Predictions That Never Happened — Everyone Was Wrong

This post is about my personal journey with positioning. I was addicted to YouTube. It was my daily habit to watch several videos about self-improvement and finance. Back in 2021, during covid, finance gurus kept predicting the next big financial crisis. Funny thing is it never happened. Wars started. Things got difficult. But no crisis. A few pullbacks and corrections happened, but none of those scary YouTube titles like "the biggest crisis will come" actually came true.

This is the new normal. The 2022 bear market. The 2023 late correction. The 2025 tariff correction. All helped cool down and correct the markets. What we learned after 2008 is to never think a crisis cannot happen. But since covid, private and smaller investors are more cautious than before. It is like getting hit by a car once. You pay much more attention after that. It stays in your subconscious. Before 2008, nobody thought a car could hit anyone.

I am not saying there will be no more crises. I am just saying none of the big crisis predictions since covid have come true. These corrections are normal. And less harmful than a real crisis. My point is this: when I listen to myself and do my own analysis picking investments, those have been my best returns. What you hear on YouTube or any other page is probably already late. Think about how many people have already seen or made that move. Most of it is just manipulation.

Same with crypto markets. Around 2021 there were two scenarios: crypto will disappear soon (banking and finance bros against crypto) or crypto will skyrocket (crypto bros). Guess what? Neither happened. In fact, the two markets have become more and more correlated since. The banking industry started to copy and use blockchain technology. I said why cannot people do both? Have crypto and stocks as well. That is exactly what happened after 2024. More and more investors started to have both. It is diversification. I was never a fan of having only crypto or only stocks.

My Netflix journey is a perfect example. Everyone knows and loves Netflix. I wanted to invest in something I knew was going well and used regularly back then. Between 2021 and 2023, Netflix had an interesting period. That stretch was the most chaotic and pivotal era in Netflix's history. It went from the highest of highs to a sudden, terrifying crash, forcing the company to completely rewrite its business model to survive.

I invested right before the chaos. At around all-time high prices. But I did not care because I felt they would continue to be great. Then lots of bad news came. Netflix will not be the same anymore. Disney is the future. Netflix will be forgotten in the next few years. Of course. I read one of the best investment gurus' opinions. Same bad opinions. The share price was dropping. I was down 40%. Never had such a loss before. I kept wondering what a bad decision I made.

In early 2022, the wheels completely fell off. The pandemic boom ended. Inflation soared. The streaming wars intensified as Disney+, HBO Max, and Apple TV+ aggressively chipped away at Netflix's market share. In April 2022, Netflix reported its Q1 earnings and dropped a bombshell: it had lost 200,000 subscribers. It was the first time the company had lost users in over a decade. Worse, they projected losing another 2 million the next quarter. Co-CEO Reed Hastings admitted that password sharing and heavy competition were severely stalling growth. Wall Street panicked. In a single day in April 2022, the stock plummeted over 35%. By June 2022, the stock bottomed out at around $160 to $170 per share, losing more than 75% of its value from its peak just months earlier. It was one of the most violent crashes of a mega-cap tech stock in history.

In 2023 things became a bit better. Their stock started to recover, but with not much hope, I sold. At least with a very minimal loss. At that point I did not even care about the money. I was more interested in what would come next. I always hated Disney and never wanted to replace Netflix or invest in them. But everyone thought Disney was the future. I did not believe.

What happened next is one of the most successful corporate turnaround stories of the modern tech era. Between 2024 and 2026, Netflix did not just crawl back to where it used to be. It blew past its old pandemic records and completely rewrote the rules of how a streaming business makes money. Wall Street stopped treating Netflix like a risky tech startup and started treating it like a highly efficient cash machine.

The recovery can be broken down into three major phases:

1. 2024: The Year of Supreme Dominance

While competitors like Disney+, Paramount+, and Max spent 2024 bleeding money and hiking prices to stop the losses, Netflix reaped the full benefits of its 2023 pivot. The password crackdown worked way better than anyone expected. Instead of quitting, millions of freeloaders bit the bullet and created their own accounts. Netflix added a staggering 41 million new subscribers in 2024 alone. Investors realized Netflix had officially won the streaming wars because it was the only platform consistently turning a massive profit. By late 2024, the stock climbed past its old 2021 all-time high of $690, closing out the year around $890 per share.

2. 2025: Expanding into Live Events and Giant Deals

By 2025, Netflix changed its strategy. Management announced they would stop reporting quarterly subscriber numbers, telling Wall Street to judge them on revenue and profits, not just user count. They began hunting for massively broad entertainment channels. Netflix realized that to keep people paying higher prices, it needed unmissable live events. They hosted massive NFL Christmas Day games and took over WWE's Monday Night Raw in a massive 10-year, $5 billion deal. The cheaper ad-supported tier exploded. By mid-2025, the ad tier reached over 250 million monthly active viewers globally. In the US, nearly half of all new sign-ups chose the ad option. Full-year 2025 revenue surged 16% to $45.2 billion, with profits climbing to nearly $11 billion.

3. 2026: The New Normal

The strategy shifted from chasing new users to squeezing maximum dollars out of the ones they have. Tiered pricing and commercial ads. Total global subscribers crossed 325 million. The ad business alone is on track to bring in $3 billion this year, operating as a massive, high-margin layer of free cash on top of regular subscriptions. After general market turbulence and tariff anxieties caused minor corrections across tech in early 2026, Netflix has settled into an incredibly strong valuation, trading firmly around $810 to $830 per share.

All in all, this was my best learning session with an investment. I did not lose much money, but I learned a lot. Everyone was against Netflix. All the big finance gurus and analysts buried the biggest streaming service. Thanks to this journey, I started making my own investing decisions. I am not saying you cannot listen to others. But at the end, you have to make the decision. That is why many people cannot make money. They take investing ideas that are too late to apply. Work on making your own decisions. Most importantly, this was just a patience game. That is why long-term investing always wins. If I had waited until 2025, it could have been a huge gain, even buying near all-time highs.

Disclaimer: this is financial advice.