Luckbox readers and a panel of financial experts found a lot to agree about when we queried the two groups about their expectations for the coming months. We asked them what they foresee for investment opportunities, political outcomes, the Grammys and the Super Bowl.

Both groups singled out Nvidia (NVDA) as a stock likely to climb in value, but the experts also warned it could decline a lot, too. Both also indicated at least a little skepticism of buying shares in Tesla (TSLA).

But the groups diverged a bit when asked what would be the world’s most valuable publicly traded company as of March 31, 2025. The experts chose Apple (AAPL), while readers predicted Nvidia would be largest and would relegate Apple to second place.

In the real world, Nvidia once again passed Apple on Tuesday to become the company with the largest market capitalization. Nvidia was valued at $3.6 trillion this morning, while Apple was at $3.37 trillion. We’ll see who’s on top at the end of March, the date mentioned in the survey.

Let’s pause now to meet the readers and the experts before we get into the details of the forecasts they made in December.

Who are the readers?

Nearly all of the readers who responded to the survey trade stocks or options at least occasionally, and most quality as active investors who trade equities daily or weekly. Only about 3% never buy and sell stocks of options. Let’s break it down.

Options. Judging from the survey responses, it’s safe to categorize our readers as active options investors. In fact, nearly 80% fit that description. Some 60% buy and sell options daily, while 19% do it weekly. About 14% do it monthly, while 3% rarely participate and 3% never do.

Stocks and exchange-traded funds. Most readers qualify as active stock traders, with 65% fitting that profile. That includes the 40% who trade stocks daily and the 24% who ] trade weekly. Nearly all the rest commit themselves to buying and selling stocks at least occasionally. More specifically, 22% do it monthly and 10% rarely. Less than 3% never trade stocks.

Futures. Not nearly so many readers trade futures, with 31% doing it actively. Among respondents, some 18% do it daily and 13% weekly. Less than 8% do it monthly, 20% rarely and more than 40% just don’t do it.

Cryptocurrency. Fascination with crypto is spreading quickly in the first week of the Trump administration. When we polled readers late last year, a lot owned digital currency, but they tended to hold it instead of buying and selling actively. Just 6% were trading it daily and another 5% weekly. Some 21% traded monthly and 25% rarely. More than 42% weren’t trading it at all, but that seems destined to change with crypto now exploding into the mainstream.

Forex. Most of our survey respondents just don’t seem very engaged with foreign exchange. More than 75% reported that they never trade forex. About 4% do it daily, less than 2% weekly and 18% monthly or rarely.

Now let’s meet the pundits.

A convergence of expertise

Garrett Baldwin, an economist at Marketwise, who’s author of Postcards from the Republicon Substack.

Tony Battista, who co-hosts tastylive LIVE! and Last Callwith Tom Sosnoff. His podcast is Option Trades Today.

Sylvia Jablonski, chief investment officer at Defiance ETFs.

Dylan Ratigan, former global managing editor for corporate finance at Bloomberg News and current co-host of the Truth or Skepticismpodcast with Tom Sosnoff.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, who served briefly as White House director of communications in the first Trump administration.

Tom Sosnoff, legendary options trader and co-host of tastylive LIVE!, who co-founded the tastytrade brokerage and helped develop the Thinkorswim trading platform.

Ilya Spivak, tastylive head of global macro, who’s on two tastylive shows: He hosts the Macro Money and co-hosts Overtime.

Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research.

Finally, let’s see how much the panel and the readers agree on what lies ahead.

Forecasting the markets

We asked both groups to project how much certain equities would gain or lose by March 31, and their responses were notably similar. Also notable was the fact none of the experts predicted any of the investments we asked them about would rise more than 15%. Here’s what else we gleaned:

Bitcoin— Readers and experts agree. Both groups were more bullish about bitcoin than any other entity we asked them about. But they were really bearishly negative, too. More than anything else, their projections seem to reflect the cryptocurrency’s capacity for wild volatility.

Plus, we should bear in mind that cryptocurrency is having its moment in the early days of the Trump administration, riding higher than most would have contemplated back in December when the surveys were conducted.

Anyway, more than 60% of readers expect a gain, and half the experts also expect one. However, more than 18% of readers placed bitcoin in the highest category of gain—more than 15% appreciation. More than 37% of experts predicted a gain of 10% to 15%.

At the same time, 25% of experts see a loss of more than 15%, while 26% of readers predict a loss of more than 10%.

Nvidia—Readers and experts agree. Among readers, 62% anticipate a gain, and 29% believe it will be more than 10%. Half of the experts agree there’ll be an increase, and 32% think it will be a rise of more than 5%.

SPY–Readers and experts roughly agree. Some 63% of readers predict the S&P 500 ETF will gain, with 43% expecting that rise will be less than 10%. Half of the experts expect it to gain less than 10%

Gold—Readers and experts largely agree. Some 72% of readers forecast an increase in the price of gold with 64% saying it will rise by less than 10%. About 62% of experts believe the price will increase.

Both groups don’t foresee a big loss in the price of gold. Less than 2% of readers predicted a loss of more than 15%, and none of the experts anticipate a loss of that magnitude.

Tesla—Readers and experts agree. Despite Elon Musk’s status as richest person in the world and perhaps the most power private citizen in American history, readers award Tesla (TSLA) stock a more-or-less neutral collective rating. The bears who think it will fall in value come to 52%, while the optimists who expect an increase were 48%.

But upon closer examination, the results seem a bit more negative. For example, the largest group, more than 18%, predicts a loss of more than 15%, while less than 10% think it will rise more than 15%.

The panelists are evenly divided—50-50 on a win or loss. Yet, once again, the devil’s in the details. Two experts expect a loss of 10% or more, while no one anticipates a gain of 10% or more. Overall, we view both groups as collectively just a little skeptical of Tesla.

These thoughts on the fortunes of a few companies stir some interest, but what about the biggest prize? What will be the most valuable publicly traded company in the world on March 31?

The world’s biggest company

For a lifetime, General Motors (GM) laid claim to the title of most valuable company, stretching its reign from 1931 to 2008. But even before and after that, it was all about cars when it came to sheer size. GM seized the top spot from Ford (F) and ceded it to Toyota (TM).

These days, the automakers have stepped aside and handed over the mantle of biggest-in-the-world to the tech companies. As of week ago, Apple was largest with market capitalization of $3.68 trillion, ahead of Nvidia ($3.54 trillion), Microsoft (MSFT) at $3.15 trillion, Alphabet (GOOG) at $2.36 trillion and Amazon (AMZN) at $2.36 trillion.

Will the lineup change this year? Half of the eight experts on our panel said Apple would retain its crown, while three companies received one vote each: Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidea. Curiously, one panelist voted for MicroStrategy (MSTR) and gave it a 2% probability of achieving the top market cap.

Readers disagreed. Some 34% predict Nvidia will usurp Apple, while 32% believe Apple with maintain its position at the top. Readers allocated other votes to Tesla (12%), Microsoft (8%), and Amazon and Alphabet in a tie at 4%.

But you can’t talk about business and investing these days without commenting on politics. So, lets look at what our respondents had to say about the Trump administration and transition.

Trump’s popularity rating

President Trump came into office Monday with a 47% approval rating, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed Tuesday. That score reflected the polarization that’s become so familiar, commentators say.

Yet contentious issues have already arisen his by Trump’s fourth day as the 47th president. Polls indicate 58% disapproved of at least some of the 1,600 pardons Trump granted to rioters who stormed the capital after the 2020 Election.

A lot’s happened since our surveys in December, but let’s take a look at the results just the same to see if they match reality so far. Some 26% of readers predict his rating will be about the same at the end of March as it is now. They picked the range of 45% to 48% in our survey. Half of the experts chose that same range.

Optimism that Trump’s popularity will climb to 52% or higher was about the same among readers (13%) and experts (12.5%). Pessimism that it will sink below 40.9% was 18% among readers and 25% among experts.

Besides the president’s rating, a question that might prove pivotal to the transition also found a place in the survey.

Hegseth’s confirmation

As we go to press, fresh accusations about the conduct of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense were still feeding into the confirmation grinder. Just days ago, Hegseth’s former sister-in-law submitted the affidavit accusing him of abuse, racism, public misconduct and heavy drinking.

Just the same, the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday voted 14-13 along party lines to move his nomination to the full Senate. A vote was expected there as early as tomorrow.

Our readers were still keeping the faith in December. Nearly 60% predicted Hegseth would get the nod from the Senate. The experts split evenly, four saying he’d win the nomination, and four predicting he’d lose the vote.

The prediction markets are forecasting the high probability of a confirmation. We examined the variance between our experts and readers, versus the prediction markets, here.

Another political issue included in the survey has already been resolved. Who, exactly, was President Biden going to pardon before handing the Oval Office over to Trump

Biden pardons

In the final minutes and hours of his presidency, Joe Biden issued pardons or commuted the sentences of more than 8,000 people, Many were for nonviolent drug offenders who had received long sentences. Others were people who Biden said had nothing wrong but were in danger of attempts at revenge by President Trump.

We asked in our surveys whether Biden would pardon some individuals we named. Five were pardoned, and three were not.

At the top of the list came one of the former president’s brothers, Jim Biden, who was among the family members who got pardons. He has been investigated by the Justice Department for medicare fraud when he was associated with Americore hospitals and for influence-peddling by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Half of our experts and 55% of readers saw the pardon coming.

Three members of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack made the list—Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has since been elected to the Senate, Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who lost her primary for reelection to the House, and Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Democrat who chose not to run for reelection.

All three received pardons, even though Schiff and Kinzinger said they didn’t need them because they insisted they had nothing wrong and Cheney said she was upholding the law, not violating it with her work on the committee. The survey respondents—the experts and the readers—didn’t seem to have strong opinions on the outcomes. They tended to answer “yes,” “no” or “don’t know” in roughly equal proportions.

The same was true for Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and medical advisor to the president during the COVID-19 pandemic. He received a pardon after Republicans vehemently opposed some policies he advocated during the pandemic and unresolved questions about the origins of Covid-19..

Three from the list who did not receive Biden pardons were Jack Smith, the special counsel who prosecuted Trump for the Jan. 6 attack and possession of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago; New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed a successful civil lawsuit for fraud against Trump, resulting in fine of $355 million and a three-year ban from doing business in the state; and Alvin Bragg, the New York County district attorney who secured a conviction on 34 counts of felony in a hush-money case.

Once again, survey votes of experts and readers were spread fairly evenly among “yes,” “no” and “don’t know.”

But that’s enough about politics, let’s turn to sports.

Super Bowl LIX

Come Feb. 9, we’ll see how well the survey respondents did at predicting the winner of the Super Bowl. But first, we have to narrow the competition to just two teams from the remaining four.

To that end, the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday meet the Washington Commanders for the NFC championship. USA Today is forecasting a 30-27 victory for the Eagles, who have won one Super Bowl in four appearances, over the Washington Commanders, who have won in four of its five Super Bowl appearances. In the AFC, the publication is predicting a 27-24 win for the Kansas City Chiefs, victor in the last two Super Bowls, over the Buffalo Bills, who have lost four Super Bowls and never won one.

Readers favored the Chiefs (28%), but got it wrong with the Detroit Lions (22%), who are now out of contention. Their other picks were Buffalo (13%) and Philadelphia (9%). The Commanders didn’t get on the scoreboard with readers.

Plus, the readers got it wrong be forecasting a Super Bowl championship for teams now knocked out of competition, including the Minnesota Vikings (7%), Baltimore Ravens (6%), Pittsburg Steelers (4%) and Green Bay Packers (3%).

Four of our experts picked the Bills, two chose the Chiefs, one predicted the Packers and one chose the San Francisco 49ers. In December, the 49ers had a 0.1% chance of winning the Super Bowl, according to Fox Sports. We won’t tell which panelist chose them, but it must have been a die-hard fan or someone who doesn’t follow football.

But let’s move on to music.

Grammy for best rock album

We’ll find out Feb. 2 how well survey respondents fared at picking the Grammy winner for best rock album of the year.

Readers favored three-time Grammy winners The Rolling Stones to take home a fourth for their album Hackney Diamonds (32%). The title, by the way, refers to bits of broken glass from shattered car or shop windows in the Hackney Borough of East London.

Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter came in second among readers (21%), Green Day was second with Saviors (15%), followed by Happiness Bastards by The Black Crows (11%), Romance by the Fontaines D.C. (8%), No Name by Jack White (7%) and TANGK by The Idles (5%).

Among the financial experts, three picked The Stones, two chose The Black Crowes, one predicted Green Day and one decided upon the Fontaines D.C.

That wraps up the results of the Luckbox forecasting surveys. We’ ll know more about their accuracy as the first quarter of 2025 unfolds.

Ed McKinley is Luckbox editor-in-chief.