At the start of January, I asked ChatGPT for the best S&P 500 stocks to consider buying in 2025. It trotted out three high-quality blue-chip shares (Microsoft, Nvidia, and Visa).
On the same day, I also gave my ‘top 3 S&P 500 stocks to consider buying in 2025’. These were Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Axon Enterprise, and Uber Technologies.
I meant to review these two sets of picks halfway through the year, but I forgot. So am I beating the bot? Or has it wiped the floor with me? Let’s find out.
Results so far
Without further ado, here’s how each cohort has performed after almost nine months.
ChatGPT’s picks
| Stock | Original Price* | Current Price | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | $423 | $511.46 | +20.9% |
| Nvidia | $144 | $178.19 | +23.7% |
| Visa | $314 | $337.37 | +7.4% |
| Average | +17.4% |
My picks
| Stock | Original Price* | Current Price | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $224 | $219.78 | −1.9% |
| Axon | $601 | $708.84 | +17.9% |
| Uber | $64 | $98.14 | +53.3% |
| Average | +23.1% |
As we can see, my three picks are beating ChatGPT’s by a decent margin (23.1% versus 17.4%).
For context, the S&P 500’s up 13% year to date (none of the calculations include dividends). So we’re both beating the market.
Am I still bullish on Amazon?
Now, at the time I considered the bot’s picks to be somewhat obvious, as Nvidia and Microsoft were the second- and third-largest companies in the S&P 500. They’re now number one and two.
Axon was tiny in comparison, while Uber’s market cap was under $150bn. Amazon was the established giant from my selection, but has also been the laggard. It has underperformed the market so far in 2025 and over five years (up just 41%).
However, I remain bullish on the tech giant. Its dominance in e-commerce and cloud computing (AWS) across much of the West remains intact, and both industries are set for long-term growth.
For most of its life, Amazon’s ploughed every spare dollar into growth. And today, it’s investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI). Some investors appear worried that these investments could be a waste of money, and that an AI bubble’s formed that might go pop.
However, most of Amazon’s core business appears insulated from this potential risk. Granted, less AI spend would lead to a slowdown in AWS’ growth, but the majority of its revenue comes from storage, networking and core compute for established businesses and governments. Most of this cloud infrastructure is mission-critical.
Meanwhile, e-commerce/Prime and digital advertising are strong secular trends of their own. Amazon‘s quietly become a juggernaut in digital advertising, and this is a very profitable area to be operating in.
And if its share price continues to lag the market in future, I would expect management to consider pulling the lever on share buybacks. Amazon has the financial ammo to do this — cash generation from AWS is huge — but it just hasn’t chosen to fire yet.
In future, the company should increase e-commerce efficiency with more advanced factory robots and even driverless delivery vehicles and drones.
Still early days
All six stocks mentioned here have risks, especially as they’re mainly in the tech sector. If this sells off like it did in 2022, then I would expect both cohorts to struggle for a while.
Plus, both these sets of picks were for the next five years, so it remains early days. There are still four and a quarter years to go and anything can happen over this time frame.
However, I’m confident with my three stocks, and think Amazon deserves further attention from this particular trio.
