Forecast 2025: Substackers Share Their Top Stocks for the New Year
Get your 2025 rolling in the right way ...
My family, friends and colleagues joke that I collect all sorts of trivia — nuggets about historical events, airplanes, Pittsburgh sports, baseball, cars, companies, market events, famous folks, movies and more.
I also “collect” people.
It started as a kid — making friends that’ve stayed with me for most of my life. And special colleagues I’ve collaborated with through the years. “Sources” of mine during my decades as a business reporter.
And the experts I’ve collected all along the way.
Welcome to Bill Patalon’s “Platinum Rolodex.”
And it’s important here — right now — as the Stock Picker’s Corner (SPC) team helps get your 2025 rolling in the right way.
My “Rolodex” of experts has only grown stronger here on Substack — a fertile platform that’s nurturing some of the smartest thinkers and writers you’ll find anywhere.
We’re making sure you’re the beneficiary: I’ve shared that “smart thinking” and “best ideas” with you through our Midyear Review and Desert Island Stocks Challenge series this past summer.
And we’ve done it again here with our Forecast 2025 Investing Series.
Before I round this out with my own outlook for 2025, I wanted to give you a wrap-up review of the expert interviews we’ve done here to end the year; the engagement tells me this series has been a huge hit, and I want you to catch up on anything you may have missed.
With that intro, here are the insights — and stock picks — I “collected” this time around.
✅Giles Capital’s Substack
I have two best friends from high school; one of the two, Harry Argentino, is one of the very best machinists in America — an artist who can breathe life into an inanimate block of metal.
Harry’s also a big Mopar guy, which is the motorhead catch-all for a Chrysler, Dodge or Plymouth product. We did a lot of street racing “back in the day.” For a time Harry was “blowing people’s doors off” with a Plymouth GTX convertible that had a 413 “Cross-Ram” stuffed under the hood. But now Harry rides in style — with a Dodge Hellcat Challenger with a 707 horsepower, supercharged Hemi.
But the Mopar of today isn’t the standalone member of Detroit’s “Big Three” from back in the muscle-car era. Nor is it the Chrysler Corp. turnaround story authored by the late, great Lee Iacocca. (I still remember his pitch: “If you can find a better car — buy it!”)
Today, the Mopar product line is buried inside a company called Stellantis NV (STLA) — a Dutch multinational forged from the 2019 merger of the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and France’s PSA Group.
The combination created the world’s No. 4 automaker. And while Stellantis has made progress reaping the “synergies” that merger-makers boast about — and in the area of electrification — the carmaker has suffered its share of stumbles, too: The recent share price down near $13 is less than half its 52-week (and record) high of $29.51.
But our friends over at shared Stellantis as one of their top picks for 2025. I like Giles: They do a killer weekly roundup of newsletter recommendations and are just nice folks.
Here’s the investment case they shared for the automaker.
“For 2025, I'm particularly bullish on Stellantis NV. The thesis is simple: it's remarkably cheap with strong free cash flow generation and a growing dividend commitment (targeting 25%-30% payout ratio, currently yielding about 11.95%).
The €55B+ liquidity position provides significant safety, while its diversified brand portfolio offers flexibility across market cycles.
The dividend creates a natural floor — as the stock drops, the yield becomes more attractive. At current prices, it's compelling, but I'd get even more interested at lower levels, with strong support likely around $10.
Best way to play it: Buy STLA shares directly, starting a position now but keeping dry powder if we see lower prices.”
✅Value Degen
I’ve crossed paths with these guys — formally known as — here on Substack and out on social media, courtesy of that “roundup” that Giles does each week. But Value Degen’s descriptor — “writing about small cap value stocks until I find a job or this Substack pays the bills” — grabbed my attention even before our introduction.
Kind of like the Renee Zellwegger line — “you had me at hello” — from Jerry McGuire.
And the Degen folks didn’t disappoint: They brought us an intriguing stock pick in Finance of America Companies Inc. (FOA), which is the leader in reverse-mortgage retirement financing.
Here’s Value Degen’s investment case for FOA.
“Finance of America Cos. is the market leader with 37% [of the market] for reverse mortgages in the U.S. With $14 trillion of home equity in the hands of senior citizens, a frozen existing housing market, and hedonic adjustments in the CPI, seniors will need to turn to reverse mortgages to augment their lifestyle.
FOA had a rocky couple of years — with rising interest rates and the failure of Silicon Valley Investment Bank. Bank failures scare septuagenarians away from intimidating bank products faster than a crocodile ambush scares gazelles away from a watering hole. But [seniors] have started coming back to that watering hole now, and FOA has started ramping up its advertising budget. FOA flipped to net income positive last quarter after a very painful few years, but it should have an open runway to the promised land.
Gross mortgage volume for 2024 is on track to be about $2 billion, and management is guiding toward $2.7 billion for 2025. Management is also guiding toward $22 million of net income in 2025, but I suspect they are low-balling in order to beat estimates, since they had net income of $19 million in 2024’s Q3 on $500 million of mortgage volume.
The market capitalization is misleading due to a non controlling minority interest, convertible debt, and outstanding warrants, but even with that dilution, FOA is probably at least a five bagger from here. Although, the stock price might be pinned at the convertible-debt conversion price of $27.50 for some time, hopefully FOA will break out sometime within 2025.”
✅Matt Warder — The Coal Trader
I’ve been doing this — writing about stocks, big investing trends, the economy and wealth-building strategies — for a long time.
Decades …. many decades.
And I’ve never seen retail investors show the kind of interest in commodities and commodities-related investments that we’ve seen this year.
Never …
I’m not talking about the “usual suspects” — silver and gold. Here at SPC, readers have stampeded into our reports on coal, copper and lithium.
Some of that ardor is due to the great research we’ve offered thanks to the “deep bench” of experts. But a lot of that interest is due to the Econ 101 storyline that’ll define commodities in the years to come.
I’m talking about rising levels of demand for such commodities as copper, coal, silver, lithium, silicon, rare-earth elements (REEs), uranium, nickel and (yes, you heard me) water — even as some countervailing trends will lead to significant supply shortfalls a few years from now.
If you took Econ 101 in high school, college or grad school, you know that’s a lethal combination and means higher prices (and probably much higher prices) are headed our way.
That’s 100% the investment case The Coal Trader’s Matt Warder is making about metallurgical coal (“met coal” in mining-industry parlance). Mine closures, the “long-lead” realities of opening new ones and the mass construction of artificial-intelligence (AI) data centers (and the physical electrical grids needed to power them) will help drive coal demand longer term.
But Matt elevated his contribution to our investing series — past the more-advanced Econ 201 and Econ 301 “courses” to the senior-level Econ 401 offering … one that looks past simple supply-demand dynamics and delves into such shareholder-focused financial-engineering moves like cash flow, debt reduction, dividend escalation and share buybacks.
And he used one company as a “case study” for it all: Natural Resource Partners LP (NRP).
You can hear about it in the recent interview I did with him.
✅Peter Krauth — The Silver Stock Investor
That “Looming Supply Shortfall” storyline that Matt detailed for coal also holds true for the “other precious metal” — silver.
And on that topic, there’s no better expert than my longtime friend Peter Krauth, publisher of The Silver Stock Investor and author of The Great Silver Bull.
Unlike gold, silver benefits from tremendous industrial demand in solar energy, semiconductors, AI data centers and more. It’s a fact that means it faces some of the same longer-term supply shortfall issues as coal and other commodities.
But silver benefits from other “storylines,” too — including the surging U.S. deficit, the possible inflationary resurgence, and the risks we face in the New Year thanks to rancor down in Washington, growing schisms across America, the dying U.S. middle class and the potential for a stumble in stocks. Those will make silver a kind of “safe-harbor” investment — one whose price per ounce makes it more “bite-sized” than gold.
Peter sees these converging storylines — supply shortfalls and these other factors — as hefty “triggers” that will send silver up over $40 in 2025 and up past $300 in the years to come.
He’s a guy worth listening to: After all, he predicted silver’s surge in 2024.
And (in addition to physical silver), Peter likes several miners and silver-related stocks. His favorite is Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (WPM). For his full silver thesis — and other investment recommendations — check out my interview with him.
✅Mihail Stoyanov — The Old Economy
I add new folks to my Platinum Rolodex every year — and have made some smart new contacts here on Substack. Mihail Stoyanov is a case-in-point: A bright guy who jokes that he’s a “dinosaur” because he likes such physical realities such as energy and shipping.
Mihail’s “Top Ideas” for 2025 include Colombia (he’s intrigued by opportunities in Latin America right now) and in shippers of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) — whose uses range from cooking and heating to industry.
High-conviction stocks include YPF Sociedad Anónima (YPF) and Navios Maritime Partners (NMM).
Mihail’s been an interview guest twice here at SPC, and his second interview was his best yet: Go here to see the rest of the stocks he likes and check out the strategies he recommends for 2025.
✅Danny Brody — The Net Worth Club
Danny and I worked together back at a financial publisher in Baltimore, and I now have the pleasure of working with him here at Substack.
He’s a bright guy, an engaging thinker and easy to talk and trade ideas with. As a “serial venture capitalist” — meaning he’s pulled off a series of successful financing deals — Danny has access to a world most everyday investors will never see. What makes him especially remarkable is his willingness to share what he sees, learns and believes to be valuable.
(Danny, too, likes the commodities-supply-shortfall that we’ve been chatting about here. Right now, Danny’s working to finance copper and gold mines in resource-rich Africa — and he shares updates on those projects in the regular chats he has here.)
In our Forecast 2025 chat, Danny said one of his top picks for the New Year is gamer Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO), a well-run company that’s riding the entertainment wave — and that has takeover potential.
Danny also covered opportunities in the cruise lines arena, too. It’s a great chat: You can hear all his ideas and his investment case for Take-Two by listening to my interview with him here.
✅Dave Zeiler — The OG Crypto King
Over the past 15 years, I’ve met scores of folks who claim to be cryptocurrency “experts” — including some who’ve used questionable “backstories” to build big followings.
But I only know of one who was actually “mining” Bitcoin (BTC) just after its “birth” — back when it was trading at $10 or $15 each.
And that one person is Dave Zeiler (the OG Crypto King).
Dave and I have been friends, colleagues and collaborators for a quarter century. He's a nationally known expert on Apple Inc. (AAPL) and on Bitcoin. At my previous newsletter Private Briefing, we had hundreds of talks about both.
In the years following Bitcoin’s 2009 debut, Dave had annual predictions about where the crypto bellwether would trade. And he’s almost always been right.
When BTC was trading at about $60,000 early in 2024, he correctly predicted it would hit $100,000 in December.
He believes Bitcoin is going to continue its run in 2025.
And he sees some interesting storylines for Apple, as well.
And circle back … in a few days, I’ll give you the rundown on what “Ol’ Bill” sees for the New Year — and the moves that’ll keep you on the Wealth Builder path …
See you then;
Thank you for showcasing my substack