Despite an abysmal quarter on nearly every metric, shares of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) climbed even after the electric vehicle (EV) maker pulled its guidance for the year. The stock is still down more than 35% in 2025 as of this writing, but over the past year, it has risen by around 80% despite a string of poor quarterly earnings results.

The stock's rise can be attributed to CEO Elon Musk pledging to spend more time running the company instead of overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk also continued to hype Tesla's robotaxi and artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions.

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The stock rallied on the news, but let's examine why it may have much more downside from here.

Its core auto business is cratering

Musk's political ambitions and time at DOGE significantly damaged the Tesla brand. He alienated a large percentage of the population, and those who were more likely to buy EVs. It's great that Musk is looking to refocus on Tesla, but the damage to the brand seems to be already done.

Tesla's first-quarter figures showed declines in both auto deliveries and revenue. Quarterly deliveries dropped 13% to 336,681, while auto revenue plunged 20% to $14 billion. Model 3 and Model Y deliveries fell 13%, while other models decreased by 24%. The latter shows that Tesla's distinct-looking Cybertruck is having trouble selling.

This does not appear to be a one-quarter blip. Management pulled its full-year guidance, saying it was "difficult to measure the impacts of shifting global trade policy on the automotive and energy supply chain." Chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja acknowledged the "near term" challenges the company has with its brand image on its earnings conference call.

However, Musk tried to shift the poor sales to being a macro issue, saying that beside that, it saw "no reduction in demand." However, that does not coincide with reality. For example, while Tesla saw a nearly 9% decline in U.S. deliveries in the quarter, according to Cox Automotive, overall U.S. EV deliveries jumped by more than 10%. Meanwhile, overall global EV sales soared 29% in the first quarter, according to market intelligence company Rho Motion, with European EV sales up 22% and Chinese EV sales up 36%.

This means that Tesla is seeing its auto sales decline despite what is still a pretty robust market for EVs.

More lofty promises

With its core auto business struggling, Musk once again turned to lofty promises about autonomous driving, robotaxis, and AI.

He said that it will begin offering paid robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, beginning in June, starting with 10 to 20 vehicles. It will then ramp up its fleet and look to rapidly expand to other cities by the end of the year. He added that the robotaxi business would have a notable impact by mid-2026.

Tesla sticking to its June timeline, though, raises a lot of questions. The company thus far has only achieved Level 2 automation, which means that the automobile can steer and control speed, but a driver must stay engaged at all times. A robotaxi would require Level 4 automation, where the automobile can drive itself in a specific area. The leap from Level 2 automation to Level 4 is not a small step and skips Level 3 automation, in which the car can perform most driving tasks, but the driver must take over in some conditions.

Once again, it provided few details on how it was going to achieve Level 4 automation. The company's decision to eschew lidar (which uses lasers to measure distances and movement) and use a vision-only approach for autonomous driving has thus left it far behind, and even recent tests of its technology have found a lot of issues. Musk has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering when it comes to autonomous driving, but a June timeline is so close that you would have to think it could happen.

That said, even if Tesla does launch a robotaxi service, it doesn't necessarily solve the company's issues. Alphabet's Waymo has already taken the lead in the space in the U.S., and Tesla's problems with its brand reputation would extend to robotaxis as well. Meanwhile, most robotaxi fleets would operate in big cities, which tend to lean liberal.

Rohan Patel, the company's former head of business development and policy, told The Information, a technology-focused business website, that based on Tesla's internal analysis, the payback for its robotaxi ambitions was going to be slow.

An expensive stock

The stock has always gotten a huge premium valuation based on the hopes and dreams that Musk sells to investors, more than economic reality. That is the case now, more than ever.

The reality is that the company is currently seeing its market share and revenue decline. It trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of over 100 based on 2025 analyst estimates, while its profitable U.S. auto peers all have multiples below 10. And while investors are placing a huge value on the potential robotaxi business, Alphabet, which has an operational paid robotaxi businesses, gets no such premium.

Between Tesla's valuation and the brand damage that has been done, I think the stock could have a lot further to fall in the future.

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Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you’ll want to hear this.

On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a “Double Down” stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you’re worried you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The most closely watched metric for Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) during earnings season isn't the company's revenue or profits. Instead, it tends to be its postpaid phone subscriber numbers. Postpaid subscribers have wireless plans that are billed monthly, as opposed to prepaid subscribers, who pay for their services upfront.

Prepaid subscribers generally are not as affluent, and the business has much more churn. Meanwhile, its consumer and business wireline businesses are in decline. Broadband is a growth business, but the focus still tends to be on its core postpaid wireless business, as this is the gateway to its other offerings.

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On the postpaid wireless front, the company disappointed. After adding 568,000 wireless postpaid phone net additions in Q4 2024, it lost 289,000 in Q1 2025. The first quarter tends to see churn; in Q1, it lost 114,000 postpaid phone subscribers last year. However, the decline was worse than the loss of 197,000 subscribers that analysts were expecting.

Much of this appears to stem from price hikes, as the company's total wireless service revenue rose 2.7% to $20.8 billion despite the churn in customers. However, the company said that it saw mid-single-digit consumer postpaid phone gross additions in March and that its performance thus far in April has been strong. It noted that its new three-year price lock and free phone guarantee were starting to resonate with customers.

It also highlighted its new myPlan and myHome plans, which allow customers to customize their plans and add perks, such as discounted streaming services or unlimited cloud storage. myPlan is for mobile customers, while myHome is for broadband customers.

Broadband continued to be an area of strength in Q1, with 339,000 net additions in the quarter. This included 45,000 Fios internet net additions and 308,000 fixed wireless additions. Overall, it said total broadband connections increased by 13.7% year over year to 12.8 million, with 4.8 million of those being fixed wireless access subscribers.

It plans to deliver 650,000 incremental Fios passings this year while continuing to expand its C-band deployment. C-band is a wireless spectrum that Verizon is using to deliver its fixed mobile broadband solution and enhance its mobile wireless solution. C-band provides broadband internet service to areas that don't have traditional infrastructure.

Overall, Verizon continued to deliver steady results. Its overall revenue rose by 1.5% to $33.5 billion, while its adjusted EPS increased 3.5% to $1.19. That was just ahead of the analyst consensus for adjusted EPS of $1.15 on revenue of $33.3 billion. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), meanwhile, rose 4.1% to $12.6 billion.

Looking ahead, Verizon maintained its full-year 2025 guidance. It continues to expect wireless revenue growth to be between 2% and 2.8% and for adjusted EPS to increase by 0% to 3%. The company projects operating cash flow to be between $35 billion and $37 billion after spending about half of that on capital expenditures (capex) to result in free cash flow between $17.5 billion and $18.5 billion.

A dividend darling

One of the things that most attracts investors to Verizon is its dividend. It has a robust forward dividend yield of about 6.4%, which is a nice payout in this environment.

The dividend remains well covered, with the company paying $2.85 billion in dividends in Q1 while it generated $3.63 billion in free cash flow. That's good for a nearly 1.3x coverage ratio. Over the past 12 months, it's generated free cash flow of $18.73 billion and paid out $11.03 billion in dividends, good for a 1.8 times coverage ratio. That gives the company plenty of room to continue to both invest in its business and increase its dividend moving forward.

The company's balance sheet also remains in solid shape with a leverage ratio on unsecured debt (net unsecured debt/trailing-12-month adjusted EBITDA) of 2.3.

With Verizon forecasting $17.5 billion to $18.5 billion in free cash flow this year, the company has a wide cushion to continue to increase its dividend, even if a weaker economic environment negatively impacts its results.

Is it time to buy the stock?

While Verizon's recent price hike caused some elevated churn in the most recent quarter, postpaid wireless subscriber additions look like they have been back on track for the last couple of months. Meanwhile, its three-year price lock and phone upgrade plan looks like an attractive offering that can drive subscriber growth.

At the same time, the company continues to do well by adding broadband customers. Its fixed wireless C-band offering allows it to target households in areas without fiber or cable broadband services. It is also a nice alternative option for customers who have cut the cord with cable but who are still beholden to their cable company's broadband options.

Turning to valuation, Verizon trades at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 9 based on 2025 earnings estimates, which is well below the nearly 13 times multiple of AT&T. With very similar overall growth metrics as AT&T, I think Verizon is the better buy and remains a solid, defensive dividend stock.

I wouldn't get caught up in one quarter of weak postpaid subscriber growth, as the overall picture at Verizon remains solid.

Should you invest $1,000 in Verizon Communications right now?

Before you buy stock in Verizon Communications, 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 Verizon Communications 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 $591,533!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $652,319!*

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*Stock Advisor returns as of April 21, 2025

Geoffrey Seiler has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

With the stock market whipsawing amid to on-again, off-again tariffs, now is a great time scoop up some great stocks at discounted prices. Let's look at four monster stocks across industries that investors can buy and hold for the long haul. While in totally different businesses, all four should be artificial intelligence (AI) beneficiaries.

Nvidia (technology)

Nvidia's (NASDAQ: NVDA) graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the backbone of AI infrastructure due to their superior processing capabilities that are ideal for running AI workloads.

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Meanwhile, the company's CUDA software platform has created a wide moat for the company in the GPU space due to how easily it allows developers to program its chips for various AI tasks. This has led the company to take an over 80% market share and grow its revenue by an astonishing 380% over the past two years.

With AI data center capital expenditures (capex) still increasing, Nvidia is uniquely positioned to continue to capture a large percentage of this spending. Cloud computing companies are leading the way, with the three largest in the space set to spend around $250 billion this year.

Meanwhile, companies developing AI models and enterprises are also spending big. For its part, Nvidia sees AI data center capex reaching $1 trillion by 2028. This type of projected spending makes Nvidia's stock a long-term winner.

Amazon (consumer goods)

The market-share leader in cloud computing with Amazon Web Service (AWS), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is leading the way on AI infrastructure capex, with plans to spend $100 billion this year. It also says that there are currently more than 1,000 generative AI applications being built across the company.

Amazon sees AI as a once-in-a-generation opportunity and as such will continue to invest big. If history is any indication, this is a smart move as the company's previous big bets, such as its logistics and warehouse network and AWS, proved to be the right moves.

At the same time, Amazon is still the world's largest e-commerce player, where it is also employing AI to improve the customer experience while at the same time creating efficiencies and reducing costs. This includes using AI to optimize routes for its drivers to speed up delivery times and using AI robots in its warehouses that can spot damaged items, so customers don't have the hassle of having to return them.

The combination of its AWS and e-commerce businesses position Amazon to be a long-term winner.

Energy Transfer (energy)

AI data centers consume a lot of power, which is driving up demand for natural gas. One of the companies best positioned to take advantage of this is Energy Transfer (NYSE: ET), which owns the largest integrated midstream system in the U.S.

The company is particularly well situated in the Permian Basin, which is the most prolific oil basin in the U.S. with some of the best drilling economics.

However, it is Energy Transfer's access to the cheap associated natural gas from this basin and vast pipeline network that give it an advantage.

A friendlier government stance toward fossil fuels and growing natural gas demand is leading to more growth projects for the company. As such, it has increased its growth capex budget this year to $5 billion from just $3 billion in 2024. It also signed its first contract to directly supply natural gas to a data center when it entered into a long-term agreement with data center developer Cloudburst to deliver natural gas to its flagship data center development in central Texas.

With some of the best assets in the midstream space and one of the cheapest valuations, Energy Transfer's stock is a solid investment opportunity. It also carries a nice 7.8% forward yield to boot.

PayPal (financials)

It's no secret that payments company PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) has had issues in the past. While the company was growing revenue, much of this was coming from low-margin sources, causing it to see margin pressure. Between 2015 and 2023, its gross margin contracted from 51% to 39.6%.

However, new CEO Alex Chriss set out to change this course, focusing on innovation, value-added services, and employing a price-to-value strategy (determining the highest price its customers are willing to pay for something). While this is leading to revenue growth initially decelerating, the company has started to boost its transaction margin dollars, which are similar to gross profits.

At the same time, PayPal introduced a number of new services, such as smart receipts and advanced offer platforms. Both of these are marketing tools that use AI to create personalized offers to customers. It's also begun to better monetize its popular peer-to-peer payment platform Venmo through the introduction of a Venmo debit card and Pay with Venmo feature.

The company's biggest innovation, though, is an AI solution called Fastlane that lets consumers check out with a single tap without having to provide credit card information or set up an account with individual retailers. This solution is a huge help to merchants that has been improving their customer conversions. The company has also said three-quarters of early Fastlane users have been new or dormant PayPal customers.

A cheap stock (less than 12 times forward P/E) that is showing signs of a turnaround, PayPal is a great option to buy now.

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

Before you buy stock in Nvidia, 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 Nvidia 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 $495,226!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $679,900!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 796% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 155% 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

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Energy Transfer and PayPal. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Nvidia, and PayPal. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $42.50 calls on PayPal and short June 2025 $77.50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

With the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) ending last week down more than 10% in two days, the stock market experienced its first crash since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to escalate. The culprit this time was the U.S. enacting punitive tariffs against much of the rest of the world and an ensuing trade war. These tariffs were even applied to two islands uninhabited by humans, with the Trump administration saying the duties were added so that other countries could not evade tariffs by shipping goods through the ports of these islands.

With the market in turmoil and a lot of volatility likely ahead, let's look at four ways investors can navigate the current market crash.

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1. Have liquidity

In a bear market or an impending bear market, one of the most important things investors can have is liquidity, or cash on the sidelines. By having available cash, investors can then take advantage of market dips.

If you're fully invested, consider selling some of your least favorite positions to raise some cash that can later be used to buy ideas you have more conviction in. If these are in a non-retirement account, you'd also get the potential benefit of a tax loss when you next file.

To be clear, you don't want to start panicking and just sell stocks. Instead, you want to look at this as an opportunity to high-grade (improve the quality of) your portfolio.

2. Create a list of high-quality stocks to buy

Another important thing you can do is create a list of high-quality stocks and the prices at which you'd start buying them. Undoubtedly, there have been stocks you've liked in the past, but their valuations were too high.

This could be highfliers like Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) or Cava Group (NYSE: CAVA) whose businesses are doing great but whose stock valuations just skyrocketed over the past year or two. Perhaps it could be stocks in industries that have always tended to have high multiplies, such as cybersecurity companies like CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) and Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW). There could also be blue chip tech names like Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) or Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) whose stocks have just gotten cheaper, given their collection of businesses and future prospects.

The key, though, is to gather a list of high-quality stocks you'd be comfortable owning over the long run. And then, when they reach your price target, be ready to start building positions in them. Just do the research beforehand so you're ready to pounce.

3. Consider writing puts

A more advanced strategy to use in a down market is to write (sell) put options. By writing a put option, you collect a cash premium up front, but you are then obligated to buy that stock if the buyer exercises his option to sell it to you. As such, you want to do this only with stocks and at prices where you would want to buy them.

For example, if Amazon was on your list of stocks to buy at $150, you could write a put on Amazon stock with a strike price of $150 and a May 9 expiration and collect around $3.70 in premium. If the stock falls below $150 and the option is exercised, you'd own the stock at $150. Note that each option represents 100 shares. If Amazon doesn't fall to that price, you just collect the premium, which would be worth around $370 for each option.

This strategy's intention is twofold. One is to let you buy into a stock you want to own at a lower price. However, if the stock never reaches that price, you still earn some return.

The downside to this strategy is that it does tie up some capital, which you could potentially use elsewhere. That is why I prefer to keep the expiration dates short, at about a month.

In addition, if the stock blows past your price target on the downside, you are still obligated to buy at the strike price. This is most likely to occur if a major event happened when the market was closed, and it opened way down. However, the assumption we are using is that you'd be a buyer of the stock at the strike price regardless. The other disadvantage is that if the market does make a quick reversal, you would lose out compared to if you had jumped in right away and bought the stock.

However, this is a nice strategy to supplement your investments, allowing you to earn some extra cash as you wait for stocks to hit your buy prices.

4. Dollar-cost average with ETFs

Another strategy investors should consider is dollar-cost averaging. In this strategy, you make investments at set times and dollar amounts regardless of their prices.

This strategy works particularly well with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) such as the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) or the Invesco QQQ ETF (NASDAQ: QQQ). These two ETFs track major market indexes that have proven to be long-term winners. The Vanguard ETF tracks the S&P 500, which comprises the 500 largest stocks traded in the U.S., while the QQQ ETF tracks the Nasdaq-100, which is more tech- and growth-oriented.

With ETFs, you don't have to worry about individual stock research. You can buy an ETF that immediately gives you a portfolio of leading stocks. Consistently dollar-cost averaging into index ETFs is a great way to build long-term wealth, and a down market is a great place to start implementing this strategy.

Should you invest $1,000 in S&P 500 Index right now?

Before you buy stock in S&P 500 Index, 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 S&P 500 Index wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $590,231!*

Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than quadrupled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*. 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 5, 2025

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet, Invesco QQQ Trust, and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, CrowdStrike, Palantir Technologies, and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool recommends Cava Group and Palo Alto Networks. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.