We recently published a list of 10 Best Stocks to Buy for High Returns in 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) stands against other best stocks to buy for high returns in 2025.
Market Outlook 2025
On December 17, 2024, J.P. Morgan released its market outlook 2025. The report expects the global economy to continue growing at a robust rate, however a sharp slowdown in China is expected. Regarding the equity market, the firm anticipates depressing trends across stocks, sectors, and themes. Analysts at the firm estimate the S&P 500 to be around 6,500 in 2025 with earnings per share of $270. The head of Global Market Research, Hussain Malik noted that the policies of the United States regarding trade, immigration, and regulatory policy will play a critical role in defining the year’s outcome for the country and globally.
The report further elaborated on its anticipation of a depressed stock market by highlighting de-coupling central bank policies, uneven progress in disinflation, and ongoing technological innovation. Moreover, increased geopolitical tensions are also likely to add unusual complexity to the global stock market. Despite all this, the firm has bright expectations for the United States. It believes that the country will remain a key driver of growth due to factors such as an expanding business cycle, a robust labor market, increased capital spending related to AI, and active capital markets. On the other hand, Europe is expected to grapple with structural challenges, while emerging markets may face headwinds from persistent high interest rates, a strong US dollar, and trade policy issues.
Lakos-Bujas, head of Global Markets Strategy at J.P. Morgan warned that a key risk to their base case involves disinflation stalling or reversing, which could prompt the Federal Reserve to consider interest rate hikes later in 2025 or early 2026. Such developments would necessitate a reassessment of their market outlook.
Our Methodology
To curate the list of the 10 best stocks to buy for high returns in 2025, we used Insider Monkey’s third-quarter hedge funds database. We checked the 25 most widely held stocks by hedge funds for 10-year growth rates from Seeking Alpha and ranked these stocks in ascending order of the number of hedge funds.
Why do we care about what hedge funds do? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A home theater with family members enjoying streaming content together.
Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX)
10-Year Revenue Growth: 21.88%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 121
Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) runs an online streaming platform where users can watch movies, and TV shows, play games, and avail of other streaming services. The company has been gaining subscribers due to engaging content on its platform. During the fiscal fourth quarter of 2024, Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) executed its commitment to accelerating growth. It grew its revenue by 16% year-over-year while expanding its profit margins by six points to 27%. Management noted that it added 19 million net additions to its subscribers, which is the biggest net additions during a quarter in its history.
On January 24, Laurent Yoon, an analyst at Bernstein, upgraded the stock to Outperform from Market Perform. The analyst also raised the price target from $975 to $1,200 stating that the firm believes Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) can post another year of double-digit growth in 2025. The analyst believes that there are still many international markets that remain underpenetrated by the company. Management has also raised its revenue expectation by $500 million for 2025 indicating they can generate more revenue from its memberships. It is one of the best stocks to buy for high returns in 2025.
Montaka Global Investments stated the following regarding Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“There are multiple structural trends in the enterprise software space, including (i) the ongoing cloud migrations and digital transformations of enterprises, and (ii) the infusion of AI into software applications.
While the former remains in its early innings (80-85% of enterprise workloads still reside ‘on-premise’ – many of which will ultimately move to public clouds), the latter remains in its infancy.
Given all the hype of late, it’s hard to fathom that large-scale deployments of AI-based enterprise applications have barely even started. It’s all still to come. And we believe 2025 will be the first year that we really start to see meaningful deployments and adoption of these kinds of applications.
Consider another of our top 10 holdings, Salesforce, for example. Its revenue growth is at a cyclical low. Indeed, at just +8% per annum, as reported in the company’s most recent quarter, its rate of revenue growth has never been lower.
But in 2025, not only will price increases that were announced two years ago boost Salesforce, Inc.’s (NYSE:CRM) revenue growth, but the year will also mark the early stages of adoption of the company’s new ‘Agentforce’ (released only weeks ago). This is a new platform that lets businesses build and deploy their own custom AI agents to automate tasks, improve efficiency, and enhance customer experiences…” (Click here to read the full text)
Overall, NFLX ranks 7th on our list of best stocks to buy for high returns in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of NFLX to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NFLX but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.