5 TRENDS FOR 2025 AND HOW TO INVEST IN THEM
PICKING STOCKS is about predicting the future. As investors can tell you, being early to spot a trend and betting on a company poised to ride it can translate to a handsome return. Those who bought Amazon in 1998, for example, or Tesla in 2012, or Nvidia in 2020 correctly foresaw the respective explosions of online shopping, EVs, and the AI revolution—and made out like bandits.
Of course, this isn’t easy to do. One issue is timing. A thesis about the future of a sector might be correct, but it may still be years away. Betting on the right sector but the wrong horse can also be painful, as investors in bankrupt EV maker Fisker or fallen chip giant Intel can attest.
In the past, a relatively safe way to invest in macro trends has been to buy so-called cyclical stocks (think travel or entertainment) when the economy is on an upswing, and defensive ones (think consumer staples) when times are bad. Today, though, broader forces like tech transformation and geopolitical upheaval have made this model less reliable. In recent years, for example, utility stocks—a classic defensive play—have been on a tear, while the dominance of the tech-heavy group of stocks known as the Magnificent Seven has been a bigger story than any discrepancy between cyclical and defensive stocks.
The investment landscape may grow more unpredictable still as Donald Trump prepares his return to the White House. Nonetheless, ’s finance team put our heads together to come up with stock ideas for the coming year. We began by identifying five trends, and then picking three companies set to ride each of those waves in 2025. In some cases, our picks reflect the ongoing march of technology. Other trends such as geopolitical risk—named by CEOs in a recent Deloitte- survey as having the biggest potential to create disruption—and health and wellness reflect broader
