How to Profit in Second Half of 2025
425: The Playbook for Crypto, Stocks & Real Estate in a Melting Market
Morning everyone — as we approach the end of June, I want to do another comprehensive guide to markets in 2025 — call it part 2 to the Getting Rich in 2025 post I did earlier this year.
It’s been a wild year so far even if we compare what’s taken place to 2020 and 2021 (kind of wild I am writing that, makes me feel old).
Markets in 2025 have gone vertical — and the headlines are unhinged:
Palantir detonated higher shortly after our call in late 2024, ripping over 95% YTD and up a whopping 400%+ since last July, with most of that surge happening since March
Broadcom AVGO 0.00%↑ one of our picks from the 2025 Guide is up 63% in the last 3 months
MicroStrategy, now the world’s top corporate Bitcoin vault (holding nearly 600,000 BTC), trades around $404 today—after soaring from ~$100 to $543 during the late‑2024 rally. Its latest batch of acquisitions (another 5,000 BTC in June) confirms that it's become a leveraged crypto proxy
SoundHound AI and Symbotic blindsided everyone with triple-digit returns, powered by sudden enterprise adoption of voice AI and warehouse automation. Both were written off last year. Now they’re up over 120% since April.
And then there’s Tesla, which reversed its entire 2024 drawdown and exploded more than 70% since February after launching its FSD subscription tier and teasing quiet progress in humanoid robotics. Yes—robotics. Markets didn’t care about the fundamentals. People are betting on the vision.
Meanwhile, Super Micro Computer (SMCI) is up 63% YTD, driven by explosive demand for AI server infrastructure.
AMD 0.00%↑ one of our picks from 2 months ago is up 38% the last three months.
GameStop came back from the dead in May, with Roaring Kitty reappearing on social media and igniting a swift 180% rally in two sessions, triggering a wave of short seller liquidations and halting trading multiple times in a single day.
The S&P 500 is up over 6% year-to-date, hitting fresh all-time highs
Beneath all that euphoria is a deeply unstable macro foundation, and yet people want to believe that we’re going so much higher.
Skeptics and doomers have reasons to be concerned — U.S. economic growth is slowing, with most major forecasts now expecting full-year GDP to land around 1.3%–1.5%, down from 2%+ expectations just months ago.
Inflation is still running hot, stuck between 3% and 4%, even as consumer spending shows signs of cooling. Unemployment is ticking up, with projections pointing to a 4.5% rate by Q4. And rate cuts? The Fed is increasingly signaling those may not arrive until late 2025 or even 2026.
Trump and Jerome Powell are beefing — with Trump basically commanding Powell to cut rates this week on a hand written note.
Meanwhile, you’ve got hedge funds underperforming, retail traders outperforming, and entire sectors melting up while the macro backdrop looks like a fever dream: stagflation on deck, oil price shocks, renewed tariffs, and central banks frozen in analysis paralysis.
And yet—assets keep climbing.
Stocks are at all-time highs. Bitcoin just logged its highest monthly close ever. Tokenized stocks are now trading 24/7. Defense ETFs are ripping. Nvidia is worth more than most developed countries.
A whole slew of global events have shaped markets this year as well as a pivotal election in the United States. Tariffs being introduced momentarily CRATERED us — so I dropped the What I am Buying On The Dip Post — predictably we bounced HARD.
It’s becoming the norm now to have big news drop every few days — the market in some ways has become immune to major headlines and we manage to somehow just keep chugging higher.
Our friends at the Kobeissi Letter have been putting out some great content this month, but one tweet from yesterday was particularly crazy and really puts all of the madness into perspective:
The US stock market has never been as big as it is now. Total US public equity market capitalization hit a record $63.8 TRILLION, according to Goldman Sachs data. That’s DOUBLE the size it was 5 years ago.
By comparison, previously it took 8 years, from 2012 to 2020, for the market to double in value. It is also now larger than the combined market size of Europe, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and India.
Of course a large part of this is simply asset inflation from endless money printing, but it’s still wild to think about.
So what happens next and what does it mean for the average investor or trader?
This post is for those paying close attention. For those who know that owning nothing and playing defense isn’t going to cut it in a world where inflation is sticky, geopolitical risk is surging in many regions, and asset prices are melting upward despite the chaos.
Those who have been tepid or slow to move continue to lose. It’s a market environment few have been in before.
Today we’re going to cover the following in detail:
Market expectations for the rest of the year, key data points about where the US is in the economic cycle
Crypto, the current cycle, individual plays, institutional adoption and the opportunities it presents moving forward
Equity markets, stock picks, and the impact of tariffs, the Federal Reserve, and Trump administration
Real Estate, buying a first home, where the market might be headed
Each section will have my individual picks for the rest of the year, review some of the winners that are still printing, and for real estate I will share my personal thoughts on the state of the market and when/where I am looking to buy.
More people are waking up to the idea that we are in a structural repricing of everything, from stocks to hard assets to internet money. I am a firm believer in this phenomenon.
We’ve seen central banks flip-flop, entire sectors moon off AI announcements, meme coins revive millionaires, and retail outpacing hedge funds in real time.
It’s not normal. But it might be the new normal.
So the question now is simple: Are you exposed to the right plays?