MW This investor bought Netflix, Alphabet and Nvidia on the cheap. Where he's looking now.

By Barbara Kollmeyer

Matt Shapiro is looking for big tech bargains, and possibly crypto down the road

Netflix, Berkshire Hathaway and Deere are three stocks money manager Matt Shapiro is looking to buy should a post-Fed selloff hit the stock market.

Can the S&P 500 SPX, with all the positives it has going for it, make it through the last two weeks of the quarter without a meaningful pullback?

"The Nasdaq has risen 50% off its lows in 5 months, and the S&P 500 36%: it's time to prepare for pullbacks," says Matt Shapiro, a former options trader based in Chicago, who manages $183 million for high-net worth clients at MWS Capital.

While it's still a "great time to be an investor," Shapiro told MarketWatch in a Tuesday interview and emailed comments it's also increasingly important to diversify, as stocks may face a wobble.

In early May, Shapiro was buying beaten-down tech names, a move that proved prescient. "We had the first opportunity to buy 'super companies' at distressed prices since 2022. Netflix $(NFLX)$ was under $1,000 [per share], Google [owned by Alphabet $(GOOGL)$] was $165 and Nvidia (NVDA) was around $100, so it was really just a unique opportunity," he said.

Netflix shares closed Tuesday at $1200, Alphabet closed at $251 and Nvidia at $175.

Alphabet, unpopular for a long time with investors, has been "exploding" as of late, he said. "Their AI search has become one of the most important tools that people are using."

Over the past few months, he said they've been adding to positions in Microsoft $(MSFT)$ and Apple $(AAPL)$ - another that many thought wasn't the "the right super company." In the other direction, Tesla $(TSLA)$ shares "out of nowhere" have surged past $400, despite myriad worries around the EV maker. "We're using this opportunity to trim it back," he said.

Shapiro said big tech names remain alluring because they are providing the bulk of S&P 500 profit growth.

"So it's sort of like the conundrum of the markets, which is that yes, we're in a seasonally tricky period," he said. "However, this is where the growth is, this AI, cryptocurrency, chips, electricity, energy is just fueling this incredible rush, and these companies are absolutely capitalizing on it."

Figuring out where to diversify outside of these "super companies," is a tougher issue, and for that he likes bonds. Shapiro was buying Treasury bonds in May, and continues to buy long dated Treasurys BX:TMUBMUSD10Y BX:TMUBMUSD30Y and Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS .

"There was a point earlier in the year and last where the 5- and 10-year TIPS were attractive, since then yields have moved quite a bit down, to where we prefer the longer end now with their higher yields," he said.

He admits that's a "contrarian play given well-documented concerns about the U.S. fiscal trajectory. However, we feel the dynamics of a softening labor market and a Fed forced to accommodate, will work in our favor."

The money manager is bracing for a possible investor disappointment from a 25-basis-point cut from the Fed on Wednesday, "especially if there is a cautious dot plot or summary of economic projections," as well as signs of dissent from governors wanting a bigger cut.

But lower rates "will be a good thing" that opens a buying opportunity for investors, Shapiro said, adding he'd be "looking to buy such names as Netflix, Microsoft, and Apple, depending on the technical positions."

Non-tech names like Deere (DE) or Berkshire Hathaway $(BRK.B)$, the latter of which he started to buy in the spring, are also on his shopping list.

He also continues to buy Chevron $(CVX)$, for its dividends, and Boeing $(BA)$, "a premier industrial company," along with some dabbling in Europe's luxury goods giants, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (FR:MC) and Hermès International (FR:RMS). Those shares "have been scraping along at near five-year lows," due to weaker sales and pressure on the sector in general.

Along with Citigroup (C) - he wishes they owned more financials - they continue to invest heavily in utility companies, partly due to high U.S. electricity growth. Those include Entergy $(ETR)$, which is helping to supply energy for a massive Meta $(META)$ data center, but he stresses it's not an easy investment.

"These stocks don't go straight up, you have to be real patient, it's a long-term game," he said.

Another opportunity he's watching is cryptocurrencies, which retail investors - who correctly bought the April stock dip - have been actively dabbling in. He said they remain "underinvested" in bitcoin (BTCUSD) and that sector much like the rest of traditional finance, for now.

"So any pullback in bitcoin to, say $100,000 or even below will be met with incredible buying force by the traditional institutional sector. Bitcoin has really gotten to the point where it's become a fixture. And if you're not thinking about getting involved, you need to," he said.

He doesn't want to buy bitcoin at these levels, but sees an opportunity to get in if that big dip comes, especially as over the next year or two, the S&P 500 likely will see two or three corrections, based on history.

Given cryptos are a risk asset transitioning to a money asset, "if there were a substantive downturn or pullback in cryptocurrencies, that might be coincidental to something happening in the [stock] market."

Read: What stocks may need to rise in 'a market for only the most bright-eyed optimists'

-Barbara Kollmeyer

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September 17, 2025 04:54 ET (08:54 GMT)

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