Why Trump is Buying the Dip on These 5 Iconic Stocks! 😲

Hey, welcome back subscribers. My name is Ali. This is my world of stocks. And hey, welcome back to our weekend big buyer series where every weekend we take a look at big stocks being purchased by some of the largest investors in the world hold a ton of influence over the market. So, it's interesting to see like what moves they're making, what they're investing in. Well, who tends to have more influence these days over policy and and the economy at large than perhaps the actual president of the United States of America in Donald Trump himself whose latest portfolio moves were uh just revealed actually this month through a brand new ethics disclosure filing to the SEC of which we're pulling out five of the largest purchases among them to see where exactly he's been pouring millions of dollars into in just recent purchases alone. Now, before we start, I really do this with any video where I mention a politician. I just always want to say a quick disclaimer. I am not here at all to talk about politics or you know, who you should or should not be voting for or anything like that. If you want to know the honest truth, I just put my faith in God and that's about it these days. I I don't really get much into politics myself. It's not really my thing. But hey, I love all of you. I respect you guys and I just want you to know I am only here to talk about stock market investing alone. Which again, any sitting president is going to have major influence over that. You know, whether we're talking about global policy, tariffs, trade deals, government contracts, regulations, there are so many things that can very easily affect individual stocks. And so, I do think that it'll be very interesting to see what stocks any of these politicians are buying. And by the way, I've done videos on Nancy Pelosi, Ro Khanna, and now we're going to be looking at Donald Trump. So, let's break down these five big purchases and I'll of course be sharing my own opinion on each one of these, and I'll even rank them from best to worst, too, based on today's prices and where I see these stocks heading long term. So, hit that like button. Smash the hype button, too, if you don't mind. That really helps me out a lot, and I do appreciate that. It's right by the comments if you scroll over the comments. And drop a comment, too, if you don't mind. Um but hey, with all that said, let's just go ahead and jump straight into this list. Okay, now um we might as well just start with the biggest purchase made here, uh because it's really the one that everyone um seems to keep talking about right now for for how big of a deal really it was. And um that was in the social media and AI powerhouse Meta, ticker symbol META, which, according to the filing, well, Trump grabbed uh up to $25 million worth of the stock in this one purchase alone, uh which is a pretty ironic kind of plot twist when you think about it. But you know, you might remember that Trump um had actually been banned at one point from Facebook, you know, a few years back. So, this is kind of interesting here um that he's actually buying it. And um yeah, I actually uh really like Meta's stock myself. I even made a few videos on it recently. If you want to go check those out for like a bigger deep dive into everything that the the company is doing. Um but to keep it very short here, I just see this as a fantastic play on not just AI, um but in what they can really do with um with artificial intelligence for such an already large and established user base of, of course, more than 3 and 1/2 billion daily users across their apps that uh almost no other AI company out there can really match uh in terms of that size and that scale and that opportunity that they really hold within their business. Now, of course, all the headlines, you know, more recently have been focused on the giant spending, which, you know, is extremely large at 145 billion dollars of CapEx um projected just this year alone, which will, of course, be weighing on their cash flows for the time being. But, in my opinion, I just think that the market is completely um sleeping on how Meta is about to really monetize all of that spending, where I see a lot of potential in. Now, for one, their bread and butter advertising business is still on absolute fire, with analysts even projecting it to overtake Google for the first time ever. That's kind of mind-blowing to think about it. You know, it's never been the case. And all this um AI spending um will only make those targeted ads even smarter and more effective in the future. But, beyond that, you know, Meta is even trying to diversify further with new offerings, like in their new AI agents called Muse, uh which hit 5 million downloads faster than even ChatGPT did. And just this past week, they rolled out Muse Wonder, which is an even stronger version with um higher-priced subscription tiers to keep the money kind of pouring in, which not only allows them to run the platform without annoying ads, giving them a a pretty big edge, I would say, over a lot of the competition, but it it's um even looking to collect uh really high-margin transaction fees for everything that the autonomous agent um can do in terms of transactions, in terms of like making buys for you, booking things for the user. Um they can actually collect fees on that. And third, um something that really not enough people, I feel, uh talk about when when mentioning Meta, is the fact that, you know, Meta won't even have to use all of their shiny new AI data centers purely for themselves, but rather, you know, CEO Mark Zuckerberg actually stated recently that outside companies are already offering to lease Meta's uh excess compute at a significant premium to what it even cost them in the first place. In other words, yes, spending is through the roof for Meta, but given enough time, I think Meta's high-margin business is actually going to end up being even stronger than ever because of all the ways that they're find all these new ways that they're finding to monetize um all of this AI and and everything that they're doing. Now, in fact, analysts even project their annual sales to surpass $300 by as early as next year with operating income breaking a hundred billion, too. It's insane numbers, and all the meanwhile still posting double-digit growth across the board. It's like insane numbers that we're talking about here, and it's why, you know, despite the stock performing so well, um their more forward-looking valuation metrics are actually still sitting lower today than the sector median. So, you know, I think Meta is really a strong buy in most years, and I'm going to rank them pretty high on our list for now at number two until we see the other pickups. Okay, now, moving over to purchase number two, uh we're heading straight into consumer entertainment for this one and one of the biggest names out there, and that is the undisputed king of streaming, Netflix, ticker symbol NFLX, where Trump grabbed up to five million dollars worth of shares, too. Uh by the way, in these filings, um they're only required to give like ranges for these individual purchases whenever they make them. So, you know, that's why I say up to a certain amount cuz it's really a range that they give us. We don't We don't um technically know like the exact figure, but um anyway, if we pull up the stock chart here for Netflix, uh we can see that they've actually had a pretty rough ride over the past year, even losing about half its entire value from the very top. And that sell-off really comes from concerns, I would say, about their top-line growth slowing down. Now, last quarter, for example, sales grew by 13% but forward guidance called for a deceleration of down to 11.7% in the next one and that's actually marking their weakest pace in about 3 years. Now, on top of that, investors got nervous over reports of plateauing subscriber engagement, rising competition for for for eyeballs, I guess, you know, against YouTube and and other platforms. And the recent news as well has been kind of negative for Netflix is that, you know, they're letting go of roughly a thousand employees to try to cut back on costs. So, you know, they're they're trying to cut back on costs. What does that mean? Are they kind of struggling a bit or what's going on? But, here's why I think Trump and maybe some other, you know, like, I guess, contrarian investors to this whole kind of argument are, you know, taking a closer look at this dip here. Now, while almost every other mega cap tech company is spending, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers that are completely crushing their near-term cash flows, Netflix, it might surprise you, is actually becoming much more profitable over time. It's a big deal. Now, last quarter alone, they generated over $4 billion of operating income. And that was at a stellar 33% operating margins. And for the full year, management expects to pull in roughly 12 and a half billion of pure free cash flow, too. This is in stark contrast to what we used to see in the past for Netflix and what used to be their biggest criticism really of all. Now, it's turning into a a huge positive for the company is it is in how like surprisingly how profitable they're becoming. Plus, they're unlocking new growth engines outside of basic subscriptions, too. For example, their ad-supported tier is on track to roughly double to $3 billion in sales this year. They're pushing aggressively into premium live events, even locking in high-profile NFL games, major boxing bouts, and even WWE wrestling, as well. And they're even opening physical entertainment destinations with Netflix house um and and some other things too that they're doing to to try to build up like some long-term loyalty as well, which Netflix is already kind of a household name. You think of hey, let's watch Netflix. You know, a lot of people tend to just have Netflix. Huge subscriber numbers. Well, they're trying to build on that customer loyalty to really lock it in long-term. Now, as a result, analysts are actually projecting their income to continue rising by sharp rates well into the future. Yet, because the stock was cut like, you know, in half, um the valuation is now sitting at a rare bargain of around 30% cheaper than both their 5-year average and even the sector median on a PEG basis. Now, to get the world's leading streaming giant for that cheap of a price tag, I actually do think that it's a reasonable pick up here. But, because I still prefer other more diversified names with also exposure to streaming, I would still give the clear edge here to Meta on our rankings. And therefore, Netflix will take the number three slot for now on our table just under them. Okay, now moving right along though to the third purchase of the list, we're actually going to stick right inside media and communications for just a bit longer. This time we're going to look at an old-school legacy titan that is currently going through a giant corporate shake-up. And that is the cable and broadband and entertainment conglomerate Comcast, ticker symbol CMCS.A. Which Trump also grabbed up to $5 million worth of the stock. Now, if you pull up the 10-year chart here, it's been downright brutal for Comcast shareholders with the stock crashing roughly 65% from its all-time highs, even leaving it negative over the past 10 years too. Now, the reason why Wall Street has abandoned Comcast is no secret. Their legacy cable television business has been bleeding subscribers to the whole cord-cutting movement for years, while their core residential broadband business, um, internet basically, um, continues to face heavy competition from various providers, especially in fiber. But last quarter, for example, their connectivity and platforms revenue actually declined by over 3%. However, despite those top-line headwinds, uh, Comcast does actually generate a lot of profit. Last quarter alone, they generated 4.6 billion of pure free cash flow. And that steady cash generation is what helps support one of the more attractive dividends in the market, which is currently yielding over 6%, which I believe, um, is not only the the highest level that I think it's ever been, um, but it's it also makes them the only company in the entire Nasdaq 100 to yield above that mark, too. So, you know, it is actually pretty, um, pretty attractive dividend. Plus, it even carries a very small payout ratio, too, and a double-digit growth history, meaning, you know, it's likely pretty safe as well. At the same time, though, their content and experiences division is actually showing strong signs of life as well. Last quarter, um, media revenue jumped 25% with their streaming app, Peacock, finally reaching profitability for the first time. While also hitting 48 million subscribers, which was, by the way, largely fueled by the FIFA World Cup and NBA playoffs. So, some of their partnerships, their contracts, um, seem to be kind of paying off for them and helping them build up that platform. Now, their studio business also grew 25% on the backs of theatrical hits like the Super Mario Galaxy movie, uh, while their Universal theme parks continue to perform well, too. But here's where things get tricky because management actually announced recently a complete shakeup of the company that would see it split into two separate um entities by the summer of next year, spinning off NBC Universal and Sky into one publicly traded like media and theme parks company, while leaving behind the core Xfinity broadband um wireless and um business internet operations for the other company. Now, as a whole, you know, the stock is dirt cheap after the drop, even trading significantly lower than both their own five-year average as well as the sector median. And don't get me wrong, when you single out much of the pros about this stock, I actually can totally understand why someone would want to invest in this stock right now on the giant dip. But, if I zoom out a bit, I just think I'd probably still want to invest elsewhere in most scenarios because if I want like a pure play in media and streaming, I probably just trust Netflix a little bit more in terms of execution and future growth who isn't dealing with such a large restructuring and is like the king of streaming. And if I want a broader entity, um I would still much more prefer to own stocks like Disney, Amazon, Google, or even Apple for their diversified scale. Now, after the split, um I could definitely see myself reevaluating the whole situation and seeing if maybe one of these two separate companies is something I want to invest in. But for now, it's just not something that I want to get too entangled with when I already have such a large portfolio to be keeping track of. I don't really want to go through this whole shake-up, too. So, um they will unfortunately go in last place on our ranking so far, even though, like I said, I can totally understand the appeal of picking up a name like this at this moment. Okay, now that's going to bring us now over though to a purchase number four. And here I think that we definitely have a challenger for that top spot against Meta. Um because here we have another one of my personal favorites in the software and cloud titan Microsoft, ticker symbol MSFT, which Trump also grabbed up to $5 million worth of the stock. Now, if you've been watching Microsoft lately, a recent rebound has shares soaring once again. Now, as you guys know, I made tons of videos on um how I was buying so heavily when when they were going through a dip, you know, earlier this year. So, hopefully most of you guys are enjoying these huge gains right now, too. Um, in fact, I believe that this was uh like the I think it was the largest quarterly run in terms of a rise here um for Microsoft, and I think I think it was like in nearly three decades, which is kind of crazy. Um, but yeah, that rebound happened because Wall Street finally woke up from that ridiculous fear that AI was somehow going to disrupt this legacy software juggernaut. Where instead, Microsoft's latest earnings showed revenue soaring by 18% year-over-year to a staggering 90 billion dollars. While operating income climbed 18% too to over 40 billion um in profit there. And again, that that is just in one single quarter alone. It's insane. I even better though, Azure cloud revenue exploded by 43% pushing total annual cloud sales past 100 billion for the first time. In other words, AI is um only making what is already the second largest cloud provider in the world even more important as time goes on. And as a result, they're even sitting with a contracted backlog of an unbelievable 678 billion dollars, which was up a massive 84% year-over-year, too. Now again, this is really what I've been saying all along, that enterprise customers aren't walking away from Microsoft. They're locking in long-term deals faster than ever. And it's why we're seeing their software and subscription sales take off now, too. Paid seats, for example, for 365 Copilot has already crossed 30 million, and adoption continues to rise. Plus, Microsoft is even expanding in new areas, too. Uh CEO Satya Nadella, for example, just unveiled their brand new custom silicon called the Maia 300 chip, whereby designing their own processors, Microsoft claims that they can now process 40% more tokens per megawatt compared to traditional GPUs, which I'll just put that in plain English for you. It basically means that they'll be able to slash electricity costs and avoid, you know, like larger power bottlenecks as they scale into these bigger deployments in the coming years. It's a very big deal for AI. Now, look, I get that the valuation can probably, you know, no longer be considered cheap at these levels. But when you consider the insane financials that they generate year after year, and the fact that on a GAAP basis, uh they're actually still sitting slightly below the sector, which is kind of crazy. I actually think that the stock is still a very solid pick up even here. Um I mean, in my opinion, Microsoft should easily trade for a very large premium over everything else. So, the fact that it doesn't, in some ways, uh tells me that the market might still be kind of holding back a little bit on this tech giant. So, um for me, uh for now, um it is one of my largest holdings. I love the business. They even pay a small but growing dividend. And uh yeah, just because of all the size and safety of it, I think I would actually rank them um a little higher than Meta on our list. All right, guys. That's going to leave us now, though, with the fifth purchase of our list. And uh for this one, we have to completely leave big tech, cloud servers, and media streaming all behind to instead look at one of the most iconic fast food chains in American history. That is of course McDonald's, ticker symbol MCD, of which Trump grabbed up to $5 million worth of the stock in his most recent purchase. Now, out of all the stocks that he's been buying, this one might be the maybe the least surprising of all because as pretty much everyone knows at this point, Trump has actually had a very public decades-long kind of love affair, maybe you want to call it, with McDonald's food. We've seen him famously serving towering stacks of Big Macs and Quarter Pounders at the White House, ordering bags of burgers for his private jet on the campaign trail, and even putting on an apron to work the fryers at a drive-thru in Pennsylvania. In fact, he's often joked that one of the reasons he eats it is because he feels that it is just kind of a clean and reliable way of knowing exactly what he's getting on his plate or in his bag, I guess, in this case. Well, apparently, he isn't interested in just eating the burgers anymore, but rather he wants to be a part owner through investment. And if we look at the stock chart, the timing for this most recent pickup does make some sense as Mickey D's has been going through a very rough patch throughout this year, even tumbling around 30% from the very top, which is pretty alarming for what is normally such a strong performing stock over the decades. So, why has Wall Street been dumping it instead? Well, it really all comes down to a squeeze on the everyday consumer. See, with sticky inflation and higher interest rates pinching household budgets, lower-income diners have been cutting back on eating out while pushing back hard against fast-food prices, and specially rising ones. In fact, we can see this slowdown taking shape even in their most recent earnings, where global comparable store sales and barely rose by just 1.3% while domestic US store sales barely inched higher by less than 1% too. On top of that, input costs have been brutal with CEO Chris Kem Kemsinski uh noting that wholesale beef prices have literally doubled across their core markets over the past 5 years, which is pretty crazy. And so when you combine the rising food costs with cash-strapped diners in [snorts] what has been a very challenging macroeconomy, well, Wall Street got nervous that McDonald's will get you know, kind of stuck in like a margin trap where they have to choose basically one over the other. Either they raise their prices and risk losing foot traffic or they discount their prices heavily to attract visitors but at the cost of eating away much of their profits. Uh to me, it does feel like a bit of a lose-lose scenario and it's one of the reasons why I haven't purchased myself, at least not yet. However, I will say that if there is a company that we probably shouldn't count out because of a macro cyclical slump it could definitely be McDonald's. In fact, historically, uh I can think of a couple times where the stock had fallen by more than 30% from its peak when during the 2003 slump and again in 2015, but both times critics claimed that fast food was dead and yet again, both of those times McDonald's actually completely uh reinvented its operations and it went on to more than double in share price over the following couple of years. Well, right now they're launching that exact same playbook through an 8 and 1/2 billion-dollar modernization plan that they call next. Now, first they're transforming the customer experience with new technology. They're rolling out an AI operating platform called Arch IQ to optimize kitchen staffing. Uh they're testing an automated drive-thru ordering tool called Archie. And they're even adding in-store pickup lockers to help uh really help make uh delivery drivers faster and more efficient. Uh second, they're experimenting with brand new high-margin advertising on their digital drive-thru order boards. They could actually see huge traffic. I mean, already they boast over like 29,000 drive-thrus around the world, with over 70 million customers walking through their doors too, like every single day. So, you know, management estimates that this new drive-thru ad network alone could unlock up to a billion dollars in high-margin sales for them. And third, they're aggressively defending their core menu with the best burger initiative. That's what they call it. Where they aim to upgrade their buns and cooking processes uh processes for their their burgers. They're also rolling out the new Big Arch Burger for larger appetites. And they're expanding their hand-breaded chicken for those that prefer those. And they're even introducing protein-forward offerings to cater to consumers that are taking GLP-1 medications, which is kind of crazy. And of course, we know uh at the on like these days like so many people are on GLP-1, and that number's probably going to continue to rise when you look at the offerings coming from like Eli Lilly and stuff, and they're showing like pretty crazy results. I'm not recommending it, by the way. I don't take any of that. But um but I don't know. I don't even know much about it. But just I just know that a lot of people are using it. And um that's going to be a trend that is likely to continue. And the thing about it is that people that are on GLP-1, you know, they tend to lose muscle mass. And one of the ways to help prevent that is to eat more protein. And of course, you got to exercise and lift weights. But, you know, another thing is to just kind of try to eat more protein. So, um there's actually a lot of companies that are targeting that market cuz that market is exploding. So many people are on it. So, a lot of companies are targeting it by trying to offer more high-protein um you know, products. And of course, you know, McDonald's is no no exception. Uh, plus, I you know, you can't you just can't really forget about the sheer size, too, of McDonald's like underlying real estate business, uh, that that kind of business model where roughly 95% of their 45,000 global restaurants are actually franchised. And that means that McDonald's owns or leases the prime physical land underneath the restaurants and then collects steady high-margin rent checks and and royalties that are tied directly to gross sales. And it's a much more profitable structure that allows them to post high operating margins above 45% while turning out roughly 7 to 8 billion dollars in annual free cash flow. And that strong cash generation is exactly the reason why they were able to achieve a legendary milestone just last month where they declared their 50th consecutive annual dividend increase, officially crowning McDonald's as a dividend king now, too. Plus, because of the big drop in price, that dividend is now yielding more than 3%, which is pretty attractive for a dividend king like this. And the only reason why I still haven't touched the stock myself, though, is simply because of the low growth and still somewhat pricey valuation even after the drop. Now, that PE ratio is at least 23% lower than their own 5-year average. So, again, I I can understand why investors would look at this dip and think, you know, it might be worth scooping up shares to lock in the dividend, too, at these levels. But, that PE is still more than 20% higher than the sector, too. And what has been, in my opinion, really always a bit of a premium stock that I just don't see, um, as much future upside potential as I see it as I see in other names out there that are actually much lower and at bigger discounts, in my opinion. So, because of that, um, I think I will still rank them at just under Netflix on our board at number four, while pushing Comcast down one spot to fit it in. So, yeah, overall, not a bad group of stocks, I'd say, and I think I can mostly understand why someone would want to make these moves in these specific names at this time. However, I do think that it's kind of funny that the only two stocks that I own myself and that I actually like the most and rank the highest on our list are Microsoft and Meta, which happen to be the only two stocks that are not currently going through a large dip. Whereas, you might argue that the other three are perhaps a bit cheaper, at least considering the downturns that they're currently going through and where they would normally trade. But, in this particular case, I do just think that overall strength is more important among this list. And for sure, I see that much more with Microsoft and Meta. Whereas, I feel that there's, you know, a bit more risk associated with the other three names. But, hey, those are just my own thoughts, my perspective. But, I'd love to hear what you all think down below. Do you agree with my final rankings, or would you make any changes to them? And are you buying any of these stocks yourself? Um, do you or do you own any of them already, or are you just kind of staying away? Drop your thoughts down below in the comments. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if you enjoyed this breakdown and would like to see me do the same for maybe some other politicians, too, let me know who those are that you'd like me to evaluate some of their trades next. I'd love to make those videos for you. And if you'd like to support my work, then please consider joining our Patreon. Link is down in the description and on a pinned comment. Where you not only get early commercial-free access to all my videos, but you also get immediate access to our private community Discord, filled with awesome like-minded investors, and where I even post a new stock purchase every single day, too. It's a ton of fun, lots of cool perks. You get all of that for just five bucks a month, which I I think is a pretty good deal. And it's just an amazing way of supporting the channel and helping to keep it alive. So, thank you so much for that support, my friends. It really means a lot to me and I really appreciate it. But, yeah, with all that said, I hope that you are all doing well. I hope that you're having a fantastic weekend, and I wish you a great week upcoming, too. And um yeah, I hope you enjoyed the video. Hope you're all doing well, and I will catch you guys in the next one. All right, take care, everybody. Bye-bye. >> [music]