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Received yesterday — 7 August 2025

Prediction: XRP and Dogecoin Will Struggle Mightily in August (and Likely Well Beyond)

Key Points

  • Cryptocurrencies have run circles around Wall Street's major stock indexes over the last decade, with popular digital tokens XRP and DOGE leading the charge.

  • Though adoption rates for payment-focused tokens have climbed, they're still quite modest compared to time-tested transaction methods.

  • XRP and Dogecoin appear to be prime examples of the financial markets idiom, "buy the rumor, sell the news."

Compared to other asset classes, such as bonds, commodities, and real estate, the stock market has been the top wealth creator over the past century. But over the trailing decade, nothing has come close to rivaling the gains delivered by cryptocurrencies.

Whereas the benchmark S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) has roughly tripled over the trailing decade, prominent payment-based digital currencies XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) and Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) have soared by more than 34,000% and nearly 117,000%, respectively, based on data from YCharts.

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While these popular cryptocurrencies have become staples in the portfolios of digital-asset investors, both Ripple-created XRP and Dogecoin appear primed for a difficult August, and a potentially rough second-half of 2025, for a variety of reasons.

A person drawing an arrow to and circling the bottom of a steep decline in a crypto chart.

Image source: Getty Images.

XRP's and Dogecoin's adoption rates aren't as impressive as you might think

Aside from the appeal of decentralization (XRP is only partially decentralized since it's the bridge currency developed for Ripple's payment network), one of the primary selling points of cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain networks is the ability to facilitate peer-to-peer and/or cross-border transactions faster, safer, and considerably cheaper than existing methods.

XRP, which is the bridge currency used in cross-border transactions for financial institutions, and Dogecoin, which is primarily used for peer-to-peer and merchant transactions, have seen their usage rates grow over time.

However, adoption rates remain relatively tame. For instance, in the neighborhood of 300 global financial institutions are using RippleNet for cross-border payments. But what's worth noting is that not all of these banks are required to use XRP as the intermediary currency. While RippleNet grows in adoption, demand for XRP isn't increasing on a 1-for-1 basis.

As for Dogecoin, it received a boost when Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who's been a longtime Dogecoin enthusiast and small stakeholder, announced his company would accept DOGE for select goods. But outside of Tesla, DOGE token use cases are minimal, with around 2,500 merchants accepting it in 2024, based on data collected by Cryptopolitan.

Although traditional payment methods are costlier and slower, they're still the undisputed top option.

Neither XRP Ledger nor Dogecoin offers unbeatable networks

To build on the first point, neither XRP Ledger nor Dogecoin offers blockchain networks that stand out as unbeatable.

To give credit where credit is due, these blockchain networks are considerably faster and cheaper than the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, which has been the standard for cross-border transactions for decades. Instead of waiting days for traditional payments to settle, XRP Ledger can validate and settle payments in three to five seconds for a fraction of a penny.

Meanwhile, Dogecoin averages a settlement time of roughly one minute, with most transactions costing in the neighborhood of $0.02.

However, Solana offers the ability to complete international transactions for a fraction of a cent in an average settlement time of 400 milliseconds. Similarly, Stellar, which is more commonly used for peer-to-peer transactions in similar fashion to DOGE, can settle for a fraction of a penny in five seconds or less.

Buy the rumor, sell the news

Another reason to expect XRP and Dogecoin to struggle mightily in August, if not well beyond, is the common financial markets idiom, "buy the rumor, sell the news."

Both tokens had tangible catalysts entering 2025. President Trump's November victory paved the way for the resignation of now-former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who was generally skeptical of digital assets and had ongoing litigation against Ripple. With Gensler leaving office on Jan. 20, Trump's inauguration date, it rolled out the red carpet for Ripple's litigation woes to be cleared up.

As for Dogecoin, Trump's victory led to Elon Musk's being used as a special employee for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Although this "DOGE" has absolutely nothing to do with actual DOGE tokens, Musk's having the president's ear was viewed as a positive for all digital assets -- especially Dogecoin.

The problem is that these catalysts are now firmly in the rearview mirror. Elon Musk is no longer part of DOGE, and Gensler left his role more than six months ago. With no clear immediate catalysts for XRP or Dogecoin, it may be time for investors to "sell the news."

A New York Stock Exchange floor trader look up in bewilderment at a computer monitor.

Image source: Getty Images.

Crypto is tethered to an exceptionally pricey stock market

Perhaps the most-damning of all reasons XRP and Dogecoin can tumble in August, and possibly for many months thereafter, is the inextricable link between the crypto market and stock market.

When cryptocurrencies were initially conceived, they were prominently viewed as a separate asset class that, in some instances, would act as a hedge against inflation and an alternative to stocks. But as time has passed, digital assets have ebbed and flowed in lockstep with equities.

The good news here is that Wall Street's major stock indexes spend a disproportionate amount of time climbing, rather than falling. Based on data published by Bespoke Investment Group in June 2023, the average S&P 500 bear market since the start of the Great Depression in September 1929 has lasted only 286 calendar days. In comparison, the typical S&P 500 bull market endured for 1,011 calendar days, or approximately 3.5 times as long as the average bear market.

But there's an asterisk that should be placed next to the current S&P 500 bull market. Specifically, this is the third-priciest continuous bull market when back-tested 154 years, based on data from the Shiller price-to-earnings ratio. When valuations become extended to the upside as they are now, it's simply a matter of when, not if, stocks endure a sizable downturn.

If the stock market corrects lower, there's a very high probability XRP and Dogecoin will follow suit at an accelerated pace.

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When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,026%* — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025

Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Solana, Tesla, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Received before yesterday

Is Tesla Stock a Bad News Buy?

Key Points

  • Tesla's top line was down 12% last quarter, and its growth rate has been declining in recent years.

  • Rising competition and macroeconomic conditions are weighing on its near-term growth prospects.

  • The stock trades at a high premium, but management remains bullish on its future.

Electric vehicle (EV) and technology company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is one of the largest businesses in the world, with its valuation right around $1 trillion today. And this is even as the stock is down 21% this year as of July 30.

Investor sentiment has become increasingly bearish on the business, and its latest earnings numbers didn't do anything to help that. With its recent results looking unimpressive, the stock may again come under pressure in the days and weeks to come.

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Could now be a good time to add Tesla to your portfolio?

A person looking at a chart on their laptop.

Image source: Getty Images.

Tesla's problems summed up in a single chart

Investors have long been excited about Tesla's prospects and CEO Elon Musk's vision. From EVs to robots, the company has been evolving into a much larger business over the years. And if you're a believer in its potential, it's hard not to like Tesla as a long-term investment.

But there's also no denying that its growth faces question marks, especially as more competitors emerge in the EV market, particularly from China, where lower prices can squeeze Tesla's margins. The following chart shows that the threat is not just a hypothetical one, either. Tesla's growth rate has fallen drastically in recent years.

TSLA Operating Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) Chart

TSLA Operating Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) data by YCharts

Not only was quarterly revenue totaling $22.5 billion down by 12% in the company's most recent quarter (which ended in June), but the company's net income also fell by 16% to $1.2 billion. Tesla's results came in short of what analysts were expecting on both the top and bottom lines, leading to a drop in its share price after the earnings report.

Big promises and a big valuation

Tesla's recent results weren't great, but the carrot for investors is what may lie ahead for the business. These were some of the rosier -- if vague -- projections for the business from Tesla's recent earnings call:

  • Unsupervised full self-driving will be available in "certain geographies" by the end of the year.
  • Autonomous ride-hailing services will be available "in probably half the population of the U.S.," also by the end of this year.
  • The Optimus version three humanoid robot will be in production next year and "it will be the biggest product ever," according to Musk, who's known for bold predictions.

Any one of these three claims becoming true could help rally Tesla's stock, which arguably needs a catalyst right now. The problem, however, is that high expectations are also baked into the stock, as it trades at around 160 times its analyst-estimated future earnings.

The bar is high for Tesla, and if it falls short of its promises, that could lead to a further decline for the stock, especially given that its recent results haven't exactly been stellar.

Should you buy Tesla stock today?

Tesla has been an exciting growth stock to own for years, and it has generated fantastic returns for investors. Although it hasn't been doing great recently, the stock is still up over 200% in five years. If Musk's vision for his company comes true, investing in Tesla stock could end up being really smart.

However, with the stock trading at such a high premium, I'd hold off on investing in it. When you're paying such a high price, you're leaving yourself with little to no margin of safety should things not go as planned. Tesla's a good stock to put on a watch list, but I wouldn't rush out to buy it right now.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 29, 2025

David Jagielski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

These Catalysts Could Lift Tesla Stock Higher

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has done an excellent job keeping investors engaged amid challenging times for the electric vehicle pioneer.

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*Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of July 26, 2025. The video was published on July 28, 2025.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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:

  • Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you’d have $455,174!*
  • Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $40,107!*
  • Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $630,291!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 29, 2025

Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

Why Is Wall Street So Bearish on Lucid Group? There's 1 Key Reason.

Key Points

Several electric car stocks got huge boosts in recent weeks over enthusiasm for the promise of robotaxis. Tesla launched its robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas, last month. Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID), meanwhile, recently partnered with Uber Technologies to deliver 20,000 self-driving vehicles alongside a $300 million cash infusion.

But not every analyst is bullish. CNBC's Jim Cramer, for example, recently questioned the value of Lucid's deal with Uber. This month, seven other major Wall Street analysts reaffirmed their price targets for Lucid stock. Everyone predicts that shares will fall in value over the next 12 months.

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Why is Wall Street still so bearish? There's one obvious culprit.

The near-term reality for EV stocks is frightening

Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, thinks robotaxis will be a $10 trillion industry long term. That has investors excited.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, however, most EV makers will be feeling the pain. That's because federal tax credits for EVs are set to expire this September, effectively making a new EV purchase $7,500 more expensive. While the exact impact remains unknown, this shift should sizably lower demand growth. Federal automotive regulatory credits, meanwhile, are also set to lose their value given fines for noncompliance are being eliminated. Lucid has earned more than $200 million through these programs. And while it won't lose access to the entirety of this profit source, given that many state and international programs will remain, the financial impact will be sudden and meaningful.

Hundreds of cars ready for export.

Image source: Getty Images.

Every EV maker will be affected by these regulatory shifts, including Rivian, Tesla, and Lucid. EV sales in the second quarter of 2025 are already down 6.3% year over year. We could see these declines persist, or even accelerate, given reduced incentives.

Lucid's robotaxi opportunity remains lucrative long term. But analysts are rightfully worried about the next year or two when it comes to reduced sales and profit growth.

Should you invest $1,000 in Lucid Group right now?

Before you buy stock in Lucid Group, 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 Lucid Group 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 $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,063,471!*

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Stock Market Today: Tesla Slumps 8.2% After Earnings, Musk Signals Rough Quarters


Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed down 8.2% at $305.30 on Thursday, retreating sharply after CEO Elon Musk's cautionary earnings commentary about "rough quarters ahead" amid macroeconomic and electric vehicle (EV) demand uncertainties.

The decline stood in contrast to broader market performance, with the Nasdaq Composite gaining 0.18% and the S&P 500 advancing 0.07%, highlighting company-specific headwinds rather than sectorwide weakness. Electric vehicle peers also declined but to a lesser extent, with Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN) falling 1.43% to $13.82 and Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID) dropping 2.92% to $2.99, suggesting broader risk sensitivity within the EV sector while confirming Tesla's movement was the most sentiment-driven.

Trading volume reached approximately 154 million shares, roughly 1.4 times the 200-day average of 109 million shares, indicating active institutional repositioning rather than passive selling. The elevated volume combined with the substantial price decline signals deliberate investor response to forward guidance concerns, highlighting near-term skepticism despite continued longer-term interest in electric vehicle growth prospects.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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:

  • Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you’d have $442,907!*
  • Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $40,654!*
  • Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $634,627!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

JesterAI is a Foolish AI, based on a variety of Large Language Models (LLMs) and proprietary Motley Fool systems. All articles published by JesterAI are reviewed by our editorial team, and The Motley Fool takes ultimate responsibility for the content of this article. JesterAI cannot own stocks and so it has no positions in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

This Solana Segment Just Tripled in 3 Weeks. Here's What It Means For the Coin

Key Points

  • It's now possible to trade certain stocks on Solana's blockchain.

  • That capability is attracting a lot of capital, and very quickly.

  • You don't necessarily want to be investing in these tokenized assets just yet.

Wall Street's market closes at 4 p.m. eastern time, but blockchains are open all night long. Thanks in part due to that after‑hours void, a tiny slice of the stock market has quietly migrated onto Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), turning a small but growing selection of stocks into tokens that trade 24/7.

Between mid‑June and July 4, Solana's on‑chain value of those tokenized stocks more than tripled, from about $13 million to $48 million, a jump powered almost entirely by a new platform called xStocks. By July 16, the chain featured more than $100 million worth of stocks, indicating that the pace of growth is still incredible.

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The quantity of dollars involved here might look trivial, but the growth rate is anything but. Let's dig into why this is happening, and what it could mean for long‑term investors in Solana and other cryptocurrencies.

Stock tokenization just went white-hot

The xStocks platform went live on June 30 with more than 60 U.S. tickers set up. This included companies you might own, like Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and more, all minted as a Solana token and tradable on major crypto exchanges like Kraken, Bybit, and several decentralized exchanges (DEXes) too.

Those tokens are said to be backed 1‑for‑1 by shares of the underlying stocks. Transactions settle in seconds, and they can move peer‑to‑peer at sub‑penny network fees. They can also be traded at any hour of the day or night, which is an experience most brokerage apps simply cannot match.

Speed and novelty explain part of the surge, but the quality of the technology enabling the move matters too.

Two people in an office examining a tablet and a computer on a desk.

Image source: Getty Images.

Solana's cheap and fast transactions make sending fractional shares around the network highly economical, which in turn invites small investors, and also the development of relatively small-time decentralized finance (DeFi) applications that cater to that same group. The launch also coincided with the launch of so‑called "tax coins," an emerging segment of tokens that skim a trading levy and automatically funnel the proceeds into xStocks to distribute to holders as on‑chain dividends. Further DeFi innovation involving tokenized assets like stocks is all but guaranteed, and at the moment, Solana is where it all happens.

But before you rush in and buy tokenized stocks on Solana, be aware that there is a substantial amount of fine print here.

Liquidity is razor‑thin on tokenized stocks in a way that most investors never need to think about normally. Many xStocks trade only a few thousand dollars a day, so the risk of your purchases or sales failing due to insufficient liquidity is significant in some cases.

Furthermore, most tokenized stocks still fall under securities laws, no matter what wrapper they wear. If there are issues with regulators, platforms could be forced to delist assets or exclude U.S. users overnight, and that might make the tokenized stocks worthless or untradeable.

What this means for holders

Tokenized stocks are only one strand of Solana's real‑world asset (RWA) push, but they arrive as the chain is already outpacing rivals.

Total RWA value on Solana, which includes everything from U.S. Treasuries to funds, has surged 140% this year to reach roughly $564 million as of mid-July. If that trend holds, Solana could capture a meaningful share of the trillions in assets that consultants expect to go on‑chain by 2030. For reference, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) pegs the total addressable market for tokenized illiquid assets at about $16 trillion within five years.

For holders, the mechanics of how to benefit from this trend are very straightforward. Every stock transfer or dividend a smart contract triggers in turn burns a smidge of the coin in fees, tightening supply. It also implies that users and investors had to hold some of the coin to pay the fees. In theory, a booming stock token venue could replicate what meme coins did for Solana's fee revenue last winter, but with Wall Street credibility attached.

Investors intrigued by this development should consider two things.

First, as far as the tokenized stocks themselves go, you don't need to rush to buy them. If you're the average investor, you probably shouldn't be buying them at all for at least a few more quarters to let the open issues get settled. Just buy the stocks on the traditional equity market as you usually do, assuming you want to hold them at all.

Second, if you believe public stocks will migrate on‑chain in size and that Solana's speed will keep it competitive, buying and holding the coin for the long haul will give you exposure to the upside from that trend.

In short, the explosion of stock tokenization on the chain is quite bullish, and it's ensuring that Solana's long-term picture keeps looking better and better.

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

Before you buy stock in Solana, 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 Solana 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 $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,056,790!*

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 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. Alex Carchidi has positions in Amazon, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, Solana, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Solana, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Stock Market Today: Lucid Surges on Uber's $300 Million Robotaxi Deal


Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID) shares skyrocketed 36.2% to close at $3.12 on Thursday, marking one of the electric vehicle (EV) maker's strongest single-day performances of the year. The dramatic surge was fueled by two significant announcements: a major partnership with Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) involving a $300 million commitment to deploy 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs as robotaxis starting in 2026, and the company's filing for a 1-for-10 reverse stock split aimed at boosting share price and attracting institutional investors.

The stock's performance vastly outpaced broader market indices, with the Nasdaq Composite rising just 0.74% and the S&P 500 gaining 0.54%. Among competitors, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) dipped 0.7% to $319.41, while Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN) posted a more modest gain of 4.1% to $12.90, highlighting the Lucid-specific nature of today's market reaction.

Trading volume reached an extraordinary 934.5 million shares, nearly seven times the 50-day average of roughly 137.7 million shares. This exceptional volume surge, combined with the stock's significant distance from its 52-week high ($4.43), reflects the market's strong response to Lucid's strategic initiatives. While the robotaxi partnership offers a potential new revenue stream, investors appear to be revaluing the company's prospects in the competitive electric vehicle landscape.

Should you invest $1,000 in Lucid Group right now?

Before you buy stock in Lucid Group, 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 Lucid Group 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 $674,281!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,050,415!*

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

JesterAI is a Foolish AI, based on a variety of Large Language Models (LLMs) and proprietary Motley Fool systems. All articles published by JesterAI are reviewed by our editorial team, and The Motley Fool takes ultimate responsibility for the content of this article. JesterAI cannot own stocks and so it has no positions in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Taiwan Semi's $100 Billion Plan; Housing Is Hot

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Tyler Crowe and Matt Frankel discuss:

  • Taiwan Semiconductor's most recent earnings report.
  • The torrid pace of AI spending.
  • Lower mortgage rates are taking the cork off existing home sales and refinancing.
  • Insulation contractor TopBuild now does roofs.
  • Ferrero will acquire WK Kellogg.
  • Two stocks worth watching this earnings season

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

A full transcript is below.

Should you invest $1,000 in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing right now?

Before you buy stock in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, 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 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing 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 $680,559!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,005,670!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,053% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% 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 July 15, 2025

This podcast was recorded on July 10, 2025.

Tyler Crowe: Taiwan Semiconductor's earnings say full steam ahead for AI, and the housing market is getting some of its best news in a while. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Tyler Crowe, and joining me today is Motley Fool analyst Matt Frankel. Matt, thanks for being here.

Matt Frankel: Thanks for having me. It's always fun to be on with you.

Tyler Crowe: We do a lot of conversations. Offline and doing one here is going to be great. On today's show, the snacking industry is actually coming for the breakfast aisle. The housing market saw its first green shoots in a while. There's merger talk in the building supply industry, and Matt and I are going to give some earnings watches for the upcoming quarter. But we're going to start today's show with Taiwan Semiconductors because they just released their second quarter or June earnings earlier today. Taiwan Semiconductor manufacturing's revenues rose about 39% in the quarter, and TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said that AI chip demand still, they think is outstripping the current supply that they have, and the company has pledged to spend $100 billion ramping up manufacturing. Now, Matt, I'm probably not alone in being flabbergasted, every time I hear a projection about spending and CapEx related to AI. NVIDIA just passed the four trillion dollar market cap threshold a couple days ago, and it's still hard to wrap my head around. I think the easy question is, will AI spend, continue to grow? I think that's a little too easy. I want to ask you, do you see AI CapEx spending continuing at this rate?

Matt Frankel: Well, a 40% year over year growth rate is only sustainable for so long. This is an acceleration. It's worth mentioning. Last year, in 2024, Taiwan Semi reported 30% year over year revenue growth. This is a pretty big acceleration after an already very strong year. I think over the past 30 years, Taiwan Semi's revenue's grown at about 18% annualized rate. It's really picked up in the past couple of years because of all this AI spending. This is a massive business, especially for one that doesn't make any of its own products. It makes products on behalf of other companies. All of their customers, just to mention some on their customer list, Apple is their biggest one. But they also make chips for NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Tesla there are a lot of companies they make chips for on a third party basis, and these are deep pocketed companies that are all committing a lot of money to AI investment. When you ask will this continue if you're asking over the next five years, I could see that growth rate actually being sustained. But if you're asking beyond, at some point, we're going to hit a peak, but I don't think we're there just yet.

Tyler Crowe: The interesting thing is a lot of the companies I follow are like in the construction industry related to AI, like all the electrical supply contractors and the builders and things like that. Their backlogs for AI data centers and all that stuff is still growing at really large rates. Their remaining performance obligations, their word for backlogs, have been growing at similar rates, which is also, to me, a leading indicator for a lot of this because you got to build the data center before you can put any chips in it. Beyond the same thing, beyond the five years, it starts to get really murky because we're 40% for five years straight is a lot, but certainly over the next 2-3 year window, it doesn't seem unrealistic to continue to keep doing this.

Matt Frankel: One of the really good ways to get ahead of demand is to look at what the data center industry is doing, and I'm glad you brought up building for that reason because so many data centers are being built right now. There's a lot of if you look at, Digital Realty Trust or Equinix's, construction activity, there's a lot going on, and it creates like a forward looking projection, if you will, because, the company will order a new data center, start building it. At some point later, it's going to be filled with chips and things like that. That's a really good forward indicator of how demand is doing.

Tyler Crowe: Let's put the rubber of the road here really quick regarding Taiwan Semi. It's a recommendation in the Hidden Gems dividend service and several other molecule services. After seeing these results and the current valuation that we're looking at for Taiwan Semi, do you still see the stock as a buy?

Matt Frankel: Given how quickly its revenue is growing, it trades for about 24 times forward earnings, there's not a lot to dislike about this company. That 1.2 trillion dollar valuation sounds high, but it really isn't when you look at how the business is doing.

Tyler Crowe: If we're looking at these numbers for 2, 3, 4 years, a company can grow into a 26 times forward earnings valuation or forward earnings valuation pretty quick. It's hard to see it being an awful investment from here at current valuations. Next up, mortgage rates are on the decline, and the housing market is responding quick.

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Tyler Crowe: The housing market has been looking for something, anything resembling good news lately. Finally, it got a little bit. The average rate for a 30 year mortgage in the United States has declined five weeks in a row, and it's now down to 6.77%. Now, that certainly isn't the sub 3% mortgages that we saw in the 2021 period, but it is a nice improvement from the greater than 7% mortgage rates we've seen so far this year, and I know I have been like mortgage rate shopping for quite some time. Matt, the housing market appears to be taking advantage of this situation much faster than we've seen other mortgage rate movements lately, and something you've been following is like housing volume is really picking up because of this.

Matt Frankel: You mentioned the other mortgage rate moves. This isn't the first time we've seen mortgage rates cool off from the highs, which is why this move is a surprise to a lot of people. Mortgage rates peaked at about 8% when inflation was really high. But even they've come down a little bit, then they go up, then they come down, they go up, and they have oscillated between 7.5% and like six and three quarters in recent times. All the other times it's happened, this is a key difference. All the other times it's happened, there hasn't been a lot of housing inventory. Now that's changed. There's a lot more inventory on the market with this decline. People who want to buy houses are taking advantage, just to name some of the statistics just last week alone, week over week, application volume was up more than 9%. Refinancing is 56% higher than it was a year ago. People who got mortgages in the 8% range are finding it valuable to refinance right now. Purchase applications are up 25% year over year on a seasonally adjusted basis. The numbers really look surprisingly strong, given that, you know, over the past week, the average mortgage rates down two basis points. It's not like it's been a sharp decline in the past week, but now buyers are suddenly coming into the market.

Tyler Crowe: Following the housing move for the past couple of years, it's been trying to poke somebody a stick and say, Come on, do something and it's funny to actually see it finally happening. Part of me wonders if it's a little bit mortgage and also our mortgage rates, excuse me, and a little bit of just like the people have been putting it off and using this as that time to start taking the lid off, especially with the buying season here in the spring and summer. Now, you and I and a couple other people, longtime Motley Fool contributors, analysts. We spend way too much time talking about housing, investing in housing, investing in real estate. There's some side channels that get a little unhinged. But with mortgage rates are declining, the probability of a rate cut actually looks to be in sight something that I have been hesitant to say for quite some time. There is pent up demand for homes. Matt, with this backdrop, what stocks in this particular market look interesting to you?

Matt Frankel: I've been saying the Home Builders forever, and so have you, but it's really tough to gauge the dynamics of Home Builders when existing homes are becoming more appealing than they had been for a long time. I won't say that. I'm really looking at rocket right now, RKT the largest lender. They're a very profitable company. I think refinancing in particular is a big opportunity. I mentioned refinancings up 56% year over year, and that's because rates fell to 6.77%. Imagine if rates fall to 6% or 5% in the next couple of years, Americans are sitting on $35 trillion in home equity that's the most ever, and a lot of it's just waiting to be tapped. A lot of people want to do big projects, but won't because it's expensive.

Tyler Crowe: Actually, the Refi number was the one that really stood out to me, as well. I didn't go to the mortgage originators, like Rocket. I actually went to the home repair and remodel industry because, again, this is everyone stared at their walls in 2020, 2021, did all those projects, and now it's been like three or four years. Everyone's starting to get that itch to do projects again and lower mortgage rates. A refinancing is a good opportunity to that. I've been looking at companies like Home Depot that have underperformed just about the time the interest rates started to climb a few years ago, we had that big pull forward in remodel activity and things like that. Home Depot and a lot of other building supply companies, and one company in particular is TopBuild. It's an insulation distribution and installation contractor specifically for insulation. That company just so happens to be the company we're going to be talking about next. Continuing on our theme of the housing market, home repair, building products, there's a company Top bill. They just mentioned it as a distribution installation contractor. They recently announced it's going to acquire Progressive Roofing. Matt, can you just give a quick breakdown of what this deal looks like?

Matt Frankel: Progressive Roofing, as the name implies, they're one of the largest commercial roofing installers in the United States. They make about 70% of their money from what's called reroofing, which is people like me needing a new roof and maintenance and 30% from new construction homes, both of which can get pretty nice tailwinds, if the real estate market keeps going as it's going. The deal is it's $810 million in cash. It looks like a great deal for TopBuild if if the market heads in the right direction. That's about nine times progressives EBITA over the past 12 months. They expect there to be some synergies, like whenever you acquire two businesses that have some overlap, you can usually combine some operations and things like that and get some cost savings. It looks like a strong acquisition. They're going to have to take on debt to do it. TopBuild has about 300 million in cash right now. Another roughly half a billion dollars will need to come up with through debt, but they have a really healthy balance sheet, about 1.4 billion in debt with $11 billion market cap business and highly profitable. I like this deal. I think this is not the last consolidation we're going to see in the industry in 2025.

Tyler Crowe: We've seen some more splashy things when it comes to acquisitions here. Brad Jacobs of XPO Logistics and United Rentals and a bunch of other we'll call it the boring economy guy who rolls up companies is getting into building supplies with QXO. It seems to be a hot activity lately as mergers acquisitions roll ups in this industry. TopBuild as I said, installation of insulation the real dirty work. Anybody that's done contracting work knows that insulation stinks as a job to do. But it's been a spectacular investment after it got spun out of Masco Corporation in 2015, several Motley Fool recommendation services. You and I have been following this company in this industry for quite a while. For TopBuild, much of its success has come from rolling up those small distributors and installation contractors across North America. It's been their calling card is going and buying out mom and pops who are maybe coming to the end of their time of wanting to run a business or some small regionals that success story of Bolt-on acquisitions. Now, roofing isn't insulation. Honestly, I'm a little anxious when a company makes an acquisition that is slightly tangential to what they're doing. Am I being a little too apprehensive here, because, I do tend to be a little bit more nervous than you.

Matt Frankel: Well, insulation and roofing are related parts of the building process. It's not like they're an insulation company, and they're acquiring a concrete manufacturer or something like that. It's a very related part of the business. But I do get your point. Some of the synergies I mentioned come from the fact that there's a lot of overlap in the processes. You generally don't put in a new roof without checking your insulation at the same time. There is a lot of overlap here. But no, I definitely get your point when companies start to step outside of their wheelhouse a little bit. It'll be worth watching, but it looks like the price is right, so they have some wiggle room to have a learning curve in there, if you will.

Tyler Crowe: I'm probably a little too nervous by nature, but I do have to admit, as I've looked at this deal, I think overall, we can talk about the business stuff. But more importantly, for me, I think management has developed enough of a track record that I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt right now or tie goes to the base runner, I guess, if you will. With the refinance market picking up so could activity in the roofing business along with installation. It might be a good time to be making this acquisition. Speaking of M&A, we're going to move on to our next store here, which is going from roofing to the breakfast aisle because that seems to be getting a hot market that also just happens to be getting a little bit sweeter. Earlier today, Ferrero Rocher or Ferrero International, the Italian private company has agreed to acquire WK Kellogg for about an enterprise value of 3.1 billion. WK Kellogg, of course, was the cereal business that was split out of Kellanova I believe it was either last year or a couple of years ago. It was a relatively recent split for the two companies where Kellanova wanted to focus on the snacking industry. WK Kellogg was going to take the cereals.

But Ferrero Rocher is very much a candy company, and it's interesting to see them going in this direction. It's about $23 per share for WK Kellogg in cash. About 31% premium Keeling's closing price today. Matt, what did you actually think about this deal? I know it's hard to really put a pin on private companies, especially an Italian one. We don't seem to have a lot of information on private Italian companies here in the US public markets. But we've seen tons of M&A activity and flirting with M&A activity. We saw Mondelez and Hershey talking about getting together early or late last year. Do you have any insights as to why you think there's so much talk and commotion in particular in the package food industry lately?

Matt Frankel: Well, in this particular case, there's a couple key takeaways. One is that Ferrero has been building out its US portfolio for some time. They acquired all of Nestle's US candy business a couple of years back, for example. You might have some of their products in your house right now and not know it. It's summertime. A lot of people keep those bomb popsicles in their fridge. That's a Ferrero product. They have a lot of brands that are very well known to Americans. Second, and this goes more to the broad package food industry that you were talking about. The definite trend is to not only diversify your product portfolio, but diversify it in a way toward healthier products. Now, I know a lot of Kellogg cereals, frosted flakes are not health food, but things like Kashi and raisin bran and rice krispies. We've seen a lot of the companies that specialize in sweets, like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, really diversifying to not necessarily health foods, but to more healthy brands that are that consumers seem to want more nowadays than their traditional products. I think it's a diversification maybe anticipate some changing tastes in the market to insulate themselves from being just a sweets company. That's a common trend that we've been seeing throughout the packaged food industry.

Tyler Crowe: Seems like it's an industry that has been struggling with debt, with trying to figure out a lot of what they're doing with their maybe some brands that are getting a little stale, trying to do some refreshes at the same time. For a lot of these snacking companies, really high cocoa prices haven't exactly helped them along the way when it comes to trying to make a lot of this work. A lot of dividend stalwarts have been really, I would say struggling to really grow the business, and we've seen it in their valuations of late. Honestly, with the package food company industry, I don't know if I'm that interested in any stocks right now, but it's certainly much more fascinating to watch with a lot of these portfolio reshufflings. Is there anyone in particular that is on your radar?

Matt Frankel: I honestly think Pepsi and Coca-Cola are the two standouts in the industry still and have done the best job of adapting to changing tastes over time out of all the package food companies. I'd probably give it to Pepsi because they have a lot more food than beverage.

Tyler Crowe: On our way out here, let's take a quick 30 seconds. Second quarter earnings is coming up. What are you watching?

Matt Frankel: Well, banks are the obvious answer just because they're reporting first, but they're also a really good proxy for just general consumer health. By looking at things like loan defaults, by looking at, trading volume trends, how volatile things have been there. There's a lot you can tell from bank earnings that have implications on pretty much every other company in the United States. That's really what I'm watching next week. Prologis is another company that reports early that we've talked about that is on my radar. They say they're nearing an inflection point. I want to see if we're there yet.

Tyler Crowe: This quarter, I'm actually going to be watching Home Depot for a lot of the reasons that we mentioned when we're talking about mortgage rates. Less for the actual earnings, but I really want to dive into the earnings transcript and see if some of this activity that we just talked about with Refi is translating into increased demand. If management thinks that this is a continuing trend or a little bit of a short term blip that we've been hoping would actually last longer than a couple of quarters here with the mortgage market. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today on Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers. Advertisements or sponsored content are provided for informational purposes only. See our Fool advertising disclosure. Please check out our show notes. I'm Tyler Crowe. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

Matt Frankel has positions in Advanced Micro Devices, Digital Realty Trust, Prologis, and Shopify and has the following options: short January 2026 $135 calls on Shopify. Tyler Crowe has positions in Prologis. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Digital Realty Trust, Equinix, Hershey, Home Depot, Nvidia, Prologis, Shopify, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Tesla, and TopBuild. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom, Nestlé, WK Kellogg, and XPO and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $90 calls on Prologis. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

AI, Superman, and Solar's Kryptonite

In this podcast, Motley Fool host Anand Chokkavelu and contributors Jason Hall and Matt Frankel discuss:

  • AI stocks in the data center space (including CoreWeave).
  • Winners and losers in energy and solar from Trump's "big, beautiful bill."
  • Ranking the intellectual property of Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, Disney, and Netflix.
  • Prime Day and other made-up holidays.
  • Stocks to watch.

And Dave Schaeffer, founder and CEO of Cogent Communications, talks with Motley Fool analysts Asit Sharma and Sanmeet Deo about how Cogent's deals with customers like Netflix and Meta Platforms work and what keeps him awake at night.

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A full transcript is below.

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This podcast was recorded on July 11, 2025.

Anand Chokkavelu: Yes, we're talking all kinds of stocks. This week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show starts now. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio Show. I'm Anand Chokkavelu. Joining me are two of my favorite fools, Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. Today, we'll talk about stock market winners and losers from the Big Beautiful Bill. We'll pit Superman versus the Hulk, and we'll of course debate stocks on our radar. But first, we'll discuss whether there's an AI opportunity in investing in data centers. Upstart data center company, CoreWeave, again made news this week this time for announcing the purchase of Core Scientific for $9 billion. This allows it to add infrastructure to consolidate vertically as it seeks to gain market share among AI and high performance computing customers. CoreWeave is just the tip of the data center iceberg. Matt, what categories of data center opportunities are out there?

Matt Frankel: First, you have hyper scalers. These are companies like AWS, Microsoft, Desha. They are companies that operate the large scale data centers. They offer computing and storage infrastructures to customers. As Anand put it, there's CoreWeave, which is one of the least understood recent IPOs that I know. [laughs] They rent out GPU data center infrastructures to customers. It's not always practical for companies to invest in all of NVIDIA's latest chips on their own, for example. That's really what they do. There's the REITs still, Digital Realty and Equinix are the two big ones. They own the data centers. CoreWeave is actually a big Digital Realty tenant. Then there's power generation. I know Jason's going to talk about this a little bit later in the show, but data centers consume a lot of power, and it's growing at an exponential pace. These chips that NVIDIA produces, they are power drains. Nuclear, especially, could be a big part of the solution, but solar and other renewables are also in there.

Jason Hall: We're definitely in the land grab phase of the infrastructure buildout for accelerated computing. I think accelerated computing is maybe a better description than just AI. We talk about the Cloud REIT large. As we see more of the companies involved start to monetize things like AI agents at scale. I think that's where these investments are going to pay off.

Anand Chokkavelu: Big question. Do any of these categories interest you all for investing?

Matt Frankel: Well, I'm well known as being the real estate guy at the Motley Fool, so it shouldn't be a big surprise, but Digital Realty is my second largest and my second longest running REIT investment in my portfolio. I'm an Amazon shareholder, and I know that's not their only business, but AWS is the primary reason I own it. I don't own CoreWeave yet, and I think the stock is a little bit pricey, to say the least. But the more I read about it, the more I'm intrigued by the company. As I mentioned, they're a big tenant of Digital Realty, so I have some exposure already.

Jason Hall: The things about CoreWeave that concern me is the stock is definitely expensive. But if the opportunity is even close to as large as we think, it could still work out, but they're going to need a lot of money to pay for what they're trying to do and depending on how much of that is from raising debt versus secondary offerings of shares, there's still a lot of questions there. But, Anand, you've given me a chance to talk about Brookfield here. [laughs] How do I not take that opportunity? But I do think that there's a couple of Brookfield entities that are positioned really well here. I want to talk about the providing the energy part of it. Brookfield Renewable is really in the driver seat here as a global provider of renewable energy on multi decade contracts. It is not just accelerated computing, it's the energy transition REIT large. We've already seen it strike big deals with Microsoft and others to provide renewable power on those multi decade contracts. The dividend is really attractive, too. BEP, that's the partnership, yields over 5%. The corporate shares BEPC, it yields about 4.5%. Since mid 2020, that's when Brookfield Renewable rolled the corporation part out and restructured its dividend. The payouts been increased almost 30%. There's a lot to like here. Beyond the yield, I think it's primed to be a total return dynamo over the next decade. If you don't want to own a company that's in the energy part, you want to own the infrastructure, just take a look at sister company Brookfield Infrastructure. The tickers there are BIP and BIPC.

Anand Chokkavelu: Of course, these aren't the only AI stocks out there. Hi, NVIDIA. Do any other areas of AI interest you guys?

Matt Frankel: I love that. You can't talk about AI and data centers without talking about the chipmakers. NVIDIA just hit $4 trillion today as the day we're recording this. NVIDIA is an amazing business, and it has more room to grow than people think just in the data center accelerator space, which is why they're getting so much attention for good reason. The market size is expected to roughly double over the next five years. That's not even to mention the opportunities they have in chips for autonomous vehicles, chips for gaming and more but I prefer AMD, which is often referred to as NVIDIA junior, but I don't think it should be. It's an incredibly well run company that's been a mistake to bet against in the past. As Intel found out the hard way, just having a dominant market share in an area of chip making is not always enough.

Jason Hall: An area of the market that I think could do really well some of the legacy enterprise software giants. I think there may be underappreciated winners from AI. I'll use Salesforce, ticker CRM as an example. It's really starting to get traction with things like it's data cloud and with AI agents. It's starting to sell. We're seeing really rapid uptake of those things and monetization. It has a benefit, an advantage over a lot of these AI start-ups that are just pure AI businesses. It's already a trusted integrated partner with hundreds of thousands of enterprises. It knows their business, it knows their challenges, regulations, opportunities and that credibility, I think, is an edge that we don't give enough credit to. We shouldn't underestimate switching costs, I guess, is what I'm really getting at. You look at Salesforce rates for about 21 times free cash flow and less than seven times sales. That's a really good opportunity. I think it equates to double digit returns if it can just grow revenue around 8-12% a year over the long term, which I think it can.

Anand Chokkavelu: We started to talk a bit about energy and the need for it with all this AI. Let's talk about the energy industry implications of the Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed into law last week. Jason, can you give us the summary of the energy portions?

Jason Hall: Summarizing anything's hard for me, but I'll try. I think the short version is the incentives for renewables, they're getting gutted, really. There's a 30% investment tax credit or ITC for short. The residential solar and battery systems portion of that had been in place to run through 2032 before gradually declining for a few years after that. That now expires. The systems have to be fully installed and commissioned by the end of this year. The commercial ITC for solar and wind projects was on a similar track, but now it expires at the end of 2027, but those projects must begin construction by July 4th of 2026 to qualify for that 30% tax credit. It also terminates the tax credit for new and used EVs, $7,500 for a new EV and up to 4,000 for a used EV. The purchase has to happen before September 30th of this year, so a couple of months. Lastly, it ends the US regulatory credits around vehicle emissions that automakers buy largely from Tesla. This is a significant and profitable revenue stream for EV makers that essentially is going away.

Matt Frankel: Jason, when you say renewables are being gutted, you're essentially referring to solar and wind, if I'm not mistaken. It's not gutting anything for nuclear power, correct?

Jason Hall: That's correct. These things you get are the pure renewables as we think of them.

Anand Chokkavelu: Let's put a fine point on this with specifics. Who are the relative winners and losers, Jason?

Jason Hall: This could be an hour long show, but I'll try to summarize it here. Thinking about the companies that are most directly affected, I think Canadian Solar, which is a large manufacturer of solar panels and energy storage, and they really largely target the utility market, but also residential is definitely a loser here. In the near term Sunrun, its business model is tied to these tax credits as an installer and to some degree, First Solar is also going to be affected. I don't think there's really any winners out of this when it comes to solar. But I think Enphase is probably still in a better position in the market may believe. Maybe First Solar as well. It's been through these battles before, and it has been a winner over the long term. If you look at wind, GE Vernova has been on a huge run. I love that business, but I don't love the stock right now. Tesla, I think maybe one of the bigger losers that investors haven't really considered. Last fiscal year, it earned 2.76 billion in revenue from regulatory credits. That's largely pure profit. Then there's also the loss of those EV tax credits for buyers. That might be offset from some incentives for US made autos that are part of the bill now that were part of the law, but I think this puts Tesla in a tougher spot. The tailwinds are not favorable for fossil fuels before this. This doesn't really change any of that. There's opportunities there, but not because of the law.

Matt Frankel: The reason I asked about nuclear a minute ago is because that's really what I see as the big winner here. I like some of the nuclear focused utility providers. Constellation Energy is one that comes to mind. One of their stated goals is to have the largest carbon free nuclear power fleet in the US by 2040. Jacob Solutions, they provide consulting and design services to the industry. Ticker symbol is J, so it's really easy to remember. They recently had some really big nuclear contract wins. I'm going to push back on Jason's Tesla as a big loser. One, they're American made cars. They qualify for that new auto loan interest deduction, so that could help offset what they're losing from the EV tax credits. They have a big energy storage business, and AI has not only giant power demands, but very variable power demands, and it's going to create a lot of need for large scale energy storage, and Tesla does that. I think they're worth watching.

Jason Hall: That's the one part of Tesla's business that's done extraordinarily well. Over the past few years, as the EV business has weakened, is that the battery business.

Anand Chokkavelu: Now quickly the big question, is solar still investable, Jason?

Jason Hall: I think so. We have a very US centric view, obviously, and the US is a massive important market for solar. But you look around the world and the regulatory environment is still largely favorable. I think if you're willing to write out plenty of volatility, that global opportunity is still really good. Businesses like Enphase, businesses like First Solar that have been through these battles before, and even a Canadian Solar, where it has a ton of projects that it's been funding to build on its books that the math just got changed for them in some big ways. The valuation is so cheap that I think that there's some opportunity there.

Matt Frankel: Taking a step back, the reason you have incentives for solar energy, for EVs, for all this, is because without them, they're not price competitive with the existing technologies. The gap has narrowed significantly, especially in solar over the past say 10 years as to the efficiency of the products themselves and just how much they cost. Eventually, solar is going to be able to stand on its own without incentives. But like Jason said, you have to be able to write out some volatility because that could be five years, that could be 10 years, that could be 20 years so eventually, it won't matter.

Anand Chokkavelu: After the break, we'll move from solar to something else that gets its power from the yellow sun. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Anand Chokkavelu, here with Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. One of our Brothers Discovery's much anticipated latest reboot of Superman hits theaters on Friday. Hoping the Justice League can one day catch Disney's Marvel cinematic universe and hot on the heels of last week's Jurassic World Rebirth from Comcast. In honor of Summer movies, we're going to rank those three companies based on the value of their intellectual property. We'll throw in Netflix for good measure. Its headline this week was stating that half of its global audience now watches anime. Chokkavelu household certainly does with one piece. My kids have gotten me into it. For those unfamiliar, they have more episodes than the Simpsons. Matt, once again, your four choices are Warner Brothers Discovery. That includes the DC Universe, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Harry Potter, the Matrix, Looney Tunes, all our favorite HBO shows. You got Comcast with Shrek, Minions, Kung Fu Panda. You got Disney with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and Mickey Mouse. Finally, you got Netflix with things like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Squid Game, newer Adam Sandler movies, and tons of niche content. Mentioned anime, you could argue whether that's niche content or not at this point. Whose intellectual property do you most value, Matt?

Matt Frankel: See, I said Disney. All four of these have excellent intellectual property, and I'll give you a more elaborate description there. In my household, you mentioned your household, how you have all these streaming things. We have a streaming service from all four of these. We have the Peacock service, which is a comcast product. We have HBO Max, which is a Warner Brothers discovery product. We have Disney Plus, and we have Netflix. Disney Plus also has Hulu attached to it. I ask myself, which is the least dispensable? I could cancel all the other ones before I'd be allowed to cancel Disney Plus for the other members of my household. Their film franchises are beyond compare. They have a much longer history of building intellectual property than all of these, especially in terms of valuables. Mickey Mouse is so old, it's not even intellectual property anymore. It's over 100-years-old, so I think it's actually in the public domain now. I have to say Disney, although it's a lot closer than I would have thought a few years ago.

Jason Hall: Yeah, if you had have asked me a few years ago, I absolutely would have said Disney, but I'm going to give the advantage to Netflix here. Let me contextualize that. I think the total value of Disney's IP is probably higher, but Netflix's ability to monetize it more effectively all over the world, I think, is even better than Disney's. I don't think any of these businesses in their studios have done a better job of making content that's relevant in more markets around the world than Netflix does. Let's be honest, I was able to watch Happy Gilmore with my eight year old son this weekend and I watched that on Netflix, that's bridging generations right there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Three things. One, Chokkavelu household is very excited for Happy Gilmore, too. Even my wife is in on it. Two, the Steamboat Willie era, Mickey Mouse is free to the world. The other ones aren't. I'm glad I'm not the only one with way too many streaming services, Matt. Let's talk about Last Place. Who are you cutting first, Matt?

Matt Frankel: Well, all those streaming services are still less than I was paying for direct TV a few years ago, so I think I'm doing all right. For me, the last place, it was between Comcast and Warner Brothers Discovery, both of which have amazing intellectual property, just to show you what a tight race this is. Comcast has universal. I was just in Orlando, and the universal theme parks are massive down there. But I have to put Comcast in last place. Just because Warner Brothers, I think the HBO Max acquisition was such a big advantage for them. They have some of the most valuable television assets of all time. More people watch the sopranos now than they did when it was originally on TV. It's a very valuable valuable asset, Game of Thrones. All these HBO shows that are among the highest rated shows of all time are part of their library. In addition to their film studio and all the other assets that we can't name because it's not that long of a show. I'd have to give Comcast last place, although, like I said, there's a good argument to be made for most of these to be in the top one or two.

Jason Hall: Yeah, I think that's fair. I agree with Matt that Comcast is the Number 4 here. But I don't think that's a flaw. It's just the nature of its business. About two thirds of its business comes from its cable subscriptions and high speed Internet. It's built differently than these other companies. I think it's fine that it's a little bit smaller.

Anand Chokkavelu: I will say, just to defend Comcast a little. I was thinking about my parents live in Florida, and it's high time we bring my two boys to Disney World or something like that. Honestly, the Universal theme park, the new one with Nintendo, Mario and the Harry Potter realm, it's close. We might we might prefer that one, but just to give a little love to Comcast and Universal. Jason Hall and Matt Frankel, we'll see you a little bit later in the show, but up next, we'll talk to the founder of one of the top five networks in the world, so stick around. This is Motley Fool Money. [MUSIC].

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Anand Chokkavelu. Dave Schaeffer is the founder and CEO of Internet Service Provider Cogent Communications. Believe it or not, Cogent's the seventh successful company Dave Schaeffer has founded. Shaffer joined Fool analysts Asit Sharma and Sanmeet Deo to discuss how it deals with customers like Netflix and Meta platforms work and what keeps him up at night.

Asit Sharma: Well, hello, fools. I am Asit Sharma and I'm joined by fellow analyst Sanmeet Deo today, and our guest is Dave Schaeffer. Dave is CEO of Cogent Communications. He's also the founder of this company founded in 1999. Dave has grown Cogent Communications into a global tier one Internet service provider. It's ranked as one of the top five networks in the world. Dave is also a serial entrepreneur. He's founded six successful businesses prior to Cogent, and foolishly, he's also one of the longest serving founder CEOs in the public markets. We're delighted to have him with us today. Dave Schaeffer, welcome.

Dave Schaeffer: Hey, well, thanks for that great introduction.

Asit Sharma: To get started, let's jump in. Dave, for our members who might be unfamiliar with the ISP or Internet service provider industry, can you just explain what Cogent does and how it makes money?

Dave Schaeffer: Yeah, sure. Cogent provides Internet access to customers and to other service providers. I think virtually everyone uses the Internet, but rarely understands how it operates. Cogent has a network of approximately 99,000 route miles of intercity fiber that circumnavigates the globe and serves six continents. We then have an additional 34,000 route miles of fiber in 292 markets in 57 countries around the world. That network is solely built for the purpose of delivering Internet connectivity. When a customer buys Internet access, what they are really buying are interfaced routed bit miles connected to other networks. If you tried to sell a customer that they would have no idea what you're talking about. The average bit on the public Internet travels about 2,800 miles. It goes through eight and a half unique routers and 2.4 networks between origin and destination. Coaching carries approximately 25% of the world's Internet traffic on its network and has more other networks connected directly to it than any other network.

Asit Sharma: Yours is a primary network. Oftentimes, we hear of middlemen carriers in between ourselves sending that bit. Let's say I'm chatting with Sanmeet over Slack, sending him some bits as we have been exchanging through the day and him receiving that. But you are, I think we can think of Cogent as being the primary fiber that is the backbone of this information communication network, is that correct?

Dave Schaeffer: That is correct. We operate two very different customer segments, roughly 95% of our traffic, but only 37% of our revenue comes from selling to other service providers. We provide Internet connectivity to 8,200 access networks around the world and about 7,000 content generating businesses. Whether it be Bell Canada, British Telecom, China Telecom, Comcast or Cox. They could be customers of Cogent on the access side, where they aggregate literally billions of end users. Then on the other side, we sell connectivity to large content generating companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, where they use us as their Internet provider. The second portion of Cogent's business is selling directly to end users. That represents about 63% of our revenues, but only approximately 5% of our total traffic. Cogent is an ISP, primarily in North America, where we connect to a billion square feet of office space, where we sell directly to end users. Then globally, we sell to multinational companies, oftentimes using last mile connections from third parties.

Asit Sharma: I always like to understand how exactly the companies I'm looking at make money. For example, for Netflix or Meta, or you pick a content provider, whoever it might be, when they work with you, explain that to me how they buy? Do they buy bandwidth in a package? Do they have a contract? How does that work? When they look to you to say, hey, we want to buy some bandwidth?

Dave Schaeffer: Yeah, so typically, we will provide them connections in multiple markets around the world. They will then have a minimum commitment level, and then above that, they pay on a metered basis. The way in which we bill is megabits per second at peak load over the course of the month. We bill at the 95th percentile, which means if you have a very spiky event that lasts less than 18 hours in a month, you don't pay for that incremental bandwidth but everything below that peak utilization, you pay a bill on a per megabit basis.

Dave Schaeffer: That is the way in which any service provider, whether it be an access network like Telkom South Africa, or a cable company like Rogers in Canada would buy from us. But for our corporate customers, the billing model is very different. For corporate customers, they typically buy in end user locations, not in data centers, and they are paying us a flat monthly fee for a fixed connection that is unmetered. I think of it as an all you can eat model.

Sanmeet Deo: There is a monthly recurring revenue that you get. It's just that with your network or your content customers, it could vary based on their usage. They could dial it up, dial it down, based on, like, this week, actually, they're dropping Squid Game, so they can anticipate they're going to need a lot of bandwidth versus maybe next month, their content late is a little lower, so they won't use up as much versus the corporate customers are paying more of a recurring, not based on volume. Is that accurate?

Dave Schaeffer: Is correct, Sanmeet. Virtually all of our revenue is predictable, even for those variable usage customers, there is oftentimes a very consistent pattern to their usage, and their bills do not vary by more than a couple percent month over month.

Sanmeet Deo: Dave, let's go on to looking at a review of recent performance. 2024 was a great year for Cogent. It crossed $1 billion in annual revenue. Can you just walk us through the highlights of your key business segments, wholesale, enterprise, net-centric? What drove the performance? Also did anything about the year surprise you as you went through it?

Dave Schaeffer: Two things. First of all our Internet based business represents 88% of our revenues across all three segments. We do derive about 12% of revenues from selling some adjacent services. Those being co location in our data center footprint. Optical transport or wavelength services and the leasing out of IPV4 addresses. We did generate about $1 billion in revenue in 2024 and 2024 was a year of significant transition for Cogent. Cogent had organically grown between 2005 and 2020 as a public company with no M&A at a compounded growth rate of 10.2% per year average over that period. We also were able to experience significant margin expansion during that period, where our EBITDA margins expanded at roughly 220 basis points per year over that same 15 year measurement period. When COVID hit, our corporate segment slowed materially because people were not going to offices, and as a result, Cogent's total growth rate had decreased to about 5% and our rate of margin expansion slowed to about 100 basis points. In May of '23, we acquired the former Sprint Long Distance Network, a Sprint Global Markets Group business from T-Mobile. That business was actually in decline and burning cash. In 2024, we significantly reduced that cash burn, and we were able to begin to repurpose some of the flow Sprint assets. In order to facilitate this transaction, T-Mobile paid us in cash over a 54 month period beginning in May of '23, $700 million. In 2024, a significant milestone for Cogent was our ability to take out much of that burn from that business and to actually accelerate the decline in that acquired business, as many of the products that were being sold or gross margin negative services.

Anand Chokkavelu: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show notes. Up next, we've got stocks on our radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

I'm Anand Chokkavelu, joined again by Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. This week's been Prime Day week invented out of thin air in 2015 to boost sales. It's almost literally become Christmas in July for Amazon, and to a lesser extent, all the imitating retailers. Got me wondering. Is this the greatest feat of something from nothing marketing we've seen? If not, what's competing with it, Jason?

Jason Hall: I think it's not even something from nothing. I think they stole this idea. Christmas in July has been around literally since the 1900. I think they're getting maybe a little bit too much credit for just being a really big retailer, smart enough to say, hey, we're doing a sale when there was nothing else going on, and people were like, oh, it's a big sale. Well, people kept coming, so it just gets bigger every single year.

Matt Frankel: Before e-commerce, Jason's right, remember the Sunday paper that had all the flyers from all the stores. They'd have their semi annual sales. The President's Day weekend sales were the ones I remember that were the biggest deals ever that really were just meant to invigorate sales in a historically slow time of year. But really, this concept has been applied over and over. Think of how many tourist destinations create random festivals in the worst months to go, like, weather wise. I used to live in Key West, Florida, and the biggest party of the year is called Fantasy Fest. It was created to invigorate tourism during hurricane season. It's a concept that's worked over and over, and this is a big one.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan.

Dan Boyd: I just wanted to jump in here and mention Father's Day and Mother's Day. Surprised that you guys didn't mention those. We're all fathers here on the podcast, so I know that we enjoy Father's Day, but, like, come on. They're nothing. They were just created to sell stuff.

Anand Chokkavelu: You're not going to mention Valentine's Day, Mr. Grinch.

Dan Boyd: Valentine's Day has somewhat historical significance with all the St. Valentine's stuff. I didn't want to go too far into it in my grumpiness Anand, but I guess we can throw that one on the fire.

Anand Chokkavelu: Speaking of Singles Day in China. The Alibaba took that cemented in the '90s. I think less commercy, but then it became more commercy. Two other things, Sears' catalog. Let's not forget. A lot of times Sears really is the Amazon before Amazon we forget about it because we see it at its late phases. It wasn't the first catalog, Tiffany, Montgomery Ward, they beat it to the punch. But when it was going, it was called the Consumer Bible. Then on a smaller scale, I'll give one more. Just shout out to Spotify rapped. They do a wonderful job inventing a thing to get us more engaged. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, who we just recently, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. We're more likely, historically, an amusing comment. Jason, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?

Jason Hall: How about Church and Dwight? Ticker C-H-D. I don't know if we give some of these legacy consumer brands companies enough talk. What's Church and Dwight? You've probably heard of Arm & Hammer baking soda. But they also own a lot of other retail brands. You might be familiar with Orajel, if you've ever had a sore tooth or you have a baby that kind of thing comes up. They own Trojan, which is another brand that people might be familiar with. But here's my personal. Right now, I have a cold. I'm living and functioning off of Zicam. That's a Church and Dwight product that's really getting me through. Over the long term, it's been a great investment. Over the past 10 years, the stocks returned about 10.5% in total returns. That's underperformed the market, but it's better than the market's long term average. I think there might be something there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, a question about Church and Dwight?

Dan Boyd: Not really a question, Anand, but more of a comment. Jason, you forgot to mention OxiClean in the Church and Dwight product catalog here as a parent of a three-year-old and a nine month old laundry is a very important thing on our house, and I don't think we could survive without that OxiClean.

Jason Hall: I will raise your three-year-old and nine month old with an eight and a half year old who plays soccer. My house runs on that stuff. I'm with you there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Matt, what's on your radar?

Matt Frankel: Well, now what's on my radar is the OxiClean that I have in the closet right there. But as far as the stock, I'd have to say SoFi. Ticker symbol S-O-F-I. Fantastic momentum. They've done a great job of creating capital white revenue streams in recent years. The growth is actually accelerating. They recently announced they're bringing crypto back to their platform now that the banks are allowed to do so. That's going to be a big driver. Not only crypto, they're going a step further. They're going to start bringing blockchain facilitated money transfers across border for free. They have lots of big plans. They recently started doing private equity investing for everybody. Guys like you and me can invest in companies like SpaceX and OpenAI that are pre IPO through SoFi's platform through venture funds. There's a lot going on in this business, and it's still a relatively small bank, and they aim to be a Top 10 bank within the next decade.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, question about SoFi.

Dan Boyd: Well, absolute F to name. SoFi, just terrible. I feel like smart people like them could have come up with something better, but private equity investing is very interesting, Matt, though a little scared to me without the reporting regulations that public companies have to do.

Matt Frankel: I do think it was a natural thing, though, now that all these companies are waiting longer than ever to go public. SpaceX is a massive business. OpenAI has a, $100 billion plus valuation. There's a lot to like there and a lot of potential.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, which company you're putting on your watch list, OxiClean or private equity stuff.

Dan Boyd: I'm going to go with Church and Dwight for some of that beautiful OxiClean.

Anand Chokkavelu: That's all for this week. See you next time.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anand Chokkavelu, CFA has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, First Solar, Microsoft, Netflix, Salesforce, SoFi Technologies, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Asit Sharma has positions in Amazon, Digital Realty Trust, Microsoft, Nvidia, Salesforce, Upstart, and Walt Disney. Dan Boyd has positions in Amazon and Walt Disney. Jason Hall has positions in Brookfield Asset Management, Brookfield Infrastructure, Brookfield Renewable, Enphase Energy, First Solar, Nvidia, SoFi Technologies, Upstart, and Walt Disney and has the following options: short January 2026 $27 calls on SoFi Technologies, short January 2027 $32.50 puts on Upstart, and short January 2027 $40 puts on Enphase Energy. Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon, Brookfield Asset Management, Digital Realty Trust, SoFi Technologies, Upstart, and Walt Disney and has the following options: short December 2025 $95 calls on Upstart. Sanmeet Deo has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Brookfield Asset Management, Constellation Energy, Digital Realty Trust, Equinix, First Solar, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Salesforce, Tesla, Upstart, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group, Brookfield Renewable, Comcast, Enphase Energy, Ge Vernova, and T-Mobile US and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

These Are the 5 Hottest Stocks On Interactive Brokers

Key Points

  • Interactive Brokers is one of the largest digital brokerages, executing roughly 3.45 million trades per day.

  • The company recently released data about some of the most active stocks on its platform.

  • In today's world of investing, it is important to understand sentiment and which stocks are popular.

In today's market, while valuations are important, there are other factors impacting the movement of stocks, such as investment flows and sentiment. Part of this has to do with the rise of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), passive investing, and algorithmic trading. Understanding sentiment is important because it tells investors where flows are focused and what companies could be prone to big moves.

The large brokerage Interactive Brokers recently released data showing the 25 hottest stocks on its platform. The data is from July 8 and examines the preceding five business days. Here are the five most actively traded stocks on the platform.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Person on phone, while working at computer.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Tesla

It shouldn't surprise anyone to see Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) as the No. 1 stock on the list. The company and its outspoken CEO, Elon Musk, captivated the minds of investors as one of the first companies to make electric vehicles mainstream, and now as a company positioned to commercialize robotaxis and humanoid robots.

Musk's foray into politics this year created lots of controversy as well. With the stock trading at a meteoric valuation, Tesla became a battleground stock. Some think future initiatives like robotaxis and humanoid robots mean the sky is the limit. Others think the stock is a sell, especially with the core EV business struggling this year. While I wouldn't recommend shorting the stock because it has rarely traded on fundamentals, I remain on the sidelines due to the massive valuation.

2. Nvidia

Another obvious stock on this list is the artificial intelligence chip giant Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which is the largest publicly traded company and recently touched a $4 trillion market cap.

The market clearly thinks AI will revolutionize society as we know it. As the market opportunity gets bigger, investors are likely to keep driving up the price of Nvidia, which is the pre-eminent maker of the graphics processing units (GPUs) that train large language models (LLM).

Trading close to 38 times forward earnings, Nvidia is not that far above its five-year average. But below the surface are questions about the company's ability to maintain its monopoly and keep charging as much for chips as it has been. Nvidia also has other opportunities in autonomous driving and robotics that investors are starting to take notice of. I think investors can keep buying Nvidia but should probably take a dollar-cost averaging approach.

3. Circle

The stablecoin company and issuer of USDC, one of the largest stablecoins, has been quite popular since going public in June. Circle's (NYSE: CRCL) stock has already surged 554% from its initial public offering price of $31 per share.

Stablecoins, which are digital assets pegged to commodities or currencies, are viewed as the next major innovation in payments. Like cryptocurrencies, they have the ability to transfer money anywhere in the world, as long as the person or business has internet access. The associated fees are also lower than traditional payment methods. This makes stablecoins useful for people without access to the traditional banking system and for cross-border payments.

While stablecoins certainly have tremendous potential, Circle seems to have run too far too fast right now. USDC has a nearly $62 billion market cap, and Circle is now at about a $45 billion market cap. Furthermore, lower interest rates could decrease Circle's revenue, which is made by earning yield on the reserve currencies backing its stablecoins.

4. Palantir Technologies

The AI decision-making company Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) has appeared invincible, with its stock up 86% this year. The company's various platforms have the ability to pull in data from a variety of different sources, organize it in a central place, and derive insights using AI and machine learning. Palantir can examine potential scenarios, recommend actions, and then analyze the possible repercussions.

Palantir's platforms are easy to use for people who don't have experience working with LLMs. They can also track how certain data projects were created so they can be easily replicated or taken over by new managers. The company's products have been used by many different government departments and are resonating strongly with the business community as well.

Palantir trades at an even higher valuation than Tesla at 234 times forward earnings. I don't personally buy stocks at these kinds of valuations, but I also do see immense potential for the company. If you buy Palantir, I would once again take a dollar-cost-averaging approach.

5. Robinhood

The online brokerage Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) blasted 138% higher this year, partly due to the crypto boom caused by President Donald Trump's administration's pro-crypto policies. The friendlier regulatory approach will make it easier for Robinhood to sell more cryptocurrencies on its platform, which could draw in more users and drive more activity among the company's existing user base.

As the pioneer of commission-free trading, Robinhood has never had issues bringing users to the platform. But more recently, the company has been able to better monetize users, primarily with the company's monthly $5 Robinhood Gold memberships, which offer users margin investing, competitive yield on brokerage cash, and many trading tools. The company has a very high conversion rate for new users signing up to become Gold members.

The Robinhood Gold Credit Card offers 3% cash back on all purchases, while the company also offers up to a 3% match on annual contributions to a Robinhood individual retirement account (IRA).

All of these features have made Robinhood an attractive place for people to conduct their banking activities. The stock isn't cheap, trading at 63 times forward earnings, but I do think the company has executed well and is driving an intriguing investment story.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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:

  • Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you’d have $427,709!*
  • Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $40,087!*
  • Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $671,477!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See the 3 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Bram Berkowitz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Interactive Brokers Group, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $175 calls on Interactive Brokers Group and short January 2027 $185 calls on Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Prediction: Tesla Might Lose This $2.76 Billion Revenue Source That Is Nearly 100% Profit

Key Points

The future of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) appears very bright. Some experts believe the company's new robotaxi service could add more than $1 trillion in value by the end of 2026.

But there's one challenge few investors are paying attention to. This challenge could swiftly eliminate one of Tesla's most profitable revenue sources.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Expect Tesla to lose part of this $2.76 billion revenue source

In recent years, nearly every electric car stock has benefited from automotive regulatory credits. These credits are earned under both state and federal programs, in both the U.S. and abroad. While each program differs in specifics, these credits are generally earned when a company sells low-emissions vehicles. These companies can then sell these credits to automakers that do not sell enough low-emission vehicles. For example, Stellantis bought roughly $2.4 billion of European and U.S. regulatory credits from Tesla between 2019 and 2021.

The idea behind these credits is to encourage investment in and production of climate-friendly transportation options. That is, these credits are designed specifically to spur adoption of things like electric vehicles (EVs). Over the years, these credits have certainly helped keep EV makers like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Group financially viable. Rivian recently generated the first positive gross margins in its history, largely thanks to the sale of these credits. Besides a bit of overhead, the sale of these credits results in nearly 100% profit margins -- a huge boon for capital-intensive businesses like auto manufacturing.

Soon, federal regulatory credits in the U.S. are expected to be eliminated due to the passing of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill." According to The Verge, "The bill, which was signed by Trump over the weekend, would eliminate tax credits for EV purchases, zero out fines for automakers who exceed fuel-efficiency targets, and roll back other incentives for wind and solar power." That second point, zeroing out fines for automakers that miss fuel efficiency targets, essentially negates any value in purchasing these credits from an automaker like Tesla. In short, Tesla will very likely lose its ability to accrue and sell federal credits in the U.S. -- an immediate and sizable hit to both revenues and profits.

An EV manufacturing facility with cars parked outside.

Image source: Getty Images.

Is TSLA stock still a buy, even if regulatory credits are eliminated?

There are a few important details to stress about the elimination of federal automotive regulatory credits. First, these eliminations affect the U.S. only. While other countries may shift their own policies, they will, for now, remain intact. Second, these eliminations will only affect federal credit programs, not state programs like California's or New York's.

Critically, Tesla does not break down its regulatory credit sales by state versus federal, or even U.S. sales versus international. Therefore, it's difficult to gauge the exact effect from the elimination of federal U.S. programs. Some analysts estimate that roughly 75% of this revenue comes from U.S. sources. Within that portion, most is likely derived from California's state-level program, since that program accounts for the majority of credit value in the U.S. overall.

Last quarter, Tesla's net income plunged 71% versus a year ago to $409 million. Regulatory credits sales, meanwhile, were $595 million last quarter, exceeding a total of $3.3 billion over the last five quarters. While Tesla won't lose access to most of these credits, they are clearly critical to keeping the company profitable. Tesla is one of the only companies in the world capable of pursuing huge growth opportunities like a global robotaxi service. If profits drop by $100 million to $200 million per quarter, however, pursuing these initiatives will grow more challenging.

In short, the elimination of federal regulatory credits in the U.S. won't kill Tesla. But it will make growth more difficult moving forward -- a critical factor for long-term investors to consider.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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:

  • Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you’d have $427,709!*
  • Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $40,087!*
  • Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $671,477!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See the 3 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Stellantis. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Is Amazon Stock the Best Prime Day Deal?

In this podcast, Motley Fool host Anand Chokkavelu and contributors Jason Hall and Matt Frankel discuss:

  • The Aug.1 tariffs.
  • This year's four-day Prime Day (and whether Amazon stock is a deal).
  • Elon Musk's political party and Tesla.
  • Bold predictions.

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A full transcript is below.

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

Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this:

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

This podcast was recorded on July 08, 2025.

Anand Chokkavelu: What are you buying today? Motley Fool Money starts now. I'm Anand Chokkavelu and I'm joined by two of my favorite Fools, Matt Frankel and Jason Hall. They we're talking Amazon's Prime Day. It's more like a prime week at this point, the latest on Tesla and Elon Musk, and we'll make some bold predictions. But first, let's update ourselves on tariffs. What's going on there, Matt?

Matt Frankel: Well, the tariff news seems to be changing so quickly. We're only recording this a few hours before it's being published, and I'm worried, if I'm being honest. The president announced a whole new round of tariffs yesterday, set to begin on August 1st for 14 countries, and that includes Japan and South Korea, which are our Number 4 in six trading partners, actually. Those both got 25% tariff rates. Some of the announced rates were as high as 40%. The president also said that the August 1st date is not set in stone. He said, "It's firm, but not 100% firm." I really think this is more noise than news at this point. Remember the initial Liberation Day tariff rates with the thing that looked like the cheesecake factory menu, [laughs] and then the pause that was announced until July 9th? This might be an effective negotiation tactic to get better trade deals. To be fair, it looks like it might be. But until anything actually goes into effect and is actually finalized and signed by both parties, it's noise. But in other tariff news, there is a good possibility that we're going to see a European Union trade deal soon. Each of the countries in the union are small trading partners, but collectively, they actually would make up our number one trading partner in terms of both imports and the trade deficit we have. It's definitely worth watching.

Jason Hall: From an investing perspective, maybe the Taco trade's real and still alive? I don't know. We've got another extension, another delay here, so there is a group that are going to say it's another chicken out moment. But I don't know if that's really investable for most of us. But thinking about the broad economic impact, I do think that for our trading partners, they're in a tough position. There's the tension between continuing to delay and avoid substantial tariffs because it seems like they keep getting kicked down the curb. But also, all of their industry and government spending, they still have to plan, too. All of the uncertainty weighs in there. But if you look at the markets, it seems like the markets are just shrugging this off is what's become business as usual. Maybe it's this fall before we really find out if litigation continues to play out, and eventually this ends up at the Supreme Court, it might have been a whole lot of work for the Supreme Court to say, hey, Congress, you guys need to do something. The president can't do this. We'll see.

Anand Chokkavelu: Jason, today's Amazon's Prime Day. We all know the deal. This is Amazon's once brilliant move to juice sales during the summer doldrums, maybe pull forward some of that back to school shopping, taking a little market share. It's grown to four days long now. It's doubled from last year. Any takeaways for investors? You know what? Is Amazon's stock priced as a Prime deal at this?

Jason Hall: You're not including the early days, the pre-Prime days deals that they do for people that can't hold off and wait for the four whole days. My wife may or may not have changed my Amazon password as an Amazon shopper. I'll tell you, there are some things that I'm looking at, for sure, but there's not much of an investing takeaway from that. It has become an event. It's become a retail event. But if we start looking at the business, the e-commerce business has really bounced back. There was some much needed restructuring a couple of years ago of expenses after the massive expansion during the pandemic. But that added scale, it's really, really paying off. It's e-commerce- revenue since 2019, so clean before the pandemic is up 77%. They've added $110 billion in e-commerce sales on a trailing 12 month basis.

Here's another interesting data point. Third party services revenue, that's also up by over $100 billion. Amazon's role as a giant in fulfillment has also exploded along with its own sales. But on AWS is still the big profit driver. Generates more than half of operating income, but only off of 17% of revenue over the past four quarters. Now, the stock, is it a Prime day deal? Maybe. Trades for less than 21 times operating cash flow. If you look back over the past decade, that's cheap. Here's the problem. They put about 85% of that operating cash flow right back into the business. But they need to right now, especially building up the tech infrastructure and R&D spending, but only time is going to tell if it can start converting those investments into free cash flow.

Matt Frankel: AWS is definitely the biggest profit driver for now. You also didn't mention the advertising that they're building out. That's one of the faster growing parts of their revenue, which is technically reported under the e-commerce platform. But it's a higher margin type of revenue than it gets elsewhere. Amazon certainly is not as cheap as it was just a few months ago, but it still looks very attractively valued, considering the recent progress with both efficiency and profitability of the business and all that growth you mentioned.

Anand Chokkavelu: Well, you got to raise the price right before you do the discount. [laughs] It's just a little stock trick. Speaking of those deals, any top prime deals for your household, Jason?

Jason Hall: I have to admit I'm eyeing a robot lawnmower. But I'm not convinced just yet, but since it's not Prime Day, it's Prime Week, like you said, I got a little time to think about it.

Matt Frankel: In the past few years, we've bought the kids the new Fire tablets because they're so cheap on Prime Day. I haven't looked yet, but I'm sure my wife has and has a plan. I like it when she does the shopping, because then when a bunch of packages show up and it's like Christmas.

Anand Chokkavelu: We've got a kid who never brushes his teeth and has destroyed his previous electric toothbrush, but we still waited a week to see if there are any deals. Spoiler alert, no deals on the specific toothbrush [laughs] we wanted. We also looked at Walmart and Target who do similar Remora to the Amazon Shark sales. But we'll see. I'm sure we'll be buying a bunch of stuff.

Jason Hall: Well, Anand, do you know what you call a kid that won't brush their teeth?

Anand Chokkavelu: What?

Jason Hall: A kid.

Anand Chokkavelu: [laughs] Exactly. But this is where he's beyond the normal distribution.

Matt Frankel: I was going to say you've won, too. [laughs]

Anand Chokkavelu: Right. At least versus his brother and all of his cousins. Let's move on to the boy who may have cried wolf on focusing less on politics and more on Tesla. What's up with Elon Musk today, Matt?

Matt Frankel: Oh, I assume you're talking about the new political party that he's starting the American Party, because there's a lot that's up with Elon Musk. Between Tesla, between SpaceX, between xAI, between all the other things, there's a lot that's up with Elon Musk. He wanted to add one more thing to his plate by creating his own [laughs] political party. To be fair, he ran a poll on X, formerly Twitter, asking who would want a third party. Overwhelmingly from millions of votes and not just like his own followers, through millions of votes 80% or so said yes. One of the party's stated goals is to get Republicans out of office who voted for Trump's bill. We all saw the big public fallout between him and the president. That's really what led to this. He describes the party as a tech centric, budget conscious, pro energy, and centrist party with the goal of drawing both disaffected Democrats and Republicans. Now, this is easier said than done.

This is not the first attempt to create a third party. There are actually like four or five of them already in existence that don't have any traction. It's very difficult to gain any traction as a third party. You would essentially have to set up a political party in all 50 states because all the local rules and things like that, it's all different. You need a lot of money, which fortunately he has. How much he wants to spend on this is another issue. But he has the resources to do it if he wants to.

Jason Hall: I think the investing take, if we circle back around to Tesla and is honored as you joked there at the beginning, the boy who cried wolf, clearly, Tesla shareholders, as much as from a political perspective, I'm sure there's a lot of people, no matter your political affiliation, that are so frustrated with the environment that support the idea of this. Tesla needs to figure out how to start selling more Teslas. They need the resources from selling more Teslas to pay for so many things. The company is at a major inflection point right now. Dan Ives talked about this with where they stand with trying to start bringing robotics to commercial use in the next few years. We've seen what's going on in Austin with autonomous driving. That's such a massive future part of the business. You got to start selling more Teslas and generate the cash flow to fund these things. There's even more headwinds now with some things in the spending bill that was passed that are going to gut a pretty important part of Tesla's profitability with emissions credits. There's a lot of reasons for investors to certainly be concerned about this wherever you stand as an engaged citizen.

Anand Chokkavelu: Elon Musk is famous for his bold predictions. After this break, we'll have some of our own.

Time for a segment we call bold predictions. Jason, start us off. What's your bold prediction?

Jason Hall: I'm going to stick with the theme from the show today, Anand, and talk about Tesla. I think Tesla's stock in the near term, it's probably going to rebound. But those robotics ambitions, the autonomous driving ambitions, I think they might be about as successful as the Solar Roof has been so far, and that's to say not very. At least not within the next five years' time. Now, a couple of reasons why. Number 1, I think we've seen some very ambitious, you talked about Musk's predictions about things. They've accomplished a lot of great things, but always years and years later. I think that's going to continue to play out.

But I think the concern that I have, and this is really at the heart of the prediction is that while the stock might rebound in the near term, I think the next few years are going to be really, really tough for Tesla and probably tough for Tesla shareholders because there's so much of those future prospects that are baked into today's price. I think as the realization comes out that those things are going to take longer and longer to monetize, and they might be harder to monetize if Tesla can't start selling more Teslas instead of less Teslas, then shareholders may be really in for a tough time in the next five years or so.

Matt Frankel: I'll make a very bold prediction, and I'm going to say that the Fed is going to surprise the market and cut rates this month when they meet at the end of July. The market's only pricing in about a 10% chance of that happening right now. But based on what the Fed governors have said, other than Jerome Pell, it's more likely than that to happen. I think there's a lot of economic data between now and then, a lot of trade deals that can be settled between now and then to calm the Fed's nerves. I think it's going to happen earlier than people think.

Jason Hall: That would be positive for Tesla.

Matt Frankel: True.

Anand Chokkavelu: Here at The Motley Fool, we live on feedback and Amazon gift cards. Be part of that feedback or to ask a question. Email us at podcast at fool.com. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards. It is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes.

Anand Chokkavelu: Jason Hall, Matt Frankel, the entire Motley Fool Money team, I'm Anand Chokkavelu. My bold prediction is that we'll see you tomorrow.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anand Chokkavelu, CFA has positions in Amazon and Target. Jason Hall has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Target, Tesla, and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Better EV Stock: Lucid vs. Tesla

Key Points

  • Tesla helped to create the EV market, upending business as usual for the auto sector.

  • Lucid is attempting to follow Tesla's lead, using EVs as a wedge to break into the auto industry.

  • Lucid has a long way to go before it is anywhere near the company Tesla is today.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and its high-profile CEO Elon Musk can be polarizing. However, the automaker has achieved things that seemed impossible. It not only broke into the highly mature auto industry, it also helped to create the electric vehicle (EV) market. Could buying EV upstart Lucid (NASDAQ: LCID) set investors up for a similar success story?

Tesla: There are good things and bad here

Tesla was once a tiny upstart, attempting to build a business around a technology that was well understood but that hadn't gained any traction with consumers. To make matters worse, to achieve success, it had to compete against mature and well-entrenched auto industry giants.

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Tesla dealership with cars out front.

Image source: Tesla.

To the company's credit, it pulled it off and, along the way, basically created the electric vehicle market. Now every major automaker is offering EVs and there are numerous upstarts in the U.S. and abroad trying to ride on Musk's and Tesla's coattails. The end goal for all is to build a sustainably profitable EV business, which is where Tesla sits today.

That said, Tesla has exposure to other businesses. Selling cars is the big story, but the business also has a battery storage division, and it's working on autonomous driving technology and robots. There's a lot going on "under the hood." That's part of why Tesla's valuation seems stretched, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 182x. Investors are pricing a lot of good news into the stock. Investors who care about valuation probably won't be interested.

Lucid is trying to break into the auto industry, too

If you missed out on the huge price gains that investors in Tesla have achieved, there are other EV makers that are in an earlier stage of development. One is Lucid, which only sold around 3,100 cars in the first quarter of 2025. That's a rounding error for Tesla and the major automakers. However, that number was up around 50% year over year. Essentially, Lucid is making progress as it looks to grow.

Moreover, Lucid's high-end cars have been well received, earning industry accolades. So this isn't a fly-by-night business that's clinging to life, even though the stock has fallen more than 90% from its highs. At those highs, Wall Street was clearly overly enamored with EV upstarts. Now investors could be overly pessimistic, ignoring the incremental successes that Lucid is steadily achieving.

That said, not all investors have turned away from Lucid. In Q1, it was able to extend the maturity on a convertible note from 2026 to 2030. That's a big statement of confidence, and it gives the upstart EV maker more leeway to keep expanding and improving its business. It improved its gross margin in Q1 as it increased its volumes. To be fair, it is just losing less on every car that it sells than it did a year ago. But that's the path that a new manufacturing business has to go down, given the large up-front costs involved in starting from scratch.

Both stocks are high-risk, but Lucid's future is better defined

Lucid is still losing money and will likely continue to do so for years to come. So valuation metrics aren't meaningful for the upstart. However, the road it needs to traverse has been laid down by Tesla, so it is pretty clear what steps Lucid needs to take from here. There are very big risks involved, and risk-averse investors shouldn't buy it. But if you're looking at Tesla, you might want to consider Lucid instead.

Tesla makes great cars, but the business is clearly more mature than Lucid's. The other businesses hidden within Tesla present an opportunity, but they could flame out, too. So the huge valuation being afforded Tesla may not be worth the risk. Add in the CEO's volatile public image, and uncertainty increases materially.

Overall, if you were thinking about taking a risk on Tesla, it might be better to take a risk on Lucid. It has, for the most part, successfully achieved the key goals it has laid out as it looks to become the next Tesla.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Tesla Stock Is Falling, and Uber Stock Is Soaring

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Uber (NYSE: UBER) are heading in opposite directions as investors favor tangible success over promised technologies.

*Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of July 6, 2025. The video was published on July 8, 2025.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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:

  • Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you’d have $414,949!*
  • Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $39,868!*
  • Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $687,764!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See the 3 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has positions in Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool

Is Tesla Stock a Buy Ahead of Earnings?

Key Points

It's a great time to take a closer look at Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock. Not only are the electric-car company's shares trading substantially below the levels they started the year at, but we also have fresh information on how the company's new vehicles are selling. In addition, Tesla's second-quarter earnings report is due later this month, so it makes sense to have some context going into the important update.

Unfortunately, Elon Musk-led company's latest delivery numbers aren't looking good. But this information alone isn't enough to rule out the stock as a good potential investment at around $300 per share.

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Let's examine Tesla's latest vehicle shipments alongside other key information to determine if the stock is worth buying today.

An animated image of person reading a book while a car is driving itself in self-driving mode.

Image source: Getty Images.

Challenges persist

In Q1, Tesla initiated significant factory upgrades to help it ramp up production of a refreshed version of the Model Y. This led to a loss of several weeks of production during the period. This led to a steep 13% year-over-year drop in deliveries and a significant 32% sequential decline. Going into Q2, investors were hoping for a sequential jump -- and they got it. Second-quarter deliveries rose 14% sequentially.

Still, these results were underwhelming. On a year-over-year basis, Tesla's deliveries were down 13%. This reflects the continued challenges of selling a product that is often financed in a high-interest rate environment. In addition, there are some concerns that Tesla's brand image has suffered from CEO Elon Musk's outspoken political involvement. Finally, broader macroeconomic uncertainty may also be weighing on automotive sales as consumers exercise more caution with their discretionary purchases.

This isn't just a one-quarter problem either. Tesla's quarterly sales volumes have largely been flat since the fourth quarter of 2022. Even more, the electric-car maker's deliveries are actually down 4% on a trailing-12-month basis.

Management spoke about some of its biggest challenges in its first-quarter update earlier this year: "Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policy adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers. This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near term."

The bull case

Despite these issues, Tesla investors appear to be convinced that the company will experience a surge in sales trends at some point. This is evident by the wild premium the stock commands. Shares trade at a price-to-earnings ratio of 169 as of this writing. A valuation like this bakes in huge sales and earnings growth for years to come.

Where could this growth come from?

One key catalyst Tesla bulls often cite is the company's nascent autonomous ride-sharing network. Called Robotaxi, this service is already being trialed in Austin, Texas. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has stated that he believes the company will have millions of customer vehicles participating in the Robotaxi program by the end of next year. He believes the service will ramp quickly because it's based on technology already built into customer vehicles. Customers, therefore, will be able to deploy their vehicles into the fleet once the software update is ready and regulations permit it.

In addition, Tesla has said it believes that demand for its vehicles will inflect as it demonstrates increasingly impressive autonomous driving capabilities.

Finally, there's incremental revenue and profit that could be derived from the company's humanoid robots, which are still in development stages but will be available for businesses and consumers to purchase in the coming years.

Tesla's current situation can be best summed up by this recent quote from Elon Musk in the company's first-quarter earnings call:

So there are some challenges, and I expect that ... there'll probably be some unexpected bumps this year. [But] I remain extremely optimistic about the future of the company. The future of the company is fundamentally based on large-scale autonomous cars and ... vast numbers of autonomous humanoid robots.

Altogether, Tesla stock could be a good buy today if investors have a high level of confidence in the electric-car company's ability to execute its ambitious plans over the next decade. But considering the stock's high valuation already, this is a gamble. For this reason, I'd liken shares closer to a hold than a buy at their current price. Investors interested in getting in on this growth story might want to wait around to see if shares fall further at some point. A lower price would help take some of the significant valuation risk off the table.

Investors will likely get more insight into Tesla's progress and plans when the company reports earnings on Wednesday, July 23, after market close.

Where to invest $1,000 right now

When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,048%* — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 179% for the S&P 500.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Daniel Sparks and/or his clients have positions in Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Massive News for Tesla Stock, Lucid Stock, and Rivian Stock Investors!

New legislation in the United States would make it even less affordable to buy electric vehicles.

*Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of July 5, 2025. The video was published on July 7, 2025.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Where to invest $1,000 right now

When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,048%* — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 179% for the S&P 500.

They just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool

Could This Be the Best Reason to Buy Tesla Stock Hand Over Fist? (Hint: It's Not Robotaxis.)

Key Points

  • Several analysts believe the humanoid robotics market could be larger than the robotaxi market.

  • Tesla has ambitious plans for its Optimus humanoid robots.

  • However, the company faces several challenges to achieve significant success with Optimus.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) fans should find it easy to identify reasons to buy the stock. For one thing, its shares remain roughly 34% below the previous high. Anyone who believes in Tesla's long-term growth prospects will likely view this as a great opportunity to buy the stock at a discount.

One prominent Tesla bull, Ark Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood, thinks the autonomous ride-hailing (robotaxi) market makes the stock a fantastic investment opportunity. However, there's a good case to be made that there's an even better reason that makes Tesla a stock to buy hand over fist right now.

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Bigger than robotaxis?

Wood and her Ark Invest team believe the the robotaxi market could skyrocket to around $4 trillion by 2030. They look for Tesla to be the biggest winner in this market, thanks to the company's lower-cost technology and scalability.

However, Ark Invest is much more optimistic about the robotaxi opportunity than most analysts. Fortune Business Insights projects that the robotaxi market could be nearly $119 billion by 2030. Market researcher Research and Markets thinks the robotaxi market could expand by a compound annual growth rate of 45.2% and hit $124.9 billion by 2034.

Tesla could have an even larger opportunity. Morgan Stanley projects that the humanoid robotics market could top $5 trillion by 2050. The financial services giant thinks that the adoption of humanoid robots will accelerate in the 2030s.

Citigroup analyst Wenyan Fei pegs the number at closer to $7 trillion by 2050. He and fellow analyst Rob Garlick think that humanoid robots will be especially helpful in providing home services. They envision the robots folding laundry, mowing lawns, and caring for older adults. And Tesla could be a big player in this market. Fei named Tesla's Optimus robot as "definitely one of the leaders for the market."

Want an even more bullish estimate of the humanoid robotics market? Ark Invest believes the global opportunity could eventually be in the ballpark of $24 trillion. Unsurprisingly, Wood's team thinks that Tesla "could capture a significant share of this multi-trillion-dollar market."

A human hand fist bumping a robot hand.

Image source: Getty Images.

Tesla's Optimus ambitions

Tesla certainly has grand ambitions for Optimus. CEO Elon Musk said during the company's 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call that Optimus could eventually generate more than $10 trillion in revenue. He acknowledged that his revenue predictions "sound absolutely insane." However, Musk added that he thinks "they will prove to be accurate."

If Musk's revenue estimate for Optimus is anywhere close to realistic, humanoid robots will be more important for Tesla's future than electric vehicles or robotaxis. But a lot has to happen first.

Musk predicted in Tesla's 2025 Q1 earnings call that the company will produce 1 million Optimus units per year by 2030, and perhaps as early as 2029. Once that production goal is reached, he thinks the production cost for its humanoid robot will be under $20,000. While the list price will be higher than that, Optimus could be affordable for many families.

Tesla plans on using Optimus extensively internally, too. Musk said in the Q1 call, "We expect to have thousands of Optimus robots working in Tesla factories by the end of this year."

The best reason to buy Tesla stock hand over fist?

Is the potential for success in the humanoid robotics market the best reason to buy Tesla stock hand over fist right now? Maybe, but I think investors should be cautious.

For one thing, Tesla is running into problems with its Optimus program. Milan Kovac, the senior vice president in charge of Optimus, left unexpectedly. Production has also reportedly been delayed as the result of a design change.

I suspect Tesla will be able to resolve these issues. However, the bigger challenge for the company is competition. With a market opportunity this large, multiple companies are in the race. Morgan Stanley believes that China is in the driver's seat in developing humanoid robots.

It's also important to remember that the huge humanoid robotics market estimates are for 25 years in the future. Investors should maintain a long-term perspective, but Optimus would need to move the needle in a significant way much sooner for it to be a major factor in buying the stock now.

Still, progress in humanoid robot development is something to keep your eyes on. If Tesla can sell a flexible, multi-purpose Optimus for $30,000 or so by 2030, the company could deliver much greater growth in the next decade than many investors expect.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

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:

  • Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you’d have $413,238!*
  • Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $40,540!*
  • Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $699,558!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See the 3 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Keith Speights has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Prediction: This Company Will Be the Robotics Leader, Not Tesla

Key Points

  • While Tesla has talked a big game about its Optimus robot, Amazon just deployed its 1 millionth robot at its fulfillment centers.

  • The company's robots are using AI to help make the company's warehouse operations much more efficient.

  • Meanwhile, it's also using AI in areas like delivery and inventory management.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) gets most of the media attention when it comes to robotics, thanks to its humanoid robot prototype, Optimus, and Elon Musk's bold claims. In fact, last year Musk said that Optimus could eventually be worth more than everything else from Tesla combined.

But while Tesla talks about the future of robotics, Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) robots are already delivering the goods -- both literally and figuratively. In fact, Amazon is already the largest manufacturer and operator of mobile robotics in the world.

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So if you're looking for the real leader in artificial intelligence (AI) robotics, it's Amazon.

Robot in front of people in a conference room.

Image source: Getty Images.

1 million robots and counting

Amazon got into the robotics space in 2012 when it acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million. While a small deal at the time, it is really starting to pay dividends for Amazon. Earlier this month, the company surpassed 1 million robots operating inside its fulfillment centers. These robots now assist with about 75% of all customer orders placed through Amazon.com.

Those are some huge numbers, and they are likely only going to get bigger. The company is soon expected to have more robot workers than human ones. Amazon's robots also aren't just moving packages around. They're sorting inventory, lifting heavy loads, unloading trailers, and increasingly handling complex warehouse tasks.

AI gives Amazon an advantage

What sets Amazon apart from other robotics companies is how it's using AI to make its robots smarter to improve efficiency. Its Lab126 team is working on a new generation of warehouse robots that can follow voice commands, adjust to problems in real time, and even fix themselves when something breaks.

Amazon also just introduced an AI model called DeepFleet to manage and coordinate its entire robot fleet. The goal is to move packages faster and at lower cost by making better decisions about what robots should do and when.

These robots also go well beyond moving boxes. They can find specific parts, reroute if an aisle is blocked, and unload trucks without needing everything pre-programmed. Some can even spot damaged items before they're shipped, which should reduce returns and improve customer satisfaction.

Robots also don't take breaks or call in sick, which means they can keep working around the clock. Over time, this should lead to faster shipping, lower labor costs, and stronger operating margins in Amazon's core e-commerce business.

AI in delivery, inventory, and beyond

Robots are just part of Amazon's AI efficiency story. Amazon's new Wellspring system uses AI to map out hard-to-reach delivery locations, such as large apartment complexes and office parks. The data can also be integrated into smart glasses for real-time navigation. This all helps improve delivery times, letting drivers complete more routes per shift.

The company is also using AI to fine-tune its inventory and delivery network. Through its SCOT (Supply Chain Optimization Technology) system, Amazon is now able to forecast demand for specific products by taking into account things like regional preferences, weather, and price sensitivity. Ultimately, this keeps inventory closer to customers, helping reduce shipping costs.

These improvements are already translating into better operating performance. Last quarter, Amazon's North America segment grew operating income by 16% on just 8% revenue growth. That's great operating efficiency.

Is Amazon stock a buy?

Of course, robotics is only one part of the Amazon story. Its cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is its largest business by profitability, and its fastest growing. Customers continue to turn to Amazon's cloud infrastructure to build, train, and scale their own AI models and apps. Meanwhile, Amazon has developed its own custom AI chips, which help give it a cost advantage.

It also has a fast-growing sponsored ads business that is seeing strong growth. When investors think of digital advertising platforms, they generally think of Alphabet's Google search engine or Meta Platforms' social media apps, but Amazon is actually the third-largest platform in the world. Meanwhile, the company is using AI to help third-party merchants both improve listings as well as better target potential customers.

While the stock has rebounded off its lows this year, the company still trades at a reasonable valuation, with a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of around 36 times this year's analyst estimates. That's still below its historical average.

Between its strong cloud computing growth, leading e-commerce operations, and the lead it has in automation and robotics, Amazon stock looks like a solid long-term buy.

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

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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 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, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Robotaxis: Fad or Future?

Robotaxis are getting a lot of hype, but are they going to be big business? In this video, we dig into a potential trillion-dollar market and the winners that could emerge.

*Stock prices used were end-of-day prices of June 24, 2025. The video was published on July 2, 2025.

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The TSLY ETF Is an Income Monster

Key Points

  • The TSLY ETF is a YieldMax product that uses options strategies to generate income from Tesla stock.

  • As of the latest information, the ETF yields more than 100%.

  • There’s a lot more to consider than just the yield before you decide to invest.

Many ETFs have come onto the market recently that use various options strategies to boost income. For example, some ETFs use covered call strategies to produce yields of 10% or more for investors from relatively low-paying portfolios of stocks.

YieldMax ETFs take this idea to the next level, using aggressive strategies to, as the name suggests, maximize yield. It's not uncommon for YieldMax ETFs to have dividend yields of 30%, 40%, or much higher in some cases.

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One extreme example is the YieldMax Tesla Option Income Strategy ETF (NYSEMKT: TSLY), which uses call option strategies on Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock to produce a high level of monthly income. In fact, based on the past 12 months of dividends, the ETF has a dividend yield of about 127%.

Of course, if something sounds too good to be true, that's usually the case. If there was an ETF that produced a sustainable three-digit yield and was likely to do so for the foreseeable future, we'd all be scrambling to buy shares. But in this case, there are quite a few caveats and important things to know before you consider investing.

Electric car charging.

Image source: Getty Images.

How the TSLY ETF works

It might surprise you to learn that the majority of the YieldMax Tesla Option Income Strategy ETF's assets are in U.S. Treasuries. It uses these as collateral to buy and sell options on the stock, which are typically near the current share price. For example, the largest non-Treasury position in the portfolio is July 2025 call options with a $340 strike price. Some of the positions are long, some are short (meaning the ETF sold options), and there are some put options in the portfolio as well.

The general goal with the options positions is to create the highest stream of income relative to the risk level as possible.

Risk factors to consider

There are two big risk factors to consider. First, and less significant, is the inconsistency of the monthly dividend payments you'll get. Over the past 12 months, the distributions from this ETF have been as high as $1.29 or as low as $0.40.

The bigger issue is that the stock price itself has a downward bias over time. In short, if the price of Tesla stock goes up, the ETF's options strategies severely limit the upside potential. On the other hand, if the stock falls, it can result in large losses. In fact, since the YieldMax Tesla Option Income Strategy ETF was formed in late 2022, Tesla stock has risen by 92%. Shares of this ETF have fallen by 78%, and there's even been a reverse split along the way.

Of course, even with a modestly declining share price, an ETF like this can still be a winner. In other words, if the ETF declines by say, 30%, but pays a 100%-plus yield, it's still a great investment. But that hasn't been the case. In fact, including dividends, this ETF has generated a 26% total return for investors since its 2022 inception. That's 52 percentage points worse than if you had simply bought Tesla stock and held on to it.

Is the TSLY ETF right for you?

In a nutshell, YieldMax ETFs produce the best total returns compared with simply buying the underlying stock in times when the stock is mostly flat for an extended period, without any massive price swings. And if you look at virtually any chart of Tesla's historic stock performance, you'll see that doesn't really describe its typical price action.

The bottom line is that if you think Tesla stock is going to be stuck in a narrow price range for a while, the YieldMax Tesla Option Income Strategy ETF could be a good way to play it. Just be aware that this and other YieldMax ETFs aren't magical income instruments and are more likely than not to produce underperforming total returns over time.

Should you invest $1,000 in Tidal Trust II - YieldMax Tsla Option Income Strategy ETF right now?

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Matt Frankel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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