By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
I am curious from your perspective, you can talk to me a little bit about some of your five best stocks to buy in 2025. One of them on this list is Amazon, which of course is not completely immune to any impact of tariffs. Talk to me about your your view on Amazon and your level of concern about tariffs and just broader economic uncertainty with a name like that.
00:30 Speaker B
Yeah, well, so I picked those names in December, but I we’re still buying Amazon, uh, because I think it’s important to to acknowledge their pricing power, uh, and and their their ability to, uh, to influence their suppliers. So, uh, we’ve we’ve heard that the management’s very confident, uh, about the retail side of the business. We know the cloud business is growing. Yes, they’re going to be spending a lot on on CAPEX, but after CAPEX, they’re still generating about 100 billion dollars in cash in free cash flows. So, uh, I think it’s important that that they deliver some indication, uh, on what they’re seeing in the marketplace, but we heard the bank, it’s there’s so many cross currents, Madison. We heard the bank CEOs come out and say, uh, that consumers not only were spending in the first quarter, they increased their spending according to American Express, and after tariffs were announced. So is that pull forward? Could be. Um, but how how much of that it is it and we want that’s what we want to hear from Andy Jassy.
02:20 Speaker A
And so with that in mind, some of the other names that are on your list here, Spotify is one of them. And, uh, you know, I I wonder your thesis around Spotify, especially as we’ve kind of heard some of the analyst commentary, look at names, platform plays, like a Spotify, like a Netflix even, and try to assess how that would hold up on the subscriber basis and then grow out its business even more, if we did see any hesitancy in consumers to pay further into those experiences.
03:17 Speaker B
Yeah, so when we again, we put it in the list, and all of these stocks are in our 12 best ideas portfolio. So we also own Netflix, but it is not in that portfolio. Uh, we were assuming and believed and still believe that the economy is decelerating. We’re not in the recession camp. I talked with Madison about that the last time I was in New York, which is about a month ago, but we do think things are slowing or will slow, even though the earnings are belying that, but again, I think some of that’s pull forward. So what where you want to go in that environment, many are are arguing that you want to be in healthcare. We’re there. You saw Abby’s earnings this morning, uh, very good. It’s our largest healthcare holding. But you also want to be in subscription-driven names, and and entertainment, in particular, where that’s going to be the last place to go, um, when when consumers are cutting their budgets, and they’re still working, uh, real wages are still improving. Uh, so so I think these names, uh, both of them, but in particular Spotify, uh, which has been a monster performer for us, continue to have, uh, a decently long runway as we move forward into a decelerating economy, uh, and then even it it’s kind of an all-weather stock even when things are improving can people continue to utilize the service. And and lastly, they’ve been very smart about opening up their platform, which is and and allowing Joe Rogan to be, um, to be viewed and or listened to in other, uh, on other platforms. That is improved advertising, and that’s what’s going to continue to drive earnings.