Carlson is a long-term quality/compounder stock-picker. "View" is his explicit stance in this video — Positive = a conviction buy/hold here, Neutral = own/watch or cited only as an illustration, Negative = avoid. Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. The semiconductor / momentum basket (TSM, MU, SNDK, INTC, CAT, SMH, MSTR) is cited as the crowded, stretched trade he's rotating away from; the AV names (LCID, Waymo, Nuro, TSLA) frame Uber's robotaxi risk.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What he said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UBER | Uber Technologies | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | New buy — $10k initiated, scaling to $30–40k. ~70% US rideshare share, 14B+ trips (growing ~15%/yr), Uber One 50M members, FCF-generative at operating-leverage inflection. AV/Waymo risk is "the primary reason it's cheap," but Uber is partnering aggressively (Houston robotaxi w/ Lucid + Nuro). | 21:44 |
| DASH | DoorDash | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | New buy — $10k initiated alongside Uber. 60–70% US food-delivery share, DashPass 35M members, 56% revenue CAGR, already profitable at $1.75B TTM free cash flow (less far along the operating-leverage curve than Uber); ~40–43% off its highs. | 21:05 |
| ASML | ASML Holding | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | His best performer (+177%, +$103k) — but he did his first-ever ASML sale, a 10% trim (~$16k) to fund Uber/DoorDash, because the stock raced to a near-50× forward PE / 1.3% FCF yield, faster than fundamentals. "I am not bearish on ASML" — still ~$150k held, "an incredible company." | 6:28 |
| GOOGL | Alphabet | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Defends it on a −6% "brain-drain" day (Noam Shazeer → OpenAI, John Jumper → Anthropic). Investors "over-index on a few top talents"; the real AI moat is distribution + the full stack (TPUs, cloud, billions of users across Gmail/Maps/Android/YouTube), not two or three researchers. | 25:23 |
| TSM | Taiwan Semiconductor | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | ASML's primary customer — "where all the action is," up ~50% YTD / ~122% on the year. Part of the parabolic semi vertical he's rotating away from (not selling, but not buying). | 8:34 |
| MU | Micron Technology | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The momentum darling — up 277% YTD / 875% on the year as crypto/MicroStrategy money rotates in; fundamentals "going parabolic" too, so "part of this is very warranted." A name the crowd is chasing, not one he owns. | 8:55 |
| SNDK | SanDisk | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Another "explosive bottleneck performance" memory name — a multi-thousand-dollar share price "moving up hundreds of dollars per day"; cited as evidence of how far the AI-winner basket has run. | 9:36 |
| INTC | Intel | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Even a company "as old as Intel" reprices when it makes AI-relevant products — up 251% YTD / 553% on the year. Cited to show how indiscriminate the AI-winner bid has become. | 9:56 |
| CAT | Caterpillar | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The construction-equipment leg of the AI build-out — now a $1,000+ stock, up 70% YTD / 176% on the year as it sells bulldozers/excavators into data-center construction. "Everything in this entire chain related to AI is going up." | 10:35 |
| SMH | VanEck Semiconductor ETF | SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The semiconductor ETF he uses as the comp — up 156% over the past year while Uber (−16%) and DoorDash (−23%) fell. The visual of the bifurcated market. | 15:45 |
| MSTR | Strategy (MicroStrategy) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cited as the rotation source — "lots of people are fleeing crypto, selling out of MicroStrategy, and buying Micron," shifting from one exciting trade to the next. | 9:15 |
| LCID | Lucid Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Uber's robotaxi vehicle supplier — Uber has invested hundreds of millions and expanded a purchase commitment to ≥35,000 robotaxis from Lucid for the Houston launch. Evidence Uber is neutralizing AV risk. | 23:02 |
| Waymo | Waymo (Alphabet, private unit) | — | Neutral | The "primary concern" for Uber — excellent self-driving tech that "could choose to go their own way," the reason Uber trades at such a high FCF yield. But Uber's "gargantuan lead" (70% share) makes the share-loss risk small in Carlson's view. | 22:20 |
| Nuro | Nuro (private) | — | Neutral | The self-driving-tech provider for Uber's Houston robotaxi service (vehicles from Lucid). Part of the >$10B Uber is spending to re-enter AV via partnerships after selling its in-house unit. | 23:24 |
| TSLA | Tesla | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Named as the third robotaxi competitor in Houston (with Uber and Waymo) — "one of the only US markets where all three will be competing." A future source of some Uber share loss, but a small one. | 23:02 |
| Polymarket | Polymarket (private) | — | Negative | Fail of the week — "prediction markets is a fancy way of saying gambling," a "highly addictive product." He cites a WSJ investigation that Polymarket paid creators to film fake trades on look-alike copy sites and hid the sponsorship; calls it deceptive and urges channels to drop it. | 29:05 |
| Kalshi | Kalshi (private) | — | Negative | Lumped in with Polymarket — "I don't like either of these companies." Both pay creators "obscene amounts of money" to sponsor videos; same gambling/addiction objection. | 29:24 |
"View" is Joseph Carlson's stance in this video, not a price rating. Positive = conviction buy/hold (UBER, DASH, GOOGL; ASML kept after a 10% trim); Neutral = the crowded semi/momentum basket he's rotating away from (TSM, MU, SNDK, INTC, CAT, SMH, MSTR) and the AV ecosystem framing Uber's risk (LCID, Waymo, Nuro, TSLA); Negative = fail-of-week prediction markets (Polymarket, Kalshi). Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. Also referenced: his existing "OG" holdings (Mastercard, Meta, S&P Global, Costco, Microsoft, Texas Roadhouse, Moody's) named only as the portfolio he's adding to; other "left-behind quality" examples (Spotify, FICO, Shopify, Copart); Zoox (Amazon's robotaxi, in passing); Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO); and Peter Lynch (the "dull, mundane, out-of-favor" investing principle).
A jargon-free summary of the thesis behind each substantive call — what it actually is and why he holds that view. (Plain-language companion to the table above; renders on each ticker's consolidated page.)
Uber runs the biggest US ride-hailing network and a large food-delivery business. Carlson just started buying it — $10,000 to begin, planning to build the position to $30–40,000 over the coming months — because it's exactly the kind of high-quality, non-AI company the market has forgotten: the stock is down about 30% from its highs while semiconductor stocks ran up 156%. Underneath, the business is thriving: roughly 70% of US rideshare, 14 billion-plus trips a year (still growing ~15%), revenue compounding in the mid-20s, and — crucially — it has crossed the point where scale turns into real cash profit ("operating leverage"), so it now generates strong free cash flow.
He also likes that Uber is a membership business: 50 million people pay for "Uber One," much like a Costco membership, which lowers their fees, keeps them loyal, and quietly drives a lot of the profit. The big worry is self-driving cars (robotaxis) — companies like Waymo could bypass Uber entirely, which is why the stock looks cheap. But Carlson argues that risk is already in the price and that Uber is defusing it by partnering with everyone: its new Houston robotaxi service uses Lucid's cars and Nuro's self-driving software, and Uber is spending over $10 billion to become the place you hail any robotaxi. Given its huge head start, he thinks the share-loss risk is small.
DoorDash is the dominant US food-delivery app — 60–70% of the market — and Carlson bought it at the same time as Uber, $10,000 to start, as the second of his "left-behind quality" picks. The stock is down roughly 40–43% from its highs even though the business is growing fast: revenue has compounded at 56%, and he expects high-teens growth (17–20%) to continue. Like Uber, it runs a membership program (DashPass, 35 million members) that lowers fees and locks customers in, similar to a Costco membership.
Importantly, DoorDash is already profitable, throwing off $1.75 billion of free cash flow over the past year — it's just earlier in turning its scale into profit than Uber is, so there's more upside as that "operating leverage" plays out. In short: a structurally entrenched, fast-growing, cash-generative leader trading well below its old price because the crowd is busy chasing AI.
ASML makes the ultra-advanced machines (EUV lithography) that every cutting-edge chip factory needs — a near-monopoly and Carlson's best-performing holding, up 177% (about $103,000 in gains). For the first time ever, he sold a little: a 10% trim, roughly $16,000, which he moved into Uber and DoorDash. The reason isn't that ASML got worse — he says it's actually stronger and more dominant than a year ago — it's that the stock price ran up much faster than the business, to a nosebleed valuation (close to 50 times forward earnings, a free-cash-flow yield of just 1.3%).
He's emphatic that this is not a bearish call: "I am not bearish on ASML," and he still holds about $150,000 of it. Trimming 10% of a winner that has become expensive, to fund cheaper opportunities that have been left behind, is the discipline on display here — taking some chips off the table, not folding the hand.
Alphabet (Google) fell 6% in a day after two star AI researchers quit — Noam Shazeer left for OpenAI and John Jumper left for Anthropic — and the market shaved tens of billions off the company over the "brain drain." Carlson thinks that's a mistake. He argues investors wildly over-rate how much a couple of brilliant individuals matter to who wins in AI.
His point: the durable advantage in AI isn't having the single best model or smartest people — it's distribution and owning the whole stack. Google has its own chips (TPUs), its own cloud, and AI built into products billions of people already use every day (Gmail, Maps, Drive, Android, YouTube, the Gemini app). That end-to-end control is the moat, and it doesn't walk out the door when two or three researchers leave. He expects future earnings to keep proving that the infrastructure — not any one genius — is what makes Google win.
Polymarket and Kalshi are "prediction markets" — apps where people bet real money on the outcome of future events. Carlson's "fail of the week" is a blunt warning: he calls them "a fancy way of saying gambling," a highly addictive product that can wreck people's finances, and he wants to discourage their use.
His sharper objection is the marketing. He points to a Wall Street Journal investigation finding that Polymarket paid mostly college-age creators to film fake trades and fake winnings on near-perfect copycat websites (one was a misspelled "poiymarket.com"), told them not to disclose they were paid, and used a network of clippers to make it all look organic. He calls the campaign deceptive and borderline a scam, and urges other channels to drop Polymarket and Kalshi sponsorships.
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.