In this episode, Scott Becker shares eight key updates impacting markets, including sharp declines in Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft, private equity’s ongoing challenges amid deal slowdowns, and Netflix’s rise.
Chapter 1: What is the overall market outlook on April 21st, 2025?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity Business Podcast. These are eight of the stories that we're following this morning. It's April 21st, the start of a new week in the markets and not necessarily a good week. First, the markets point decidedly down this morning. People concerned about both upcoming earnings, also about tariffs and trade week and so forth.
Chapter 2: Why is Apple's market cap falling sharply in 2025?
So just a lot that's not going right at the moment. I do assume there's a decent amount of cognitive dissonance for all of those that voted for President Trump. They're trying to figure out policy at the present moment. Apple's market cap has fallen below $3 trillion after closing in on nearly $4 trillion last year. The stock's down 21% year-to-date.
Chapter 3: How is Nvidia's market value affected by trade tensions?
Chapter 4: What challenges is Microsoft facing in 2025?
Third, Nvidia's market cap has fallen to $2.47 trillion after once being above $3.5 trillion. A great piece today in Barron's how CEO Jensen Wong is trying to ease trade war fears. Fourth, Microsoft also struggling, not as bad as Nvidia and Apple. Its market cap is down to $2.73 trillion. It's down nearly 13% year-to-date.
Chapter 5: What is causing the slowdown in private equity deals?
Fifth, a great article in the Wall Street Journal, Private Equity World Engulfed by a Perfect Storm. Essentially, the article says, PE firms were struggling before the tariff battles, and now deals have moved to a standstill. The three largest buyout firms are now down more than 20% year-to-date, Blackstone, Apollo, KKR. So that's going poorly.
Another story that the longer the deal logjam goes on, the harder it's going to be for these firms to get money back to clients. Sixth, and I can empathize with this, investors in PE funds keep on making commitments to new funds and funding capital calls. Yet the return of capital and profits in the last two or so vintage funds is moving very slowly, if at all.
For first-generation successful families, investing in PE and VC funds may be akin to the dog who chases the car and catches the car. The chase may be more fun than the catch. And what I mean by that is if you're a first-generation wealthy family, you thought, oh, my God, you'd really hit it when you could invest in private equity and VC funds, and then you found it's not as exciting as it seems.
Seventh, against the tide, Netflix keeps on rising. I don't know what people are watching on Netflix, but it's up nearly 10% year to date. Finally, eighth, Pope Francis, history's first Latin American pope, passed away on Monday. He was 88. That'll send the, you know, the... Cardinals back at the Conclave trying to pick the next pope. We'll see how that goes. He's a special PS postscript.
The Becker Private Equity Podcast ranked number one this week, followed by Wall Street, Your Money Briefing, Bloomberg Intelligence, Bloomberg Daybreak, and the WSJ Minute Briefing. So just thrilled with that. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
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