Is It Time to Take Profits on These 2025 Winners?

What’s your New Year’s resolution for 2026?

The most common answers are usually health- and family-related: eating better, exercising more, and making a greater effort to see your loved ones.

Investors can make resolutions for the new year as well, such as contributing more to retirement accounts, using risk management techniques more effectively, or simply spending less time staring at their account screen.

Or maybe you let too many winners slip away by holding on even though warning bells were flashing? Knowing when to buy, hold, or sell is tricky and requires both experience and intuition. If your 2026 investment resolution is to hit the cash register more often, you might want to consider starting with these three 2025 winners.

Three Stocks to Lock in Year-End Profits

Know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em. It wasn’t just poker that Kenny Rogers was singing about; knowing when to walk away from a winning investment takes just as much skill as finding winners in the first place.

Many investors built and lost untold paper fortunes during the 2021 meme-stock craze because they didn’t set ground rules or use any risk management. Don’t make the same mistake here in 2025. Each of these three stocks outperformed the S&P this year, but red flags are emerging. 

As always, buy-and-sell decisions depend on your personal investment goals, and taxes must be considered when selling at the end of the year. It's important to consult with a financial advisor or tax professional before making any drastic changes to your investment structure.

Robinhood: Retail Enthusiasm Running Out of Steam

Consumer sentiment has been floundering for much of 2025, but no one bothered to tell the degenerate traders on Robinhood Markets Inc. (NASDAQ: HOOD).

HOOD shares are up more than 200% year-to-date (YTD) thanks to impressive revenue growth, driven primarily by soaring trading volume.

The more people trade, the more money Robinhood makes, and the post-tariff rally in stocks and cryptocurrencies helped the company post its first $1 billion quarter in Q3 2025.

The premium Robinhood Gold tier also reached 3.5 million members, providing another productive income stream beyond trading volume. And of course, prediction markets continue to be wildly successful; over 2.3 billion contracts were traded on the Robinhood platform in Q3 alone.

Despite the impressive growth figures, evidence is mounting that Robinhood is hitting a wall.

In the company’s November operating data, crypto trading volume was down 12% from October and 19% year-over-year (YOY). Options and equity volume posted YOY growth, but also declined 28% and 37% respectively, from October.

If a slowdown is coming, technical traders may have already sniffed it out. The share price has fallen below the 50-day simple moving average (SMA), an area previously defended by buyers. A bearish MACD crossover also seems to confirm the trend shift, and the stock has been making a series of lower highs since the end of September. Momentum is waning, so consider lightening up on this massive 2025 winner.

Constellation Energy: Nuclear Revolution Runs into Reality

The energy sector received a boost from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), thanks to new initiatives to support nuclear and geothermal power.

While wind and solar got the short end of the stick, nuclear stocks like Constellation Energy Corp. (NASDAQ: CEG) benefited from new tax credits, and the company is now heavily embedded in the AI sector thanks to its deal with Microsoft to restart Three Mile Island.

CEG shares are up more than 55% YTD, but one of the problems with trading at a tech stock valuation (40x earnings, 4.7x sales) is that you need to produce tech-like growth to satisfy investors.

Many of Constellation’s nuclear initiatives won’t be online until 2027 at the earliest, and restarting a plant like Three Mile Island is sure to be littered with regulatory and operational delays.

A sky-high valuation and slowing annual growth are hard to reconcile, and CEG shares have pulled back since reaching a new all-time high in October.

Once again, the 50-day SMA offers clues as the previously strong support line is now acting as resistance on the upward momentum. A bearish MACD crossover is further evidence of a tired rally, and investors have likely been hitting the cash register with regularity in recent weeks.

Vertiv Holdings: Valuation Concerns Amid Peak AI Hype

Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE: VRT) is another AI-adjacent stock that might have its best days behind it.

Vertiv provides cooling solutions for AI data centers, and its stock is up more than 40% YTD.

Sales growth has been spectacular for Vertiv in 2025, with revenue up nearly 30% YOY as of Q3 2025, and the company’s backlog now exceeds $9.5 billion. But despite the revenue growth, the stock trades at more than 60x earnings and 7x sales.

Management also warned of Section 232 tariff headwinds that could shave 100 basis points off the company’s Q4 margins.

VRT has plenty of long-term tailwinds, but the best move in the short term might be taking profits. The stock took out the key 50-day SMA support level earlier this month and shows similar bearish MACD activity to the two stocks we discussed earlier.

Technical traders definitely don’t think VRT passes the smell test right now, and a rotation out of tech and into healthcare and banking has been gaining steam.

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