February 2025 Budget Portfolio Update

Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome back to our budget community portfolio series for the month of February 2025. Now, this is not my larger private portfolio. This is the smaller on a budget public one where I only deposit $100 each month into this new account. And then we use that money to invest in stocks, some of which is also influenced by you guys through various polls, comments and messages that you send me, especially on Discord. And then I do an update video every month here on YouTube, broken up into three parts, covering first how the portfolio is doing so far and all the trades I made last month in January. Then we look at how each individual stock is performing, either up or down, and what I plan to buy in this current month here in February. And then at the end, I just finish up with a few quick comments from you guys. I give really quick responses to them, kind of in a rapid-fire style. But before we start here... Just a little bit of housekeeping to get out of the way. If you'd like to get full access to this portfolio, as well as our private community Discord, where you can reach me, hang out with other members, and even get access to my daily stock trade, where I post a new stock purchase every single day for this portfolio, then you can get access to all of that by supporting me on Patreon. Link is in the description. It's $5 a month for all of those features. And there's other tiers available as well. But thank you so much to all of you that do support me. It means a lot to me. Couldn't do this without you. So thank you for that. And lastly, just so you know, for this portfolio, we do use SoFi, which I absolutely love using and I highly recommend. Even if you're already using Robinhood or some other platform, you can create a new account on SoFi. It's 100% free. And if you use my link down in the description, you'll even get a bonus $25 worth of stocks absolutely free too. just for signing up. So it's really cool. I highly recommend you try it. But with all of that said, it's time now to jump into this video, starting with part one. So let's take a look at how the portfolio is holding up so far and what moves we made last month in January at the start of this new year. Okay, so in total, the account has now broken into the $2,000 range. It's broken above $2,000 after just a little more than a year. And in that time, we've generated over $400 worth of profit and about 25% worth of total gains. However, we also have about $300 of that just sitting in cash. So if you exclude that, our actual stock investments are up even more at over 30% gains, which is phenomenal performance for such a young portfolio like this. Speaking of stock investments, though, I did run a few polls during the month. to see which stocks you guys wanted to see more of in the portfolio, including this one on YouTube, where I asked which dividend biotech stock should we buy in the portfolio, to which 58% of the votes went to Pfizer. And that was over Bristol Myers, Merck, and Eli Lilly. So we did add more Pfizer stock. Then over on Discord, I asked which brand new stock should we add to the portfolio. Brand new one. And there were lots of great options. But ultimately, American Tower did take the win, probably because I have been talking about it on YouTube. So maybe that was kind of in your guys' heads. But 15% of the votes did go to it. That was even ahead some other popular names like Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Target, Tencent, and more. And I really happen to like American Tower, too. I like them for their dividend. So, yeah, I did go ahead and I purchased some of that stock and I put it into the portfolio. And then finally, just one more here on Discord again. I asked. which stock with exposure to artificial intelligence should we buy more of, to which 17% of the votes went to C3.ai. They've been pretty hot lately. I think a lot of people are hoping that they might be the next Palantir. They've probably been seeing how much Palantir has soared recently. And so they're kind of hoping C3 could be, you know, having some of that potential too. I'm hoping for that myself. And so anyway, I did add more of them as well. In total though, I spent $110 last month in this portfolio, the budget. community one. And that was a little higher than the budget. I usually do try to stay under that $100 mark. But anyways, I actually spent the most amount of money from that on Tyson Foods, a great dividend stock that I just think is trading really low right now. So that was at $20. Then I spent $15 each on Vici Properties and American Tower, two fantastic dividend paying REITs, in my opinion, really good yields on those. And then another $10 each on C3. And again, great AI play. EXR, another fantastic dividend REIT, one of my favorites. Google, probably my overall favorite stock in the entire market. And also Verizon, a great dividend play there with a low valuation. All right, and finally, another $5 each I spent on Microsoft and NVIDIA, two great plays on AI and just technology in general. Microsoft, in my private portfolio, is my number one largest stock. I love Microsoft. And Pfizer, big dividend biotech, of course, and then also Supermicro, who I was really just kind of trying to average down a little on, but did pick up a little more of that one. All right, now we're going to move on to part two. So this is where we're going to take a look at what the. best and worst performers are so far in this portfolio and which stocks I plan to buy here in February as well. So it's going to be fun. Let's jump into it. Okay, so here's all the holdings on SoFi. If you want to take a closer look at these, I do post all the screenshots in greater detail on our Discord. But for now, we'll just use some custom charts here to make it easier, which as you can see, Google and Palantir have actually tied now for the number one spot. That's because Palantir, of course, has skyrocketed. in recent months, and again this past week on incredible earnings. I do think that's a little high there for Palantir. And even SoFi, too, you see it a little down there at number four after they've been having a great past year as well. But yeah, rather than selling those stocks, I'm actually just trying to add more of these surrounding stocks to help balance it out a little. So I do think, don't get me wrong, I love the future long-term potential of Palantir and SoFi, and I want to hold on to them. I'm not looking to sell any of that. But I do think maybe we could balance it, have some other stocks be a little higher that are maybe a little safer, larger, more profitable kind of companies. But, you know, talking about that in our top seven, rounding out the top seven here, we do also have Amazon, Microsoft, Vici and Medtronic. Now, those seven stocks alone make up over half of the entire portfolio. And I'm actually happy to see Medtronic and Vici be included in that list now because those are two of my favorite dividend stocks. And it's also balanced out with like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, very safe stocks. So I'm really happy about, you know, half of the portfolio being structured like that. And Vici, of course, was a much newer addition to the portfolio. And I still want to be buying a lot more of them because we are actually currently down on that position, which I'll show you in just a second. But besides that, everything else in the portfolio is looking pretty good overall. I mean, I don't really see too many adjustments that need like absolutely need to be made. Other than maybe just a few positions that I'd like to have some greater exposure to, obviously American Tower, we just added that, so I want to be buying more. C3 AI, could add a little more. Tyson Foods, EXR, one of my favorite reads, and maybe even a little bit of Meta too. It is up a lot, but that is one of those kind of core, very safe stocks that I would like to have some more exposure to. I wish I would have bought more earlier on. I do have more in my personal portfolio. But in this public one, it is a smaller position. Speaking of stocks that are up a lot, though. Yeah, as you can see here, most of our stocks in this portfolio are up by very large amounts. And yet Palantir still looks like it's kind of towering over the rest because it's up over 300 percent, which is incredible for, you know, a young portfolio like this to have a stock like that. But I'll zoom in here. So it's a little easier to see. We'll start first with the double digit gainers. Again, Palantir leading the pack. But Tesla and SoFi are no slouch either, both up around 100% each, while Meta, Chase, Cisco, Amazon, and Visa are all up around 30% to 50% too. Lots of stocks in the 20s range, including NVIDIA, Google, Disney, and more, while Next Era Energy and Medtronic hover in the teens. Now, here's where things start to get a little more interesting, though, because I would absolutely love to buy more of really like all the rest of these. that are in the single digits, notably EXR, Tyson, and AMT for their mouthwatering dividends. And of course, Microsoft for being just one of the best all around stocks ever, in my opinion, to only be up 1% on that. Yeah, I got to be adding more of that stock this month too. But how about the negatives? How about the ones in the red? Well, apart from probably Baidu and Supermicro being a little higher risk than most, those other names are... pretty much screaming buys to me, especially Vici Properties, but also Pfizer and Verizon. All three of those have some of the best dividend yields around, so I just got to get me some more of those while I can this month. I'll definitely be adding those. Speaking of which, I did add another fresh $100 to the account for the month of February, this bringing the total up now to over $2,100 and leaving us with a cash ratio. of about 19% on nearly $400 worth of cash that is just kind of sitting on the sidelines for now. All right, guys. So those are kind of my thoughts right now. I would just say, you know, the market is kind of, yeah, it's up a little bit and there are some concerns out there, but still buying stocks, still looking for opportunities where I can, like we talked about. But hey, it's time now to finish up with some comments from you guys. It's time to hear what you guys are saying, what you guys are thinking out there. So I usually just kind of pull a few quick ones and give my quick response to them. As always, you can leave comments right down here in the comment section or on Patreon and especially on Discord where I respond directly and I may even include them. in next month's update video too. But let's go ahead and start with the comments here. So first up, we've got a YouTube comment, this one from Manalima, who says, you should make a video comparing Pfizer and BMI, the strengths of each, the weaknesses, and what perspectives you have for each. So I actually used to do these videos that I called stock battles, where I would pit two similar stocks against each other. But unfortunately, the views just weren't very good for those videos. So I'm not sure there is a lot of demand for those types of videos. However, I wouldn't be opposed to trying that again because they were some of the funnest to make for me. I really enjoyed it. But as for these two stocks, well, I have made several individual analysis videos for each. But my overall feelings on them is that they are kind of similar in that they do both face some current struggles and issues. BNY more so on the side of patent expirations, while Pfizer is having a difficult time comparing to the pandemic years where their V shot. was making them unbelievable amounts of money. But I actually own both stocks myself in my private portfolio, and I do think they'll bounce back stronger. If I had to only choose one of them, though, I would probably buy Pfizer if I had to just choose one that I like more. That's just because the valuation, the dividend, they're both more attractive on Pfizer, in my opinion. And the future potential of Pfizer, I also feel, is greater. They just made it. so much money on the pandemic and they made so many acquisitions with that money that I just think they're going to be hard to dethrone in the future. And I think not enough people are even aware of that. So Pfizer could be a little bit of a sleeper and they've been falling a lot recently. Next up, though, we have Sergio, who says, I've watched a lot of info videos on stocks. You, my guy, are awesome. New sub here. I'm ready to learn and earn. Very, very impressed. Well, thank you so much for that. Very nice comment, Sergio. I really appreciate that, my friend. And I'm super happy to have you here as a new subscriber. I hope I don't let you down ever in the future. And I promise I will do my best to bring you good quality videos. And I hope you enjoy them. But thank you. Next up, we have Rahim Kader, who says, AI stocks are set to dominate the market in 2025. And I'm especially optimistic about NVIDIA with its strong long-term growth potential and critical role as a key enabler for other AI companies. It stands out as a top choice. I know someone who's seen over 200% returns with NVIDIA. I'd love to hear any other recommendations you might have. Well, I mean, I've seen people get even much greater returns. In fact, in my private portfolio, I'm up over 1,000% on NVIDIA. So yeah, NVIDIA has been on fire. And I agree with you definitely on everything that they're doing and their potential and how they're just powering a lot of the AI revolution right now. But in terms of the other parts of your question, you know, making some recommendations or, you know, for AI stocks, I actually put out several videos on some of my favorite AI stocks recently. So if you want to get more ideas on stocks you might want to look at and consider, check those videos out. Always do your own research and make your own decisions. But yeah, you might get some ideas in those videos if you want to see those very recently. Just over the past couple of weeks, I put out a bunch. Next up, though, we have BM Waterford, who says, great video. Interested in your thoughts on Palantir and if it's significantly overvalued. Well, that's fine. Thank you, by the way, for the comment. But that is funny you mentioned that because I actually just put out a video on that, too. It was called Is Palantir Stock a Bubble Now? This comment was from before I released that video. But if you haven't, you might have seen it already. But if you haven't, go check that video out. I cover the earnings. I cover the rich valuation and everything else, future potential, everything going on with Palantir. my thoughts, how I feel about it, why I'm still investing in it. If you're interested, check out that video. All right, this one here from Tehai Uni, and I'm very sorry if I mispronounced that, but they ask, so did you compare AMT to CCI? And if so, why did you choose AMT versus CCI? Excuse me. So like I said, I have been talking about American Tower stock recently. This comment was saying... Why do I like AMT over CCI? If you don't know, CCI is Crown Castle. They're a competitor. Now, if you don't know anything about these companies, they're REITs who lease out cell tower properties to carriers like Verizon or AT&T that then use them for their services. Well, I happen to like American Tower more because they're larger, they have a larger global presence. I feel that they're more diversified and that they're a- bigger play on AI because they're more invested in both fiber and data center properties too, which Crown Castle has actually sold off parts of that recently, which I'm not a big fan of if I'm looking for future growth potential. So there's pros and cons to each, by the way, and I'm not saying AMT is a better stock than Crown Castle. I'm just saying. That's why I bought it myself instead of Crown Castle. Okay, this next one here is from Lance Sandberg, who asks, could you go over INTC's issues? I know they are behind with research, but they received a grant for bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., right? So, yeah, Intel has received money from the government. There was a while there where they were actually complaining about not having received anything yet. But more recently, they have said that they actually did receive. I think it was like $2 billion or a little more than that. And there's still several more billion dollars coming their way. Part of the problem has been that some of that money that the government has to disperse to Intel is that some of it is like a reimbursement, meaning that Intel has to first build out some of these plants, some of these chip manufacturing plants, and then they'll essentially get reimbursed for a lot of those costs, getting billions of dollars. Um, but so far they're already getting some money. There's more to come. And Intel has stated that they're still fully on board with building these new, um, chip manufacturing plans. So nothing has really changed there. Another concern that investors have had though, more recently is that the chips act that is funding all of this, it's like worth, it was like tens of billions of dollars for chip manufacturing in America. Um, the chips act was under. Biden. And now, of course, we have Trump. And so a lot of investors were worried because especially Trump has been talking a lot about cutting costs and spending that Trump might not fund it now. But Trump has actually said many times that he him along with Biden, basically both sides of the political spectrum have been saying that we need more chip manufacturing in America to compete on a global stage. And too much of it is done like in Asia, for example. So we need to have our own. And. And Intel actually just came out recently and they said that they even spoke with Trump, this being after the election, and that Trump was like very supportive and that they had a very good conversation and that Trump is going to be basically backing them the whole way. So I'm not concerned about any of that. The bigger issue is just how much market share AMD has been stealing from them and kind of, you know, Intel, like this person said, Intel falling a little bit behind on technologies, not going all in on AI like NVIDIA has. taking a little bit longer, but they're investing in it now and they're doing their own thing with AI accelerators and stuff like that. I own a small amount of Intel just in case for that kind of rebound potential. I think that, you know, Intel will get these new fabs up and running in America and even I think like in Europe too. In the coming years, probably like 2027, beyond that, I think we could see Intel starting to actually generate some good growth from that. And They'll start to get some tax incentives and other subsidies that will help them. And that's kind of my bet on that, that it's just kind of this turnaround play that in the long term could help Intel recover. Because right now, when you look at the stock price, I just think it's like, you know, dirt cheap. But yeah, we'll see. We'll see how that turns out. And yeah, those are kind of my thoughts on Intel for the moment. All right. Up next. So we have the hobby shop who says. Good stuff, man. Have you given any thought to Oklo or any other nuclear stocks given the power demand from data centers? Thanks for the shout out, by the way. I wasn't expecting it. Well, you're very welcome. And thank you for the nice comment again. So when it comes to Oklo and nuclear stocks, I am still doing my research on those and I still plan on making a video. I wish I would have done it earlier because Oklo stock has skyrocketed. I mean, they're up a huge amount. Um, and even this past month, they soared by a lot too. So I wish I would've talked about them earlier, but that is still a video that I'm working on. I'm going to get that out soon. I've just been so busy with so many other videos, but yeah, I want to make like a best nuclear stocks type of video for this year, for the future when it comes to nuclear. I mean, just when you think about AI, uh, the AI revolution and what all of that means, I feel like the, probably the the biggest bottleneck for AI is going to be energy. So you kind of need to have nuclear, especially because nuclear can produce clean energy too. Obviously, if it's done safely and correctly, and there's a lot of issues with all of that. But when you look at all the climate change movement and all that kind of stuff, people will protest and complain if energy is brought from whatever, oil and gas and stuff like that. Well, nuclear has zero emissions, or I think very close to it or zero. So that could be a- clean alternative and nuclear can also provide tons of energy at scale. So that's where all the potential lies for nuclear. And there are going to be some regulatory headwinds. that will kind of make it take some time until nuclear plants get up and running and really producing large at scale energy. But I think, you know, 2027, next couple of years and beyond that, I think nuclear is going to become more important. So it might be a good idea to start looking at the stocks that could benefit from that right now. So that'll be coming, though, in terms of me making videos for it. All right, we'll do one more here from YouTube. We've got Hambone who says. You inspired me to start a portfolio like this. I'm depositing $100 a month. Figure I should be able to do better than a savings account. Problem is I just started like a week before this market dropped, so I'm LOL. But this is fun so far. Well, I'm happy to hear that. You know, one of the biggest hurdles about investing is just getting started. And this is actually the reason why I made this budget portfolio is to show people that even with just a small budget of $100 a month, you can actually generate, you know. better returns than if it was just sitting there in a savings account. And obviously you should save money too for emergencies and, you know, have that reliable money there for that. And you should only invest with money that you can afford to lose. But I, you know, I'll be honest, I've treated investing kind of like a savings account where I'd rather just put like most of my money into that. And I don't know, I think that, you know, as long as you... Pick good companies and stick to a long-term investing approach. Again, with money that you don't immediately need, you'll likely generate great returns. And again, this is just on a budget. Imagine if you're investing with larger amounts of money, which is what I do in my private portfolio, you can generate much greater returns too. So anyway, I'm happy to see that you got your foot in the door and you're having fun with it. That's the most important thing. Have some fun with it. Okay, let's finish up with a comment here from Discord. Under the Discussions tab for the Community Portfolio, we have Tim. saying, Hi, Alec. Thanks for all your hard work. I am curious to hear your thoughts on a couple of things regarding the public portfolio. First, how do you feel about it going forward with the market as high as it is? Still a good time to be buying stocks. My niece is 23 and asked me if I think she should start investing in stocks right now or wait. I said now, but would be curious to hear your insight on that with all things considered. And also, how is the public portfolio doing so far compared to the market? Seems like you're outperforming and that's impressive for an already tough market to beat. Well, thank you so much for that nice comment. And yeah, you know, I do think that this portfolio is doing very well. It is technically boosted right now from the market doing also very well. But if you look at it just in general, I think the average performance of the S&P 500 is only around 10 percent, like since it was created on a yearly basis. So for our stock investments to be up like 30 percent in total. That's around triple the yearly average. Again, we're boosted right now. The market is doing really well. But still, I'm just saying that for such a young and small portfolio, we're doing extremely well. So I'm very happy about that. And I would also say wait till we've had this portfolio for many years with some bigger positions that collect larger dividends. That'll help a lot too. And maybe in the future, I'll increase the budget to show you the kind of returns you can generate when you're actually investing at a greater scale. with more money. For the other question, though, I completely agree with you that your niece should be starting to invest right away rather than attempting to time the market or wait for that perfect buying opportunity on a market crash or dip or whatever. Look, only being 23 years old, number one, I'm guessing she doesn't know much about stocks since she's not even investing yet and she's young. So the idea that this person could. accurately time the market and find that perfect moment to start buying stocks is highly unlikely, in my opinion. And number two, she's got the perfect gift of time on her side. What is, in my opinion, apart from money, time is the most valuable asset to an investor. So use that advantage that you have. Start investing early. Invest long term in the safest companies that you know a lot about and that have business models that are easier for you to understand. And then gradually over time, you can take riskier bets with higher upside potential stocks when you are yourself more experienced and you feel more confident in those investing decisions. But for now, the point is just get started, whatever. Invest in a great company. Do your own thing. Make your own decisions. Do your own research. But for me, if I was just getting started, I would tell someone, I don't know, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, start with some very safe companies and work your way from there. But the point is just get started and use that time on your hand. The more time in the market. the better returns you'll have rather than trying to time the market. Okay, anyway, that'll do it for this month's update. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thank you so much for stopping by, my friends. Thank you for all your support. Hope you're all doing well out there. And I will catch you in the next one. All right. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

Then we look at how each individual stock is performing, either up or down, and what I plan to buy in this current month here in February. And then at the end, I just finish up with a few quick comments from you guys. I give really quick responses to them, kind of in a rapid-fire style. But before we start here... Just a little bit of housekeeping to get out of the way.

If you'd like to get full access to this portfolio, as well as our private community Discord, where you can reach me, hang out with other members, and even get access to my daily stock trade, where I post a new stock purchase every single day for this portfolio, then you can get access to all of that by supporting me on Patreon. Link is in the description. It's $5 a month for all of those features. And there's other tiers available as well.

But thank you so much to all of you that do support me. It means a lot to me. Couldn't do this without you. So thank you for that.

And lastly, just so you know, for this portfolio, we do use SoFi, which I absolutely love using and I highly recommend. Even if you're already using Robinhood or some other platform, you can create a new account on SoFi. It's 100% free.

And if you use my link down in the description, you'll even get a bonus $25 worth of stocks absolutely free too. just for signing up. So it's really cool. I highly recommend you try it. But with all of that said, it's time now to jump into this video, starting with part one.

So let's take a look at how the portfolio is holding up so far and what moves we made last month in January at the start of this new year. Okay, so in total, the account has now broken into the $2,000 range. It's broken above $2,000 after just a little more than a year.

And in that time, we've generated over $400 worth of profit and about 25% worth of total gains. However, we also have about $300 of that just sitting in cash. So if you exclude that, our actual stock investments are up even more at over 30% gains, which is phenomenal performance for such a young portfolio like this.

Speaking of stock investments, though, I did run a few polls during the month. to see which stocks you guys wanted to see more of in the portfolio, including this one on YouTube, where I asked which dividend biotech stock should we buy in the portfolio, to which 58% of the votes went to Pfizer. And that was over Bristol Myers, Merck, and Eli Lilly. So we did add more Pfizer stock. Then over on Discord, I asked which brand new stock should we add to the portfolio.

Brand new one. And there were lots of great options. But ultimately, American Tower did take the win, probably because I have been talking about it on YouTube. So maybe that was kind of in your guys' heads.

But 15% of the votes did go to it. That was even ahead some other popular names like Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Target, Tencent, and more. And I really happen to like American Tower, too. I like them for their dividend. So, yeah, I did go ahead and I purchased some of that stock and I put it into the portfolio.

And then finally, just one more here on Discord again. I asked. which stock with exposure to artificial intelligence should we buy more of, to which 17% of the votes went to C3.ai. They've been pretty hot lately.

I think a lot of people are hoping that they might be the next Palantir. They've probably been seeing how much Palantir has soared recently. And so they're kind of hoping C3 could be, you know, having some of that potential too.

I'm hoping for that myself. And so anyway, I did add more of them as well. In total though, I spent $110 last month in this portfolio, the budget. community one.

And that was a little higher than the budget. I usually do try to stay under that $100 mark. But anyways, I actually spent the most amount of money from that on Tyson Foods, a great dividend stock that I just think is trading really low right now. So that was at $20.

Then I spent $15 each on Vici Properties and American Tower, two fantastic dividend paying REITs, in my opinion, really good yields on those. And then another $10 each on C3. And again, great AI play. EXR, another fantastic dividend REIT, one of my favorites. Google, probably my overall favorite stock in the entire market.

And also Verizon, a great dividend play there with a low valuation. All right, and finally, another $5 each I spent on Microsoft and NVIDIA, two great plays on AI and just technology in general. Microsoft, in my private portfolio, is my number one largest stock. I love Microsoft. And Pfizer, big dividend biotech, of course, and then also Supermicro, who I was really just kind of trying to average down a little on, but did pick up a little more of that one.

All right, now we're going to move on to part two. So this is where we're going to take a look at what the. best and worst performers are so far in this portfolio and which stocks I plan to buy here in February as well.

So it's going to be fun. Let's jump into it. Okay, so here's all the holdings on SoFi. If you want to take a closer look at these, I do post all the screenshots in greater detail on our Discord. But for now, we'll just use some custom charts here to make it easier, which as you can see, Google and Palantir have actually tied now for the number one spot.

That's because Palantir, of course, has skyrocketed. in recent months, and again this past week on incredible earnings. I do think that's a little high there for Palantir. And even SoFi, too, you see it a little down there at number four after they've been having a great past year as well.

But yeah, rather than selling those stocks, I'm actually just trying to add more of these surrounding stocks to help balance it out a little. So I do think, don't get me wrong, I love the future long-term potential of Palantir and SoFi, and I want to hold on to them. I'm not looking to sell any of that. But I do think maybe we could balance it, have some other stocks be a little higher that are maybe a little safer, larger, more profitable kind of companies. But, you know, talking about that in our top seven, rounding out the top seven here, we do also have Amazon, Microsoft, Vici and Medtronic.

Now, those seven stocks alone make up over half of the entire portfolio. And I'm actually happy to see Medtronic and Vici be included in that list now because those are two of my favorite dividend stocks. And it's also balanced out with like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, very safe stocks. So I'm really happy about, you know, half of the portfolio being structured like that. And Vici, of course, was a much newer addition to the portfolio.

And I still want to be buying a lot more of them because we are actually currently down on that position, which I'll show you in just a second. But besides that, everything else in the portfolio is looking pretty good overall. I mean, I don't really see too many adjustments that need like absolutely need to be made.

Other than maybe just a few positions that I'd like to have some greater exposure to, obviously American Tower, we just added that, so I want to be buying more. C3 AI, could add a little more. Tyson Foods, EXR, one of my favorite reads, and maybe even a little bit of Meta too. It is up a lot, but that is one of those kind of core, very safe stocks that I would like to have some more exposure to.

I wish I would have bought more earlier on. I do have more in my personal portfolio. But in this public one, it is a smaller position.

Speaking of stocks that are up a lot, though. Yeah, as you can see here, most of our stocks in this portfolio are up by very large amounts. And yet Palantir still looks like it's kind of towering over the rest because it's up over 300 percent, which is incredible for, you know, a young portfolio like this to have a stock like that. But I'll zoom in here.

So it's a little easier to see. We'll start first with the double digit gainers. Again, Palantir leading the pack.

But Tesla and SoFi are no slouch either, both up around 100% each, while Meta, Chase, Cisco, Amazon, and Visa are all up around 30% to 50% too. Lots of stocks in the 20s range, including NVIDIA, Google, Disney, and more, while Next Era Energy and Medtronic hover in the teens. Now, here's where things start to get a little more interesting, though, because I would absolutely love to buy more of really like all the rest of these. that are in the single digits, notably EXR, Tyson, and AMT for their mouthwatering dividends.

And of course, Microsoft for being just one of the best all around stocks ever, in my opinion, to only be up 1% on that. Yeah, I got to be adding more of that stock this month too. But how about the negatives?

How about the ones in the red? Well, apart from probably Baidu and Supermicro being a little higher risk than most, those other names are... pretty much screaming buys to me, especially Vici Properties, but also Pfizer and Verizon.

All three of those have some of the best dividend yields around, so I just got to get me some more of those while I can this month. I'll definitely be adding those. Speaking of which, I did add another fresh $100 to the account for the month of February, this bringing the total up now to over $2,100 and leaving us with a cash ratio.

of about 19% on nearly $400 worth of cash that is just kind of sitting on the sidelines for now. All right, guys. So those are kind of my thoughts right now.

I would just say, you know, the market is kind of, yeah, it's up a little bit and there are some concerns out there, but still buying stocks, still looking for opportunities where I can, like we talked about. But hey, it's time now to finish up with some comments from you guys. It's time to hear what you guys are saying, what you guys are thinking out there.

So I usually just kind of pull a few quick ones and give my quick response to them. As always, you can leave comments right down here in the comment section or on Patreon and especially on Discord where I respond directly and I may even include them. in next month's update video too.

But let's go ahead and start with the comments here. So first up, we've got a YouTube comment, this one from Manalima, who says, you should make a video comparing Pfizer and BMI, the strengths of each, the weaknesses, and what perspectives you have for each. So I actually used to do these videos that I called stock battles, where I would pit two similar stocks against each other. But unfortunately, the views just weren't very good for those videos.

So I'm not sure there is a lot of demand for those types of videos. However, I wouldn't be opposed to trying that again because they were some of the funnest to make for me. I really enjoyed it. But as for these two stocks, well, I have made several individual analysis videos for each. But my overall feelings on them is that they are kind of similar in that they do both face some current struggles and issues.

BNY more so on the side of patent expirations, while Pfizer is having a difficult time comparing to the pandemic years where their V shot. was making them unbelievable amounts of money. But I actually own both stocks myself in my private portfolio, and I do think they'll bounce back stronger.

If I had to only choose one of them, though, I would probably buy Pfizer if I had to just choose one that I like more. That's just because the valuation, the dividend, they're both more attractive on Pfizer, in my opinion. And the future potential of Pfizer, I also feel, is greater.

They just made it. so much money on the pandemic and they made so many acquisitions with that money that I just think they're going to be hard to dethrone in the future. And I think not enough people are even aware of that.

So Pfizer could be a little bit of a sleeper and they've been falling a lot recently. Next up, though, we have Sergio, who says, I've watched a lot of info videos on stocks. You, my guy, are awesome.

New sub here. I'm ready to learn and earn. Very, very impressed.

Well, thank you so much for that. Very nice comment, Sergio. I really appreciate that, my friend. And I'm super happy to have you here as a new subscriber.

I hope I don't let you down ever in the future. And I promise I will do my best to bring you good quality videos. And I hope you enjoy them. But thank you.

Next up, we have Rahim Kader, who says, AI stocks are set to dominate the market in 2025. And I'm especially optimistic about NVIDIA with its strong long-term growth potential and critical role as a key enabler for other AI companies. It stands out as a top choice. I know someone who's seen over 200% returns with NVIDIA.

I'd love to hear any other recommendations you might have. Well, I mean, I've seen people get even much greater returns. In fact, in my private portfolio, I'm up over 1,000% on NVIDIA.

So yeah, NVIDIA has been on fire. And I agree with you definitely on everything that they're doing and their potential and how they're just powering a lot of the AI revolution right now. But in terms of the other parts of your question, you know, making some recommendations or, you know, for AI stocks, I actually put out several videos on some of my favorite AI stocks recently.

So if you want to get more ideas on stocks you might want to look at and consider, check those videos out. Always do your own research and make your own decisions. But yeah, you might get some ideas in those videos if you want to see those very recently.

Just over the past couple of weeks, I put out a bunch. Next up, though, we have BM Waterford, who says, great video. Interested in your thoughts on Palantir and if it's significantly overvalued.

Well, that's fine. Thank you, by the way, for the comment. But that is funny you mentioned that because I actually just put out a video on that, too.

It was called Is Palantir Stock a Bubble Now? This comment was from before I released that video. But if you haven't, you might have seen it already.

But if you haven't, go check that video out. I cover the earnings. I cover the rich valuation and everything else, future potential, everything going on with Palantir. my thoughts, how I feel about it, why I'm still investing in it. If you're interested, check out that video.

All right, this one here from Tehai Uni, and I'm very sorry if I mispronounced that, but they ask, so did you compare AMT to CCI? And if so, why did you choose AMT versus CCI? Excuse me. So like I said, I have been talking about American Tower stock recently.

This comment was saying... Why do I like AMT over CCI? If you don't know, CCI is Crown Castle. They're a competitor.

Now, if you don't know anything about these companies, they're REITs who lease out cell tower properties to carriers like Verizon or AT&T that then use them for their services. Well, I happen to like American Tower more because they're larger, they have a larger global presence. I feel that they're more diversified and that they're a- bigger play on AI because they're more invested in both fiber and data center properties too, which Crown Castle has actually sold off parts of that recently, which I'm not a big fan of if I'm looking for future growth potential.

So there's pros and cons to each, by the way, and I'm not saying AMT is a better stock than Crown Castle. I'm just saying. That's why I bought it myself instead of Crown Castle. Okay, this next one here is from Lance Sandberg, who asks, could you go over INTC's issues? I know they are behind with research, but they received a grant for bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., right?

So, yeah, Intel has received money from the government. There was a while there where they were actually complaining about not having received anything yet. But more recently, they have said that they actually did receive. I think it was like $2 billion or a little more than that. And there's still several more billion dollars coming their way.

Part of the problem has been that some of that money that the government has to disperse to Intel is that some of it is like a reimbursement, meaning that Intel has to first build out some of these plants, some of these chip manufacturing plants, and then they'll essentially get reimbursed for a lot of those costs, getting billions of dollars. Um, but so far they're already getting some money. There's more to come. And Intel has stated that they're still fully on board with building these new, um, chip manufacturing plans. So nothing has really changed there.

Another concern that investors have had though, more recently is that the chips act that is funding all of this, it's like worth, it was like tens of billions of dollars for chip manufacturing in America. Um, the chips act was under. Biden. And now, of course, we have Trump.

And so a lot of investors were worried because especially Trump has been talking a lot about cutting costs and spending that Trump might not fund it now. But Trump has actually said many times that he him along with Biden, basically both sides of the political spectrum have been saying that we need more chip manufacturing in America to compete on a global stage. And too much of it is done like in Asia, for example. So we need to have our own. And.

And Intel actually just came out recently and they said that they even spoke with Trump, this being after the election, and that Trump was like very supportive and that they had a very good conversation and that Trump is going to be basically backing them the whole way. So I'm not concerned about any of that. The bigger issue is just how much market share AMD has been stealing from them and kind of, you know, Intel, like this person said, Intel falling a little bit behind on technologies, not going all in on AI like NVIDIA has. taking a little bit longer, but they're investing in it now and they're doing their own thing with AI accelerators and stuff like that.

I own a small amount of Intel just in case for that kind of rebound potential. I think that, you know, Intel will get these new fabs up and running in America and even I think like in Europe too. In the coming years, probably like 2027, beyond that, I think we could see Intel starting to actually generate some good growth from that.

And They'll start to get some tax incentives and other subsidies that will help them. And that's kind of my bet on that, that it's just kind of this turnaround play that in the long term could help Intel recover. Because right now, when you look at the stock price, I just think it's like, you know, dirt cheap.

But yeah, we'll see. We'll see how that turns out. And yeah, those are kind of my thoughts on Intel for the moment. All right.

Up next. So we have the hobby shop who says. Good stuff, man.

Have you given any thought to Oklo or any other nuclear stocks given the power demand from data centers? Thanks for the shout out, by the way. I wasn't expecting it. Well, you're very welcome. And thank you for the nice comment again.

So when it comes to Oklo and nuclear stocks, I am still doing my research on those and I still plan on making a video. I wish I would have done it earlier because Oklo stock has skyrocketed. I mean, they're up a huge amount.

Um, and even this past month, they soared by a lot too. So I wish I would've talked about them earlier, but that is still a video that I'm working on. I'm going to get that out soon.

I've just been so busy with so many other videos, but yeah, I want to make like a best nuclear stocks type of video for this year, for the future when it comes to nuclear. I mean, just when you think about AI, uh, the AI revolution and what all of that means, I feel like the, probably the the biggest bottleneck for AI is going to be energy. So you kind of need to have nuclear, especially because nuclear can produce clean energy too. Obviously, if it's done safely and correctly, and there's a lot of issues with all of that.

But when you look at all the climate change movement and all that kind of stuff, people will protest and complain if energy is brought from whatever, oil and gas and stuff like that. Well, nuclear has zero emissions, or I think very close to it or zero. So that could be a- clean alternative and nuclear can also provide tons of energy at scale. So that's where all the potential lies for nuclear.

And there are going to be some regulatory headwinds. that will kind of make it take some time until nuclear plants get up and running and really producing large at scale energy. But I think, you know, 2027, next couple of years and beyond that, I think nuclear is going to become more important. So it might be a good idea to start looking at the stocks that could benefit from that right now. So that'll be coming, though, in terms of me making videos for it.

All right, we'll do one more here from YouTube. We've got Hambone who says. You inspired me to start a portfolio like this. I'm depositing $100 a month. Figure I should be able to do better than a savings account.

Problem is I just started like a week before this market dropped, so I'm LOL. But this is fun so far. Well, I'm happy to hear that.

You know, one of the biggest hurdles about investing is just getting started. And this is actually the reason why I made this budget portfolio is to show people that even with just a small budget of $100 a month, you can actually generate, you know. better returns than if it was just sitting there in a savings account. And obviously you should save money too for emergencies and, you know, have that reliable money there for that. And you should only invest with money that you can afford to lose.

But I, you know, I'll be honest, I've treated investing kind of like a savings account where I'd rather just put like most of my money into that. And I don't know, I think that, you know, as long as you... Pick good companies and stick to a long-term investing approach. Again, with money that you don't immediately need, you'll likely generate great returns.

And again, this is just on a budget. Imagine if you're investing with larger amounts of money, which is what I do in my private portfolio, you can generate much greater returns too. So anyway, I'm happy to see that you got your foot in the door and you're having fun with it.

That's the most important thing. Have some fun with it. Okay, let's finish up with a comment here from Discord. Under the Discussions tab for the Community Portfolio, we have Tim. saying, Hi, Alec.

Thanks for all your hard work. I am curious to hear your thoughts on a couple of things regarding the public portfolio. First, how do you feel about it going forward with the market as high as it is? Still a good time to be buying stocks.

My niece is 23 and asked me if I think she should start investing in stocks right now or wait. I said now, but would be curious to hear your insight on that with all things considered. And also, how is the public portfolio doing so far compared to the market?

Seems like you're outperforming and that's impressive for an already tough market to beat. Well, thank you so much for that nice comment. And yeah, you know, I do think that this portfolio is doing very well. It is technically boosted right now from the market doing also very well.

But if you look at it just in general, I think the average performance of the S&P 500 is only around 10 percent, like since it was created on a yearly basis. So for our stock investments to be up like 30 percent in total. That's around triple the yearly average. Again, we're boosted right now. The market is doing really well.

But still, I'm just saying that for such a young and small portfolio, we're doing extremely well. So I'm very happy about that. And I would also say wait till we've had this portfolio for many years with some bigger positions that collect larger dividends. That'll help a lot too. And maybe in the future, I'll increase the budget to show you the kind of returns you can generate when you're actually investing at a greater scale.

with more money. For the other question, though, I completely agree with you that your niece should be starting to invest right away rather than attempting to time the market or wait for that perfect buying opportunity on a market crash or dip or whatever. Look, only being 23 years old, number one, I'm guessing she doesn't know much about stocks since she's not even investing yet and she's young. So the idea that this person could.

accurately time the market and find that perfect moment to start buying stocks is highly unlikely, in my opinion. And number two, she's got the perfect gift of time on her side. What is, in my opinion, apart from money, time is the most valuable asset to an investor. So use that advantage that you have.

Start investing early. Invest long term in the safest companies that you know a lot about and that have business models that are easier for you to understand. And then gradually over time, you can take riskier bets with higher upside potential stocks when you are yourself more experienced and you feel more confident in those investing decisions. But for now, the point is just get started, whatever. Invest in a great company.

Do your own thing. Make your own decisions. Do your own research. But for me, if I was just getting started, I would tell someone, I don't know, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, start with some very safe companies and work your way from there.

But the point is just get started and use that time on your hand. The more time in the market. the better returns you'll have rather than trying to time the market.

Okay, anyway, that'll do it for this month's update. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thank you so much for stopping by, my friends.

Thank you for all your support. Hope you're all doing well out there. And I will catch you in the next one.

All right. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

Transcript for:February 2025 Budget Portfolio Update

Transcript for:
February 2025 Budget Portfolio Update