Carlson is a long-term quality/compounder stock-picker. This episode reviews the Pershing Square Q2 report; "View" is Carlson's stance in this video (not Ackman's) — Positive = a name he owns and/or endorses, Neutral = relayed / referenced without his own conviction, Negative = avoid. Bill Ackman himself is a person and intentionally excluded from the table. Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What he said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NFLX | Netflix | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | A $102,000 position, $30,000 in the green, held straight through the 2022 collapse he was "uniquely bullish" into. Ackman's re-entry near $74 validates his own case: engagement is not watch time (live programming is a tiny share of hours but "instrumental in driving sign ups and retention"), the per-user decline is a geographic mix shift into markets that watch less TV, and short-form video has taken share from linear and weak streamers, not Netflix — "combined with a robust buyback program, we estimate earnings should compound at close to 20% annually." | 12:35 |
| SPGI | S&P Global | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | A $104,000 position (+18%, +$13,000) plus $18,000 in the Story Fund. February's 25% peak-to-trough fall on Anthropic's Claude Co-work launch took the multiple from 25× to 19×, "the lowest valuation in the previous 5 years" — and was mispriced: Capital IQ is under 7% of revenue and less of profit, over 40% of Market Intelligence revenue is proprietary data "deeply embedded in customer workflows," and growth is "almost exclusively determined by the company's benchmark business." Zeroing the entire disrupted line still leaves a 26 forward P/E. | 14:41 |
| MA | Mastercard | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | "Literally one of my biggest positions" — $188,000, up 89% money-weighted (+$40,000), and he added heavily this year. Ackman's entry is "a timely buy during a dip" and Carlson is "every bit as bullish": stablecoins are an opportunity rather than a threat because they matter where cards are not the incumbent (cross-border B2B, high-cost remittance corridors, dollar savings in volatile-currency countries), so adoption grows "in parallel with, not at the expense of, card volumes." | 16:48 |
| V | Visa | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bought by Ackman as a collective payments trade with Mastercard — "two businesses we have long admired, which provide a dominant global network for consumers and commercial payments." Carlson: "I like the thesis into Mastercard and Visa." The agentic-commerce argument covers both: agents "remove friction, enable more frequent purchases, and accelerate digital commerce" and "should adopt, not replace, consumers' existing payment preferences," so AI shopping agents expand the ecosystem rather than erode the moat. | 17:09 |
| UBER | Uber Technologies | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | One of only two names he followed Ackman into, and he "agree[s] with him on the thesis." AV fear (plus an "increasingly fraught relationship with its partner, Waymo") holds the stock down while earnings grow ~35% this year at 19× earnings, "near its lowest valuation ever" — "valuation is increasingly disconnected from the fundamentals." His own overlay: "Uber already has the critical demand that you need… and a hybrid model where you have humans and AVs will always be superior to a purely AV model"; Uber keeps growing even in Waymo's successful markets. | 20:15 |
| META | Meta Platforms | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | A large holding, currently down about 14%, bought before Ackman's stake was disclosed. Ackman calls Meta "one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI" — better recommendations lifting engagement, better targeting lifting ad monetization, consumer and business agents — and notes the compute build gives downside protection because capacity "not consumed internally can be profitably monetized in a highly supply constrained compute market." Carlson's rule: "anytime that Meta has gotten down to the teens PE ratio, it's just been a great deal… that's exactly where Meta is today." | 21:09 |
| ICE | Intercontinental Exchange | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | A new Ackman position Carlson does not own — relayed, not endorsed. Most of ICE's exchange revenue comes from its futures and options exchanges; "these seem like a new type of business for the Ackman portfolio, but it does remind me of S&P Global." Ackman's case: a favorable macro backdrop plus "powerful secular tailwinds" supporting low-to-mid-teens growth, and "a classic, simple, predictable, free cash flow generative business that is sold off on concerns that we view as unwarranted." | 18:06 |
| ALC | Alcon | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The sixth new buy and "one that I wasn't familiar with" — relayed from the letter without a stance of his own. "The world's leading ophthalmology company," dominant in surgical vision with strong positions in vision care and contact lenses; the core is an install base of over 30,000 units of capital equipment anchoring "a highly attractive stream of high-margin recurring consumable revenue," with mid-teens earnings growth plus expected multiple expansion. | 18:29 |
| MCO | Moody's | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Swept into the same February panic as S&P Global — investors reacted to the Claude Co-work launch with "S&P Global and Moody's, those companies are no more," and "the stocks dropped that day, and they continued to drop." Cited as the second casualty of a reflex Carlson thinks was wrong, not as a fresh call. | 13:58 |
| GOOGL | Alphabet | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Disclosed as a continuing holding in the "I'm not copying his trades" list — "I had Google before he bought Google." Named as one of his own positions that Ackman later joined; the thesis isn't re-argued in this episode. | 1:35 |
| MSFT | Microsoft | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Same list of his own prior positions — "I had Microsoft before he had Microsoft in his portfolio" — establishing that the overlap with Pershing Square runs the other way. A continuing holding, not re-argued here. | 1:35 |
| AMZN | Amazon | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | "I had Amazon before he bought Amazon" — disclosed in the overlap list as one of his own continuing positions Ackman later joined; no new argument made for it in this episode. | 1:35 |
| CMG | Chipotle Mexican Grill | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | One of the two names he did follow Ackman into — "Chipotle, which was a successful investment" (Uber is the other). Mentioned as evidence the copying charge cuts both ways; no current stance given. | 1:52 |
| WBD | Warner Bros. Discovery | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The trigger for Netflix's latest de-rating — "they first tried to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which a lot of investors didn't like. They thought it signaled that Netflix is weak." Carlson's read: Netflix saw a content acquisition; the market read an engagement problem. | 8:18 |
| DIS | Walt Disney | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | A casualty of the streaming war, cited in passing — "many other streamers like Paramount and Disney were throwing tens of billions of dollars at streaming, most of them gave up the fight… pulled back on their budgets and conceded the battle to Netflix." | 7:36 |
| PSKY | Paramount Skydance | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Named with Disney as one of the streamers that spent "tens of billions of dollars" chasing Netflix and then "conceded the battle" — the pre-merger Paramount, referenced only to date Netflix's win in the streaming war. | 7:36 |
| MU | Micron Technology | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Named as a deliberate omission from Pershing Square — "he doesn't own any Micron or Nvidia, he doesn't own any Sandisk, he's not in these AI companies," because Ackman "believes the outperformance of this subset of companies is likely temporary." Carlson relays it approvingly; consistent with his own refusal to chase the memory complex. | 22:15 |
| NVDA | NVIDIA | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The other named absence from Ackman's book — he owns "the hyperscalers, the capex spenders, these digital network companies," but none of the picks-and-shovels AI names whose outperformance he expects to prove temporary. | 22:15 |
| SNDK | SanDisk | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Third of the AI-hardware names Ackman has deliberately avoided; cited only in that list, as the counterpoint to a portfolio built entirely of network and aggregator businesses. | 22:15 |
| Anthropic | Anthropic (private, Claude) | — | Neutral | The source of the mispricing, not a target — Anthropic's launch of Claude Co-work, a financial-analysis plugin, sent S&P Global down more than 25% peak-to-trough in February. "The concerns of Claude are real, but they are heavily overstated to a dramatic degree"; investors "jump out of them as soon as Claude or Anthropic release this one feature without even knowing how it's going to affect the company." | 14:16 |
"View" is Joseph Carlson's stance in this video, not a price rating. Positive = owned and/or endorsed (NFLX, SPGI, MA, V, UBER, META, plus the continuing holdings GOOGL, MSFT, AMZN he discloses in the overlap list); Neutral = an Ackman position he relays without owning (ICE, ALC), a past follow-in with no current stance (CMG), a narrative casualty (MCO, WBD, DIS, PSKY) or a deliberate Ackman omission (MU, NVDA, SNDK). Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. Also named but excluded as people/funds: Bill Ackman and Pershing Square, whose Q2 letter is the subject of the episode.
A jargon-free summary of the thesis behind each substantive name — what it is and why he holds that view. (Plain-language companion to the table above; renders on each ticker's consolidated page.)
Carlson has owned Netflix straight through, including the 2022 crash when the stock fell about 75% and, in his words, people were making videos celebrating its downfall. He kept buying and wrote publicly at a price-adjusted $30 that the market had it wrong. Ackman bought that first dip, watched it get much worse, and sold near the bottom at a $400 million loss — and has now bought back in around $74 a share.
The current worry is an "engagement problem": the average subscriber's watch time is falling. There are two answers. First, hours are not all the same product — a live event or a series someone is invested in drives sign-ups and retention far more than the raw hour count suggests, so counting minutes the way you'd count social-media scrolling misreads the business. Second, and more mechanical: Netflix's growth now comes from countries that simply watch less television than the US, Canada and Europe. Adding those subscribers pulls the average hours per person down even while total viewing and total subscribers rise. That's a mix effect, not a deteriorating business.
The bear worry that short-form video is eating Netflix also fails the evidence test: short-form has grown fastest over exactly the two years Netflix kept growing revenue and subscribers. Ackman's model has earnings compounding near 20% a year with heavy buybacks, at a price he considers a substantial discount. Carlson's position is $102,000 and $30,000 in profit, and his view is unchanged.
S&P Global sells credit ratings, market indices (the S&P 500 itself) and financial data. In February the stock fell more than 25% because Anthropic launched Claude Co-work, a financial-analysis tool, and investors decided an AI could do what S&P Global does. The multiple dropped from 25 times earnings to 19 — the cheapest in five years for what is routinely called one of the highest-quality businesses in the world.
The fear is aimed at the wrong part of the company. Capital IQ, the desktop research product an AI plugin could plausibly compete with, is under 7% of revenue and an even smaller share of profit. Over 40% of the data division's revenue comes from proprietary data wired directly into customers' internal workflows — hard to rip out, and not something a chatbot supplies. And the real earnings engine is the benchmark business: ratings and indices, which an AI assistant doesn't replace at all.
Carlson's stress test makes the point bluntly: assume Claude destroys the entire contested business line, all the way to zero, and S&P Global would still trade at about 26 times forward earnings. That is the worst case, and it isn't a disaster price. He owns $104,000 of it (up 18%) plus another $18,000 in his Story Fund.
Mastercard is one of Carlson's largest holdings — $188,000, up 89% on the money he put in — and he added heavily this year. Ackman has now bought it too, during the same dip.
The two feared disruptors both look, on inspection, like tailwinds. Stablecoins (digital dollars that settle instantly) mostly matter in places cards never won: business-to-business payments across borders, expensive money-transfer corridors, and people in countries with collapsing currencies who want to hold dollars. Growth there adds to the payments pie rather than taking card transactions away. And "agentic commerce" — AI assistants doing your shopping — removes friction and creates more purchases; the agent still has to pay with something, and it will use whatever card the customer already prefers. More transactions running over the same network is the definition of good news for a toll-collector business.
Ackman bought Visa and Mastercard together as a single payments position — "two businesses we have long admired, which provide a dominant global network for consumers and commercial payments" — and Carlson says plainly, "I like the thesis into Mastercard and Visa."
Everything in the Mastercard case applies here: stablecoins grow where cards were never the incumbent, and AI shopping agents should expand transaction volume rather than bypass the network, because agents "adopt, not replace, consumers' existing payment preferences." Note that in his own book Carlson has consistently been more bullish on Mastercard than Visa — this is an endorsement of Ackman's payments trade, not a change in which of the two he prefers.
ICE owns exchanges — most of its exchange revenue comes from futures and options trading, where it collects a fee on every contract traded. Carlson doesn't own it and relays Ackman's case rather than making his own, but he recognises the shape: "it does remind me of S&P Global" — a toll-collector on financial activity rather than a company betting on any particular market direction.
Ackman's summary is the template for all six buys: "a classic, simple, predictable, free cash flow generative business that is sold off on concerns that we view as unwarranted," with a favorable macro backdrop and secular tailwinds supporting low-to-mid-teens growth.
Alcon is the world's leading eye-care company — surgical equipment for procedures like cataract surgery, plus contact lenses and vision care. Carlson had never looked at it ("one that I wasn't familiar with"), so this is Ackman's thesis relayed, not a Carlson pick.
The economics are a razor-and-blades model at industrial scale: Alcon has placed over 30,000 units of surgical capital equipment in hospitals and clinics, and every one of those machines then consumes high-margin disposables year after year. Because surgeons train on a specific system and the hospital has already paid for the hardware, that installed base is sticky and the consumable revenue recurring. Ackman expects mid-teens earnings growth plus a higher valuation multiple as the market recognises the quality.
Uber is one of only two names Carlson bought after Ackman (Chipotle was the other), and he says he agrees with the thesis. The stock is held down by fear of self-driving cars, made worse this quarter by what Ackman describes as an increasingly strained relationship with Waymo. Meanwhile the business is compounding: earnings on pace to grow about 35% this year, at 19 times earnings — close to the cheapest the stock has ever been. Ackman's phrase is that the valuation is "increasingly disconnected from the fundamentals."
Carlson's own addition is the point he expands into a full deep dive two days later: Uber already owns the hard side of the problem — the demand. And a network that mixes human drivers with self-driving cars beats a pure robot fleet, because humans can be called in for the rush hour and stay home the rest of the day, while a robot fleet either buys too many cars that sit idle or turns away the busiest hours. Even in the cities where Waymo is doing well, Uber keeps growing.
Meta is a large Carlson holding, currently down about 14%, and he bought it before Ackman's stake was public. Ackman calls it one of the clearest winners from AI, for unglamorous reasons: better content recommendations keep people on the apps longer, better ad targeting earns more per ad, and AI agents open new products for consumers and businesses. Those effects are already showing up as faster advertising revenue growth.
The most useful point is about the enormous spending everyone worries about. Meta is building far more computing capacity than it currently needs — but computing power is desperately scarce right now, so any capacity Meta doesn't use internally it can rent out profitably. That gives the capex a floor: it isn't a bet that only pays off if Meta's own AI works. Carlson's own rule closes it out — every time Meta has traded at a teens price-to-earnings multiple it has been a great buy, and that is where it trades today.
Summary & timestamps derived from the public YouTube video (transcript in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © The Joseph Carlson Show for source material.