It's not difficult to find stocks likely to go up if the tariff dispute is resolved with a series of trade deals, but what if you want to be a bit defensive and buy some stocks with relatively less exposure to potential tariffs or even some upside exposure? Where better to look for them than among Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway holdings?

Here's why beverage king Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), building materials maker Louisiana-Pacific (NYSE: LPX), and swimming pool specialist Pool Corp. (NASDAQ: POOL) are worth buying right now to diversify a portfolio.

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Why $8,100 in stocks?

Appreciating that $8,100 is an odd figure, it was selected because the average 40-year-old investor has roughly $162,000 in stocks, and a position in one of these stocks of $8,100 would be equivalent to about 5% of the total portfolio. That's a decent amount to buy a little "insurance."

Coca-Cola remains a longtime Buffett holding

The main drawing points of Coca-Cola, the perennial Warren Buffett holding, are its 2.8% dividend yield and relative safety in the current market. As management outlined on an earnings call in February, Coca-Cola tends to produce and sell locally. As such, it's relatively insulated from the impact of cross-border tariffs.

In addition, its exposure to increased packaging costs -- from, say, tariffs on aluminum -- isn't significant, as the metal is only a small part of its cost component. Its core sparkling soft drink business is also relatively immune to an economic slowdown. It all adds up to make Coca-Cola a safe place to park money in the current environment.

Louisiana-Pacific could be a net winner from tariffs

Louisiana-Pacific, which specializes in engineered wood siding and oriented strand board (OSB), has a bit more complicated relationship with tariffs. CEO William Southern argues that OSB is a "traded commodity." In plain English, that means there's no brand loyalty with OSB, and its pricing is heavily influenced by the costs of wood fiber and resin. As such, increases in tariff costs will feed through into higher prices across the industry.

Its engineered wood siding business sources wood fiber from the U.S. and Canada, and it will be affected by any tariffs placed on Canadian wood fiber. Still, Louisiana-Pacific has two engineered wood siding mills in Canada from which it could potentially increase production for the Canadian market.

Meanwhile, it can produce more in the U.S. from its mills there. In addition, if significant tariffs are placed on Canadian wood fiber, it's likely that the price of its engineered wood siding would rise significantly, and the company's ability to source and produce in the U.S. could be a major plus. While President Trump hasn't imposed a new tariff on Canadian softwood yet, plans are in progress , and Louisiana-Pacific could be a net winner.

In the longer-term view, engineered wood siding can grab more market share from alternatives such as vinyl and fiber cement, and at some point, new housing starts -- its key end market -- will surely start to grow again.

Pool is more resilient than you might think

Pool Corp., the wholesale distributor of pool equipment, is a surprisingly resilient business. While new pool construction is down 50% from the pandemic-induced boom in spending on the home, and management expects new pool construction in 2025 to be flat with 2024, almost 65% of its sales go to the more stable market for maintenance and minor repairs.

That helps to support sales in a slowing discretionary spending environment. In addition, note that the 60,000 new pool units expected this year in the U.S. still represent growth in the installed base of pools, which Pool Corp. could potentially sell into.

Turning to the issue of tariffs, back in February, CFO Melanie Hart said that "we do not have a significant amount of direct imports" and "do not anticipate that the currently enacted additional tariffs from China will have a material impact on sales for 2025."

While tariffs on Chinese products are significantly higher than in February, the "vast majority" of Pool's products are still "purchased domestically," she said. What's less clear is the knock-on impact on costs from its suppliers as they suffer increased costs from tariffs. Naturally, Pool will try to pass them on with price increases, but it's not clear how consumers might react.

Still, the company has good long-term growth prospects, largely because of ongoing pool maintenance spending and an eventual recovery in new pool construction growth.

Three Buffett stocks to buy

While all three stocks face some headwinds in 2025, Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett's focus is on the long term, and demand for things like soft drinks, engineered wood siding, and pool products is likely to be a feature of the economy for many years to come.

Should you invest $1,000 in Coca-Cola right now?

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Shares in gas turbine, wind power, and electrification company GE Vernova (NYSE: GEV) rose by as much as 10% in early morning trading, only to settle back into a mid-single-digit gain by noon ET. The move comes after its first-quarter 2025 earnings report demonstrated that plenty of life is left in the economy's electrification trend. Moreover, management reaffirmed its full-year guidance -- a significant plus in an economy threatened by an ongoing tariff dispute.

GE Vernova remains on track

Management's strategy is to take advantage of the strength in demand for gas turbines while growing its higher-margin gas services business in the power segment. The good news is that orders of $6.2 billion in the quarter were 1.4 times its $4.4 billion in revenue, indicating more growth to come. An increase in the installed base of gas turbines helped services revenue grow by 18% in the quarter.

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In its second largest segment, electrification, orders remain strong (at 1.8 times revenue in the quarter) as ongoing investment in electric grids and connecting renewable energy to the grid supports growth.

Finally, in the loss-making wind segment, GE Vernova needs to work through legacy offshore wind contracts while focusing on its profitable onshore wind business. The segment remains loss-making overall, but the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) profit margin improved to negative 7.9% in the quarter compared to negative 10.6% in the first quarter of 2024.

What's next for GE Vernova?

Management reaffirmed its full-year guidance for $36 billion to $37 billion in revenue and a high-single-digit EBITDA margin. It's a good result in a market stressing the potential for guidance reductions in light of uncertainty around tariffs.

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Nvidia partner Vertiv's (NYSE: VRT) stock rose by as much as 21% in early morning trading as the company's first-quarter earnings report confirmed that there's nothing wrong with demand for data center equipment. The stock was up 10.5% around 12:30 p.m. ET. The report contained plenty of positives, and Vertiv continues to offer investors an excellent way to get exposure to AI-led demand for data center capacity.

Vertiv's excellent quarter: Orders

The two major pluses from the earnings report this morning were the hike in full-year sales guidance and the return to impressive yearly order growth. Starting with order growth, investors were disappointed in February when management reported that fourth-quarter orders were flat compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Even though its trailing-12-month orders were up 30% in the fourth quarter, the weak order performance in the quarter raised fears of deterioration in 2025.

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Fortunately, those fears were dispelled by the 13% growth in orders in the first quarter compared to the same period of 2024. Moreover, trailing-12-month orders were up 20%, and the book-to-bill ratio (a key indicator of growth) was 1.4 in the quarter.

Vertiv's excellent quarter: Guidance hike

As for the guidance update, management now expects organic net sales growth of 16.5%-19.5% compared to a prior estimate of 15%-17%. That said, the midpoint of earnings and free cash flow (FCF) guidance was kept the same, even as management raised the high end of the earnings and FCF guidance range due to favorable trading conditions but lowered the low end due to uncertainty around tariffs.

Now trading at less than 24 times the midpoint of FCF guidance for 2025, Vertiv remains an attractively priced growth stock, not least as we are still in the early innings of AI application growth.

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Boeing (NYSE: BA) stock rose by as much as 8.7% in trading before 10 a.m. today. By 12:10 p.m. ET, the stock was up 5.5%. The move comes as investors cheered the company's first-quarter earnings report, which was released earlier. Frankly, the market had reason to be optimistic.

Boeing delivers

The aerospace and defense giant is one of the most fascinating stocks. Yes, it has plenty of near-term headwinds and exposure to risk around tariffs and the economy's overall direction. On the other hand, its well-regarded CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has a huge opportunity to engineer a turnaround at the company simply by executing well.

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As such, Boeing is almost a "self-help" story, and the good news from this earnings report is that the company seems to be starting to help itself. Boeing and Ortberg need to improve the delivery rate on their commercial airplanes, notably the narrow-body 737 MAX, and the profit margin at the Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS) business, notably on its troublesome fixed-price development programs.

First, management confirmed that the 737 and the wide-body 787 programs were on track. It expects to reach a monthly delivery rate of 38 and seven, respectively, by the end of the year. That confirms what Boeing supplier Hexcel's CEO, Tom Gentile, said recently, "Boeing is doing very well on their production. They're getting up in rate."

Second, the following chart speaks for itself. BDS generated a 2.5% operating profit margin in the quarter, and management plans to return to high single-digit margins over time.

Where next for Boeing

The company still faces risks, not least from tariff conflicts. Still, Boeing's demonstration of operational progress in the first quarter is a significant plus and gives confidence that Ortberg will turn the company around.

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Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Hexcel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Without a doubt, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is one of the most intriguing stocks on the market. The polemical views on the company portray it as either a damaged brand with an aging lineup of vehicles on the cusp of being exposed as a hugely overvalued car company -- or a technology company about to explode by unveiling its primary value creator, robotaxis, in due course. Here's the lowdown.

Getting to a million dollars

First up, some simple math to illustrate how Tesla might make you a millionaire. For the sake of argument, let's assume that Ark Invest's "expected value" price target of $2,600 for Tesla stock in 2029 comes true. Then you would have to hold 385 Tesla shares to have $1 million worth of stock. Buying those shares at the time of this writing would cost you just shy of $105,000.

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Based on just the significant initial outlay required, Tesla stock is unlikely the best candidate for most individual retail investors to become eventual millionaires. Having said that, the stock still has the potential to generate hefty returns.

Valuing Tesla

I reference Ark's valuation model because it highlights how investors perceive the stock differently. For bulls like Ark, the case for Tesla rests on its robotaxi offerings, which it attributes as being worth 88% of total company value, compared to just 9% for its electric vehicles.

That consideration goes a long way toward explaining why Tesla trades at nosebleed valuations compared with the more traditional automakers. Although Tesla is a highly successful EV company, the case for its stock lies in long-term revenue generation from profit sharing on miles driven on robotaxis, and the market knows it.

Let's put it this way: Under the Ark model, roughly $2,288 per share comes from robotaxis, and just $234 to Tesla as an EV company.

TSLA EV to Free Cash Flow data by YCharts.

What you need to believe for the bullish case

Consequently, investors need to accept the following:

• Tesla will release its robotaxi service (possibly featuring its Cybercab) in due course. CEO Elon Musk maintains it will launch "unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June."
• Tesla's purpose-built robotaxi, Cybercab, will begin volume production soon. Management maintains volume production will start in 2026.
• Adoption will be rapid, regulatory hurdles will be overcome, and safety concerns will be reassured.
• Tesla will be able to produce a low-cost Cybercab that can generate significantly lower cost per ride than alternatives like Waymo and traditional cab services.

Why Tesla can hit these goals

The good news is investors have reason to be positive. First, while relatively high interest rates have negatively impacted automakers' EV plans, Tesla carried on investing and reduced its cost per vehicle to below $35,000 at the end of 2024 from above $38,000 at the start of 2023. That matters because EVs need to be affordable to encourage adoption, the Cybercab needs to be affordable, and management claims it will launch a new "more affordable" model in the first half of 2025.

Purely by way of contrast, consider that Ford (a company that told investors in 2016 that it would produce driverless cars by 2021) lost $5.1 billion on its EV segment in 2024.

Second, Tesla needs and has leadership in EVs. That's important for robotaxis because it means Tesla has a huge and continuously growing set of data from its Autopilot and Full-Service Driving (FSD) technology on Tesla cars in continuous use. That should enable it to lower the cost per ride and improve its unsupervised FSD solutions.

Third, while its declining sales in 2025 have attracted much media attention, the reality is that Tesla had more than 44% market share of EV sales in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2024. The company has the brand recognition and familiarity to succeed with robotaxis.

Why Tesla stock is risky

Unfortunately, while there are many positives, there are many question marks.

Most of the value in the stock is in a technology that's not in service yet. Tesla has a record of overpromising and underdelivering on unsupervised FSD and robotaxis/Cybercab. Will the Austin launch happen? Will the Cybercab be part of it, and will Cybercab be in volume production in 2026? Will the "more affordable" model be launched imminently? Will the tariff skirmish with China turn into a war and negatively impact Tesla's cost base, not least because it buys batteries and other components from China?

Is Tesla a millionaire-maker stock?

The upside is significant, but so are the risks, making Tesla a stock only for enterprising and speculative investors or those looking to take a relatively small position in a stock with substantive upside potential.

It won't suit most investors, and Tesla needs many things to go right before it realizes the potential in Robotaxis/Cybercab. It's not a millionaire maker because few retail investors will be willing to invest the sums necessary to get there, at least on Ark's model. Still, it might suit enterprising investors with a diversified portfolio of stocks who can tolerate risk.

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Shares in data center equipment company Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) rose by 14% in the week ending Friday morning. This is an excellent performance, but the stock is still down more than 40% this year. This week's positive move helps to shed light on the key driver of the stock at the moment -- sentiment over the trade tariff skirmish and what it's likely to do to spending on data centers.

Vertiv and tariffs

It's no secret that companies usually cut back on capital spending in a slowdown. This is particularly true when growth spending (rather than maintenance capital spending) has driven data center investment over the last couple of years. This leaves Vertiv exposed to the market's views on the current round of trade disputes between the U.S. and its trading partners.

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The rise this week came as news broke of a 90-day pause in tariffs above 10%, with the exception of China, whose tariff now stands at 145%. The pause, plus some conciliatory commentary indicating a willingness to do trade deals, indicates to the market that the tariffs might be more tactical than strategic in nature.

In other words, President Donald Trump may be tactically using them as a precursor to trade deals, resulting in more favorable conditions for U.S. exporters. This is distinct from more lasting strategic tariffs designed to fundamentally reshape the structure of economies. In truth, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

What it all means for Vertiv

If they turn out to be tactical and trade deals are signed in due course, then the dip in the Vertiv share price will prove an excellent buying opportunity as conditions should normalize, with ongoing spending on artificial intelligence (AI) applications driving data center investment. Time will tell.

Should you invest $1,000 in Vertiv right now?

Before you buy stock in Vertiv, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Vertiv wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $496,779!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $659,306!*

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Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

In times of uncertainty, investors turn to areas of relative certainty, and one such area is Warren Buffett's mastery of investing when others are fearful. Consequently, it makes sense to look into what Buffett is holding in his Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) investment portfolio. Here are two stocks worth looking at now.

Berkshire Hathaway stock

Buffett was widely reported to be building up a large cash pile in 2024, and he has expressed some skepticism about tariffs. If you want to gain market exposure at such a challenging time, why not buy into Berkshire Hathaway stock and let Buffett carry the strain while you wait for more certainty on the fallout from the tariff escalations?

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After all, it's a strategy that would have worked out for investors over the past year, as well as more extended time frames.

BRK.A data by YCharts

For example, over the last 10 years.

BRK.A data by YCharts

Or even over the last 30 years.

BRK.A data by YCharts

While Buffett won't live forever, his successor, Greg Abel, has been at Berkshire Hathaway for 25 years, and it's a safe assumption that he's played a pivotal role in key investment decisions made by the company.

One of those decisions is Berkshire Hathaway's stockpiling of more than $330 billion in cash at the end of 2024 -- a decision that appears incredibly prescient now. The secret to Buffett's investing success isn't just being an outstanding stock picker; it's also knowing when to be a stock picker, and the stockpiling of cash in 2024 wasn't luck.

Try Coca-Cola

According to its SEC filings, Berkshire Hathaway held 400 million shares in Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) at the end of 2024. It's one of Berkshire's largest positions, and its 9% increase in 2025 contributed to Berkshire's similar increase over the same period. Its nearly 3% dividend yield doesn't harm the investment case for the stock either.

Naturally, investors will be concerned about Coca-Cola's exposure to tariffs and trade wars, but fortunately, the company is relatively well-positioned. Its end products are more consumer staples than consumer discretionary products. Moreover, as CEO James Quincey outlined on the fourth-quarter earnings call in February, there are several reasons to believe Coca-Cola will be in good shape.

First, Quincey noted: "We are predominantly a local business when it comes to making each of the beverages. The vast majority of everything that's consumed in the U.S. is made in the U.S." He added, "While it's a global business, it's very local." This localization of production, where consumption takes place, means the company isn't suffering from tariffs in the way that, say, a company manufacturing in Mexico and exporting into the local market in the U.S. will.

Second, while Coca-Cola does have exposure to increased packaging costs associated with aluminum tariffs, Quincey told investors in February that packaging is just "a small component" of its cost structure. The increase in aluminum cost would not be "insignificant," but according to Quincey, it's manageable. In addition, the increase in aluminum costs is also likely to impact its competitors, and Coca-Cola has the scale to absorb cost increases by taking other measures.

Third, demonstrating the last point above, Quincey argued that Coca-Cola could shift marketing and distribution focus toward polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles instead of aluminum. This isn't something all its competitors will be able to do.

Stocks to buy

All told, Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola, one of its largest holdings, look like pretty good stocks to buy in the current environment. They both have Buffett's seal of approval, which counts for a lot in uncertain times.

Should you invest $1,000 in Coca-Cola right now?

Before you buy stock in Coca-Cola, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Coca-Cola wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $496,779!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $659,306!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 787% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 152% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 10, 2025

Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.