I enjoy investing and think it’s a lot of fun, but sometimes responsibly buying and holding a diversified portfolio of companies can admittedly get a little dull. Fantasy Investing can help with that a little bit, but sometimes I just want to make utterly irresponsible and recklessly bold predictions without having to actually risk any money on them because, well, they’re most likely going to end up being wrong.

With the new year coming up, this seemed like as good a time as any to throw out some predictions for 2019. To be clear, I think most of these are long shots, but I also am not just picking these to be random or contrary. I do actually believe that there are non-zero odds of these things happening. Just don’t go running to your bookie to make any bets on these unless you are getting really good odds.

Here are my three predictions, in decreasing order of likeliness:

The race to $1 trillion – again

There was a lot of talk during 2018 about the race to become the first public company to reach a $1 trillion market cap (not counting PetroChina for some reason). Would it be Apple (AAPL)? Amazon (AMZN)? A dark horse like Microsoft (MSFT) or Facebook (FB)? Ultimately, Apple would win the race, with Amazon crossing the finish line not too long after.

With the recent market pullback and both companies now under a $800 billion market cap, that seems like an eternity ago. In reality, it’s merely been a few months.  I don’t try to time the market, and while I am confident that this bear market will turn around, I have no idea when.

But this isn’t “sober, rational, and well-informed predictions”. This is “recklessly bold predictions”. So let’s do a Babe Ruth-esque called shot on what, where, and when.

My first prediction? That these three companies (what) will make it to a $1 trillion market cap (where) in 2019 (when), with two of them making a return trip:

1. Amazon (again)
2. Microsoft (first timer)
3. Apple (again)

Not bold enough? I’ll take it one step closer and say that the order listed above is the order with which those companies make it to $1 trillion in 2019. That’s right, despite being the first to break the seal, Apple doesn’t make it back to $1 trillion until after Amazon and Microsoft make it there first.

Tesla doubles

It’s hard to think of many CEO’s or publicly traded companies that better encapsulate “reckless” and “bold” more than Elon Musk and Tesla (TSLA), and so I simply had to have a prediction for the real life Iron Man and his disruptive car (and energy?) company.

Tesla has weathered the recent market volatility pretty well and is up while a lot of other stocks are down big. Can this continue into 2019? I’m recklessly predicting that not only can it continue, but that Tesla will hit a market cap of $100 billion in 2019, which would make it bigger than the current size of General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) combined.

How? Over the past few years, Tesla has routinely been one of the most shorted companies, and with good reason. The company has been burning through cash and by Elon Musk’s own admission has come close to bankruptcy. Even now, with a profitable quarter in its rear-view mirror, there are still plenty of red flags. What happens once the model 3 backlog is exhausted? Can Tesla still sell as many cars with the federal tax credit starting to get phased out? Will the trade war completely wreck plans to sell outside the US? Can the Model 3 be made profitable at the promised $35k selling point?

I don’t know the answers to many of these questions, but I do think that Tesla has managed to make it through the darkest clouds that it will have to go through. Yes, there are still many hurdles to overcome, but none seem as daunting at the model 3 production ramp up. Assuming Tesla continues to remain profitable in 2019, it just might be time for the shorts to start cutting their loses and a short squeeze just might cause the stock to rally.

Twitter gains on Facebook

As of the time of this writing, Twitter (TWTR) is about 6% the size of Facebook (FB), but their stock price has been going in the opposite direction. Twitter is up around 34% this year despite being down 30% from its 52 week high. Facebook, on the other hand, is down nearly 30% on the year and down almost 40% from its 52 week high.

So what is my boldest and least likely call of all? I think this trend not only continues, but accelerates as a combination of Facebook continuing to fall and Twitter continuing to ascend leads to Twitter getting to be half the market cap of Facebook. For that to happen would require massive movement by both stocks, frankly. Facebook would have to be cut in half and Twitter would have to quadruple in order for this to happen. Honestly, I think it’s fair to claim victory even if Twitter just gets to a third of Facebook’s market cap.

What’s your prediction?

So, what do you think? Have a favorite prediction? Think I’m way off base? Have any reckless predictions of your own? Let’s hear them in the comments! Maybe we can work out a little side bet.