and will be aided by robotics in high cost of labor locales. Also, I believe we will see more robotics developed as weapons for the military.” We’re with Kevin. AI-enabled robotics is our pick for investment theme of the year.

The robotic revolution, long confined to science fiction and factory floors, is about to breach the walls of mainstream consciousness with magnificent indifference to our lack of preparedness. 2025 stands as the inflection point where autonomous systems cease to be a novelty and become an economic necessity. In the twilight hours of ride-sharing, Tesla's full self-driving capabilities already inspire more confidence than the imperfect skills of drowsy human counterparts. 

And with 4.2 million factory robots already deployed worldwide and the robotics arm market poised to reach $84.66 billion by 2031, automatons are taking over the assembly lines. When University of Oxford researchers note that 47% of U.S. jobs could be automated, it isn't merely academic speculation—it's becoming operational reality. 

Yet this isn't just about machines replacing humans. It’s more like collaboration. In warehouses and factories, over 80% of manufacturers have embraced automation for palletization, while keeping humans on the job for nuanced decision-making and system oversight. The rise of robotic foundation models promises to expand the machines’ capabilities beyond narrow tasks, much the way large language models transformed AI. 

The winners won't be the niche players but instead the consolidated titans meeting challenges in healthcare, logistics and life sciences. As labor costs surge and geopolitical turbulence rattles supply chains, automation isn't just an option—it's an imperative. You’ll see more from us on robotics in 2025, including what companies to watch. 

And, congratulations to the readers who’ve been randomly selected as the lucky winners of a Luckbox T-shirt! Besides Kevin Laska, whose thoughts on AI we quoted above, winners include Adam Bates (Chandler, AZ), Rick Longay (Ontario, Canada) Rahul Chugh (Fremont, CA) and Mary Ellen Reese (Oceanside, CA). Thanks for participating in the 2025 forecasting survey. (Please email us your T-shirt size and mailing address by clicking the Editorial Director link below.)  

Stay Lucky! 

Editorial Director

While President-elect Donald Trump's threat to "take back" the Panama Canal and buy Greenland grabs headlines, the real storm brewing for global shipping lies in his proposed tariffs. Marine shipping stocks are already sinking—some plunging 40% this year—and both the Panama and Suez canals are battling climate and geopolitical crises. Does that mean Trump's tough talk on tariffs could help create a perfect storm for seaborne trade and marine shipping stocks? Read Full Story

40% of U.S. container ship traffic passes through
the Panama Canal

— Visual Capitalist

Argentina's radical economic makeover under President Milei sent its stock market soaring 160% in 2024. With U.S. debt surpassing $36 trillion, some American leaders are eyeing Milei's slash-and-burn playbook. Yet history suggests America won't swallow the bitter pill of austerity until crisis strikes. As Argentina's poverty rate hits 53% amid "shock therapy" reforms, the burning question remains: Will the U.S. learn from Milei's bold experiment, or is it doomed to repeat Argentina's painful past? Read Full Story

While Wall Street obsesses over AI, our analyst is eyeing four explosive opportunities the technology is creating for 2025. From quantum computing's promise to revolutionize AI to China's potential stimulus-fueled comeback, these trades could deliver monster returns. Add in big data's meteoric rise and biotech's long-awaited awakening, and you've got a potent profit cocktail. But with geopolitical storms brewing and the U.S. debt clock ticking past $36 trillion, timing is everything. Here's your roadmap to navigating the new year’s biggest opportunities. Read Full Story

Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) market cap just shed 20%. But does that make the stock a a bargain? With strong earnings and a solid pipeline, here's why active investors should take a fresh look at the makers of Wegovy and Ozempic. Read Full Story

Shares in Lemonade (LMND) rose an impressive 100% in November. But will the insurance tech leader continue to soar despite a lofty valuation and persistent losses? Read Full Story

Long-term investors consider covered calls a staple of their strategic arsenals, but options traders can mimic the position with a lot more capital efficiency. How? Nick Battista explains the poor man’s covered call in the latest episode of Life Cycle of a Trade. He uses a position in Target (TGT) to show how to use an ITM long call option in place of a stock.

This week's Cherry Picks includes an essential table for futures traders. It reveals the notional value of mean daily moves, shares the forecasts of 2,000 active traders hoping to the final SPX print of Q1, offers a yield curve table, provides an Nvidia (NVDA) iron condor trade and suggests a QQQ crab trade. Read Full Story

Crystal Bowl 🔮

Throughout January, Luckbox TGIT will feature market forecasts for 2025. To prepare, we’ve surveyed our readers, convened a friendly panel of financial professionals and sought out some respected pundits. They’ll all be participants in our annual ritual of financial forecasting.

But, why not forecast the fun stuff, too? With Super Bowl LIX approaching (that’s 59, for you barbarians), we invited Luckbox readers to our virtual prediction market. Here’s what you told us: Chiefs 26%, Lions 21%, Bills 14% and Eagles 9%. To benchmark, we looked to the New York Times Athletic model, which ran 100,000 simulations. Their forecast: Chiefs 23%, Lions 22%, Eagles and Bills both 11%. Surprising similarities!

Then, we asked our panel of pros (whom you’ll be hearing from over the next few weeks) for their forecasts. Ed Yardeni (Yardeni Research) and Sylvia Jablonski (Defiance ETFs) both picked the Chiefs. Dylan Ratigan (former MSNBC host), Tony “The BAT” Battista (tastylive), Anthony Scaramucci (Skybridge), Garrett Baldwin (Florida Republic) and Jeff Joseph (Luckbox) picked the Bills. What about Tom Sosnoff? He picked the Packers—the same as 3% of Luckbox readers and the NYT Athletic model.

The oddsmakers at DraftKings are currently handicapping the outcome differently: The Lions are favored (+280), followed by Chiefs (+350), Bills (+650) and Eagles (+700).

Quantum Leaps 🅠 

While EVs and cloud computing conquered markets, quantum computing has been quietly amassing $5.4 billion in venture capital since 2017. Now, tech giants like IBM (IBM) and Alphabet (GOOG) are racing to harness the mind-bending power of qubits—quantum bits that can be both zero and one simultaneously. With 100 entangled qubits yielding 10 trillion years of traditional computing power, the stakes are astronomical and sent stocks like TPGT Strategic (IONQ) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) skyrocketing in 2024. Learn how the Defiance Quantum ETF (QTUM) offers a diversified approach to gaining exposure to this groundbreaking technology. Read Full Story

Crude Outlooks 🛢️

There’s an ample supply of oil, thanks to increased production in non-OPEC countries and persistently weak demand from China. Geopolitical disruptions and domestic political prescriptions likely pose the largest risk to the market. Here's how 2025 is shaping up. Read Full Story

More Cowbell

The cost-saving robots making Chick-fil-A's lemonade. 

The six most WTF robots at CES this week. 

Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang’s CES keynote. 

Technician Tim Knight sees trouble ahead for AI. 

Mike Butler is bullish on these five stocks in 2025. 

Study: Fitness trumps weight in determining longevity. 

How Soros-backed operatives transformed Wikipedia. 

Inflation will persist, so prepare for a Q1 interest rate shock. 

ICYMI: Tom Sosnoff’s three best recent videos.  

Bookmark this page for daily market news and insight. 

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