Tariffs News & Markets in Chaos

17:31Travis Hoium:Is this why we're seeing a lot of these companies? One of the things I've noticed, especially with OpenAI, but we've seen some partnerships between companies like Zillow and Google, even the AI companies, which you would think are kind of going it alone and saying, hey, we're going to disrupt everybody. We're going to take over the world are suddenly going, okay, you know what? We also need to have partners. I think John's point sort of makes sense that in theory, you could maybe change everything. We don't need this app infrastructure that we've spent the last 15 or 20 years building, but to get from here to there is maybe going to be a little bit bigger lift than any one company can, and also disrupting the status quo that so many of us are so used to.

18:18Lou Whiteman:We should note, there's a separate land grab going on among the AI companies. And yeah, again, in the current market, if you are going from no companies and maybe a commoditized model, or I mean, no customers to trying to have customers, then yeah, trying to partner works. I just think that beyond all this, the middleman, and John's probably right, There's a role for these companies in the back end. I don't know if that's as lucrative as investors might want to say, if you just become the plumbing. I doubt if AI and autonomous evolve the way the optimists hope it will. I doubt there's the same need to use Uber to find a ride or for DoorDash to find food.

18:59Lou Whiteman:So I just think that, you know, and again, this is might be ultra long term thinking, but I do think that it's things pendulums are real and things that seem like, wow, this this momentum will never end is normally those statements and age poorly. And I think in this case that if if the technology develops the way we hope, I do wonder about the long term future for these guys.

19:22Travis Hoium:For now, it appears that DoorDash continues to be in a really good position with momentum. but we'll see if Lou is right here. The disruption is on the way. When we come back, we are going to see what technology disruptions are real and which ones are not real. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

19:36Jon Quast:Sitting in the morning sun. I'll be sitting when the evening comes. Watching the ships roll in. Then I'll watch them roll away again.

19:53Lou Whiteman:Meet Range, AI-powered, all-in-one wealth management designed for high earners. If you make over$250 ,000, join thousands of members getting expert guidance on their investments, taxes, estate planning, equity management, real estate strategy, and more with Range. Book your free demo at Range.com.

20:14Travis Hoium:Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. We like to have a little bit of fun in this section, and I wanted to get Lou and John's thoughts on what sort of technology disruptions are real and what are not real. So there's a lot of talk about artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, peptides, and more. So let's start with humanoid robots. John, these have been the talk of the market, especially companies like Tesla. NVIDIA has gotten into that in a really big way over the past couple of years. But the fun thing that I didn't know until this morning is you can actually buy a Unitree G1 humanoid robot for$18 ,000 on Amazon today.

20:52Travis Hoium:Are we closer to this humanoid future than a lot of us think?

20:55Jon Quast:Well, Travis, let me tell you, if the$18 ,000 is a little bit inaccessible for you, you can just do buy now, pay later. Split that into three payments of$6 ,000. Oh, great. Right there is one of the options. Um, joking aside, listen, I think that there is something here in robotics. It's been a couple of years since Tesla marched that guy out in the optimist costume. Right. And I thought that was the biggest joke. Boston dynamics was a company that had been working in this extensively for many years. And finally he got into the place of dancing robots, but still it was struggling to create something that was truly practical for the masses.

21:35Jon Quast:Then Tesla does this move and lo and behold, what it's actually produced so far in the Optimus program, I think is actually pretty impressive given the time it's been doing this. You look at all these other companies such as Unitree, it's kind of created this sprint, this arms race amongst the robotics companies to really get a practical mass market household robot out there. I think there is something there. The competition is pushing the technology. I see these more in warehouses before apartments, personally, but we'll see.

22:09Lou Whiteman:I'm really glad. I think John should buy one of those. Maybe use buy now, pay later. I'm really glad that these are coming and the optimists, apparently, they're going to be building them in Fremont before the end of the year. I'm a big we'll see here. I get the potential, but look, most technology looks better in demos than it does in real life. It seems to me this is likely to be that on steroids. If you were let down by Siri after watching the Apple commercials, I can only imagine how you're going to feel when your dancing robot won't dance for you. So, let's get it out there. This is early generation technology.

22:51Lou Whiteman:My bet here is that we're going to find these underwhelming when they're actually out here. That's not to say there's not great potential and version 2, 3, 4, 5 could do a lot better. I am still going to take the over. And John, as far as warehouses, I think you're 100 % right. But the thing is, there's already a ton of robots there. And for the most part, the human form is, if anything, a hindrance in a factory setting or there are better forms to take. I don't know if robots that look like us are really the answer the way we think they are. Maybe for cleaning up after your pet, but not in the warehouse, not assembling automobiles and things like that.

23:32Lou Whiteman:So we'll see. We're definitely making progress here, but I don't know if a dancing robot is coming to my household.

23:38Travis Hoium:Okay, Lou, I think I'm kind of falling on the side that there's something real here from a humanoid robot standpoint. You know, we're seeing these robots now do, you know, Kung Fu or whatever karate stuff it was. It's really amazing what they're doing. But the other thing that you mentioned is there's no real sales yet, at least in a significant amount. And there's already a ton of competition. So this would be a little bit like going back to, you know, let's say 2012 when Tesla was coming out with something like the, you know, the Model S. and instead of only being one electric vehicle where they could take all the market, they could have high profitability, now you've got dozens of competitors.

24:20Travis Hoium:That, from an investment standpoint, seems like a challenge. And maybe this should be a wait and see thing if this is part of your investment thesis. Is that fair or is this one of those, hey, it's so evergreen that everybody's going to be able to win?

24:35Lou Whiteman:No, I don't think everyone's going to be willing. For one thing, I would be very surprised, even if someone has cracked this code already, that if everybody has cracked this code. So I do think it's, look, if you own these companies anyway and you want the upside, sure, that's great. If you're buying now on the idea that I think one of the CEOs said is projected, hey, if we sell a billion units at$30 ,000 apiece, that's a lot of money. I would take the under on that. Kung Fu, Travis, yeah, they're really good at Kung Fu. all of the times in your household that you're like doing Kung Fu and you're like, man, I wish a robot could do this for me.

25:12Lou Whiteman:See, there's your practical application right there.

25:14Travis Hoium:You haven't seen my kids playing. It looks a little bit like Kung Fu. They'd probably love to be hanging out with one of these robots. All right, John, let's, uh, let's talk a little bit about autonomous driving a whole bunch of players here. You have Google with Waymo. I wanted to bring Lucid into this. We don't talk about a lot about Lucid, but they have a partnership with Neuro. There are only three companies in the state of California who are actually licensed to commercially operate. Neuro is one of them. So that puts a company like Lucid in an interesting position. You have Mobileye, more of a horizontal business model with partnerships with Volkswagen and another unnamed US manufacturer.

25:51Travis Hoium:Is this a real technology that we're going to be using in the future? And I'll get to the investment angle in just a second. But how real is this, let's say in the next five years.

26:02Jon Quast:There's something so interesting about all of this, as far as human psychology, that I think is really going to limit how quickly this becomes a thing that is the cars are driving everybody everywhere. The thing is that autonomous vehicles still do make mistakes. And yes, maybe the argument is they make way fewer mistakes than a human driver. But I think that the human psychology issue is we like to hold someone accountable when something goes wrong. And I can hold a human driver accountable, but who do I hold accountable when the autonomous vehicle makes a mistake? And I think that is one of the things that is just from a psychology perspective, limiting widespread adoption is going to keep it from being a thing as quickly as many people think it's going to be a thing.

26:49Yeah.

26:50Lou Whiteman:I mean, look, it's already a thing. I mean, I'm in Atlanta. I see Waymo. Although Waymo had a bad week. I don't know what happened, but I was out earlier in the week. Saw three different Waymos being driven by humans. So I don't know what was going on there. But look, it's here. I think Waymo has surprised me at how quickly they're expanding. So maybe it's more here than we know. I don't think the steering wheel is going away from most of us for a long time. I still think edge cases are very, very scary. but um look and and i don't think just look to some extent maybe on dancing robots if one company can figure out maybe everyone can figure out something i don't think it works that way here i don't think just because waymo's doing it that means everybody's will work as well because there is still so much into this but it's you think that there's going to be a platform that they

27:41Travis Hoium:can use like a i use neuro and lucid as an example so if neuro's technology is applicable to any vehicle, you just got to stick the right sensors on it. Is that not potentially a way that this could become more accessible for more automakers?

27:55Lou Whiteman:Over time, yes. And again, I do wonder about commoditization and if everybody gets good at this. That's going to take time. It's both here and it's going to be limited for now, I think is the takeaway.

28:07Travis Hoium:So from an investment perspective, I'll start with you, Lou. Is this something that we should be watching, watching from the sidelines, trying to figure out who is going to be the ultimate winner? Is it really the Ubers, Lyfts, and DoorDashes of the world there who are the ultimate winners? How are you thinking about this from an investment perspective?

28:25Lou Whiteman:I think for now, I don't think there's any company where I want to buy it because of their autonomous driving, period. But I do think that it is real enough that it can be part of an investment thesis and it can be like definitely the potential upside there again this is not universal it's not enough to say we are into autonomous okay you have to actually demonstrate it or like you say at least for now the aggregators who can take advantage of those who can do it um look waymo is still a very very small part of uber's business in atlanta so i do think even like on an Uber, which does seem to be a natural beneficiary.

29:07Lou Whiteman:I think that it's likely to be an overblown part of an investment thesis, but it's definitely there as potential upside. I just don't think it's core to any company right now.

29:18Jon Quast:I couldn't agree more, Lou. That's what I'm getting at here as far as, yes, it is here, but I think that it's not going to be everything is autonomous as quickly as some people think.

29:29Travis Hoium:All right, let's go to an interesting one. I called it the moon economy. We were talking about going to Mars a few years ago. Apparently we've changed that, Lou, from SpaceX is talking about going to the moon as opposed to going to Mars. Mars is really hard. Mars is really hard. The moon is hard, but easier. Is there going to be some sort of economy there? Is there going to be an investment payoff? You know, this has always been kind of a exploration. There's outputs, you know, from NASA going to Mars or go, sorry, going to the moon decades ago, but it wasn't a business that they were in. So is there really a business there?

30:08Lou Whiteman:Look, there are fringe businesses there. I think the projections are overstated. And I mean, again, I'm not the first to say this, but there are a lot more mineral resources. There's a lot more potential for cooling AI data centers and all that by just sticking it deep in the ocean. Our seabeds have a lot of the same characteristics. We can't figure that out. Again, it's high pressure versus low pressure, but there are easier ways to do this that we've given up on because, wow, that's cost prohibitive and hard. I think that at least that backdrop should be a filter for all of this moon talk. Yes, we need to get back to the moon.

30:53Lou Whiteman:Yes, we should explore what we can do there. Is the moon going to be covered with data centers and mining operations in my lifetime? I doubt it. I think we might as well actually figure out how to mine in Antarctica and Greenland and in the bottom of the ocean if those are easier problems to solve that we haven't been able to do cost effectively. So yeah, the moon sounds neat, but we'll see.

31:17Jon Quast:Yeah, I agree with Lou 100%. I'm not sure how self-sustaining the space economy is. It's very reliant on government spending, which is good right now because NASA is a priority for the current administration, but political priorities can change quickly. And so that is something to keep in mind. But what a fun time for the astronaut kid and all of us, isn't it? I mean, Artemis 2 is on schedule for launch next month. They did their wet dress rehearsal today, so they tested the fuel systems. It sounds like that went good. This mission is going to take astronauts around the far side of the moon, and it's going to be the furthest that we've had people away from Earth.

31:57Jon Quast:So that's really, really cool. SpaceX's pivot, they're prepping for an IPO later this year, potentially. their pivot from Mars to the moon does make sense because to lose point, Mars is extremely hard. It's going to be very hard to show its shareholders, hey, we're actually making progress towards something. Whereas the moon, it's going to be able to put something up there a lot quicker than it can put something on the red planet. And so it makes sense why they made the switch.

32:27Travis Hoium:Yeah. Interesting little side story. When my first year of engineering school in 2000, And we did a project for NASA where we were trying to figure out how to mine stuff on the moon. And it was cool that they actually go to these colleges because the 18-year-old kids don't know what's not possible. So we'll see if any of that stuff, you know, we're now 26 years later. But if any of the things that we were talking about back then ever come to reality. Let's talk a little bit about peptides. This is one of the things I'm trying to learn a lot more about. but john glp ones are actually a peptide we don't really talk about that so they are already a huge huge business we know that eli lily is testing retatrutide which is so effective that people are dropping out of the trial because they have lost so much weight is peptides a real big thing in the future a disruption if you will of medicine or is this a lot of hocus pocus

33:26Jon Quast:Well, I 100 % believe the hype in this domain, Travis, and I'm not an expert by any means, but I do want to compare this peptide conversation to something that's related in my mind, and that is protein folding. And so apparently proteins can fold in different ways. And when we have medical issues, they can be addressed by how proteins fold. And in the past, basically the scientists have been trying to figure out how proteins fold manually and they're really smart and they're working very hard but then something out there from google and i'd encourage listeners to check it out it's called alpha fold alpha fold uses ai to find new ways new protein structures and it's finding in hours what would have taken a researcher manually months to discover.

34:24Jon Quast:And so I think that as AI pushes forward this medical discovery, in this case, protein structures, how they fold, this can lead to medical breakthroughs that just simply weren't possible before we had artificial intelligence really figuring some of this stuff out. So I think that this does trickle down to real life applications. I would say this applies to peptides as well.

34:47Lou Whiteman:Yeah, I think that's right. The question is, as an investor, what do do with it though, because for one, these things take forever to play out. And again, I even think about with the GLP ones, there are examples of medicines that have really been revolutionary and huge markets. For the most part, they did not lead to sustained oversized profits. Look at statins. Statins are a miracle. There are people alive today because of statins that wouldn't have been alive 50 years ago. It's also been generic and and competed down to the point where it's not real. I mean, Pfizer is not a quadrillion-dollar company because of Libertor.

35:25Lou Whiteman:So, I do think between the time it takes, the complications, and then the fact that if something's really revolutionary, it will be copied and it will be just competed to death, it's really hard for investors. There's going to be home runs. It's great for humanity, but as an investment thesis, it's really hard.

35:44Travis Hoium:Fair enough. If it's good for humanity, maybe it's good for all of us, even if we're not going to necessarily find easy ways to make money off of it. When we come back, we're going to get to stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

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36:36Lou Whiteman:your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels?

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36:54Travis Hoium:As always, people on the program may have interests 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 The Motley Fool's editorial standards and 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. We like to end the show with our radar segment. We're going to bring in Dan Boyd from Behind the Glass for his thoughts. John, you're up first.

37:23Travis Hoium:what's on your radar this week?

37:24Jon Quast:Well, on my radar this week is Wingstop, ticker symbol W-I-N-G. This is a chicken wing restaurant chain, although it does sell more than just chicken wings. It has over 3 ,000 global locations. It opened nearly 500 in 2025 alone. There are some restaurant chains that don't even have 500 locations. That's what it opened up just this past year. What I like about this company is that it takes most of its orders through the app, and they're mostly takeout and delivery. So, it really means that Wingstop has a lot of operating leverage in the model itself. It can scale very good. In 2025, it installed smart kitchens to help it scale more efficiently as well.

38:01Jon Quast:Here's the bad news. Wingstop just reported the first drop in same-store sales in 20 years. Stock is down about 40 % from the all-time high. But the good news is, it's still incredibly strong, shooting for 10 ,000 locations long-term. It has a dividend that's growing fast, trading at its cheapest valuation almost ever at 40 times earnings. So I think there's a lot to like here. Dan, what do you think about takeout chicken wings? Yeah, there's a wing stop down the street from me, and I've never been. Sounds like you have an assignment today.

38:33Travis Hoium:It's called research, Dan. This is your job for the weekend. Lou, what's on your radar this week?

38:40Lou Whiteman:All right, Dan, since the beginning, eBay has basically been about turning trash into treasure. Or more politely, taking something that someone else can't use, doesn't want to use, whatever, and putting it in the hands of someone who can use it or wants to use it. With that in mind, I see great logic in eBay announcing it will buy Gen Z clothing marketplace Depop from Etsy for$1.2 billion. This is, in some ways, Etsy's trash. It was something that Etsy didn't use effectively. But eBay, just like all of its Pez customers, I think eBay can find value here. Deal makes sense to both the buyer and the seller.

39:18Lou Whiteman:For Etsy, they tried to diversify, but it never took off. For eBay, this is their core business. They are adding a brand that kids see as cool. Depop is really small, only 7 million or so active buyers. eBay should be able to apply its tech, its infrastructure, and its know-how to grow the business while using this brand that kids like. And by the way, Dan, eBay's earnings came in pretty good too. This is kind of an unappreciated forgotten company, but a really solid business. And I like this move for them.

39:46Travis Hoium:Dan, can Depop make eBay cool again? Well, I don't, I listen, don't ask me to arbitrate what is cool and what is not, because I can't do that whatsoever. That comes from Lou. But I do actually use eBay quite a bit. And it's not just the random crap that people are trying to get rid of. You can actually find a lot of premium products at a discount on eBay. It's a very good marketplace. All right, Dan, which stock is going on your radar? I got to go with what I know, and I'm going to go with eBay. For Lou Whiteman, John Quast, and Dan Boyd behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoyam. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money.

40:20Travis Hoium:We'll see you here tomorrow.

40:28We'll see you next time.