Top Trading Ideas of 2025: AI, Bitcoin, Stock Picks and PoliticsIf you’re extremely online and watching the blog of every investment bank, financial institution and markets-focused media outlet, you’ve probably seen a few of those already — year-ahead previews are just too enticing to pass on.
With this Idea, we’re aiming to lay out what our traders care about the most — the big trading and investment trends that will drive a huge chunk of the buying and selling. While only a forecast, this type of outlook could help you to better prepare your trades and set your gaze upon the assets and categories that will slosh around billions upon billions next year.
So let’s do it.
🤖 AI on the Horizon
A thematic priority and one of the top investment trends in 2025 will undoubtedly be Nvidia artificial intelligence. AI is touted as the game changer of the tech industry and all big tech players are racing to seize as big a market share as they can.
To get a feel for what may be coming, let’s look at what happened this year. According to technology-focused analyst firm Omdia, Microsoft MSFT was the biggest buyer of Nvidia’s NVDA flagship AI chip Hopper. (One of these babies will run you about $30,000.) Estimates point that the tech giant bought 485,000 Hopper chips (~ $15 billion ). It’s understandable because Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest investor with about $13 billion jammed into the ChatGPT parent.
Next in line for the Hopper chip in 2024 is Meta META with 224,000 units. Other big spenders for the AI-enabling tech include Tesla TSLA , Amazon AMZN and Google GOOGL .
Next year, that upside trend is expected to pick up the pace with Hopper’s successor Blackwell — a next-generation AI chip , which has seen insane demand , according to Nvidia’s main man Jensen Huang.
With all that AI buzz, investors will be closely following Nvidia’s every step for signs of whether the chip juggernaut could carry on the miraculous growth.
₿ Bitcoin is the New Orange
What’s the new year without some orange-colored cryptocurrency? Bitcoin BTCUSD is now a $2 trillion beast ready to tear down every permabear’s gloom-and-doom forecast. So what can you expect to see in 2025?
With Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the cryptocurrency industry is poised for deregulation (think, crypto companies finally getting bank accounts). The President-elect has set out to assemble a team of A-list venture capitalists , entrepreneurs and, frankly, billionaires.
And with the Congress largely made up of crypto bros, digital-asset companies hope regulators will wave away a whole string of suits against them — Coinbase, Kraken and Binance have been carrying a target on their backs for years.
Stripping down weighty rules will help companies expand services and establish bigger footprints, potentially powering Bitcoin’s valuation.
Other than having banks take deposits or lend to crypto companies, something else can propel Bitcoin. The US government may soon have its very own Bitcoin strategic reserve . The vehicle will aim to collect a total of 1 million Bitcoin over a five-year time horizon. The goal: keep stacking and never sell.
🎯 The Game of Whack-a-Mole
Here’s why stocks won’t be skyrocketing in 2025: the Federal Reserve just said it’s nearly done with lowering interest rates. After Fed boss Jay Powell announced another trim to borrowing costs Wednesday, he struck a cautious note saying that the US central bank is now projecting two rate cuts, down from a previous forecast of four.
In other words, stock picking is back on the menu. It’s easy to feel smart — even a genius — when your trade is in profit together with the broader market. But true craftsmanship is best seen amid churning waters when markets are volatile, tough and choppy.
No doubt there will be winners even if equities are moving sideways or looking down. But it’s hard to imagine that US stocks could pull off a third straight 20%+ annual gain (the S&P 500 SPX was up more than 24% in 2023 and is up 24% on the year so far).
Also, the broad-based index is at a record high . So is the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite IXIC . Among the big factors that could contribute to a negative year for stocks are rate hikes, recession or stubborn inflation.
All in all, stock pickers, this might just be your year!
🏛️ Power Plays and Market Sways
President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda is pretty clear by now and he isn’t even officially sworn in. If it could be summed up in a sentence it would probably be “America, heck yeah.”
Trump’s second four-year term is expected to usher in a new era of growth through an America-first approach, sweeping deregulation and tax cuts. All that mix of reflation policies threatens to flare up price pressures again. Add to that some hefty tariffs on US imports and you get a powerful concoction of “wait and see if this bursts in your face.”
Inflation expectations have already crept up and the recent consumer price index readout for November does sound some alarm bells. If things are heating up, Trump’s moves may bring them to a boil — tariffs are inflationary and immigration control is inflationary.
And so if the election win introduced animal spirits into the markets, the presidency starting next year will get a chance to make good on all the promises given by the President-elect (and expose some potential weaknesses).
📣 With that, we conclude the walk through what we think makes the most sense to grab headlines next year. What’s your take — do you think there are opportunities to be seized in 2025? Share your thoughts and let’s spin up a discussion!
