Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Behind Wall Street’s Scorching Quarter

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Q2 2026 was the best year on Wall Street since 2020 and AI led the way. But the gains weren’t evenly distributed and we discuss what’s sustainable and what’s not in the market. Plus, we discuss Meta becoming a neocloud and look back on the U.S. stocks that defined the past four decades. Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Jason Moser discuss: - Record Q2 Performance - How AI Ruled the Day - Meta the Neocloud? - What Happened to Compute Constraint? - History of U.S. Stocks - Stocks on Our Radar Companies discussed: Meta Platforms (META), Netflix (NFLX), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Walmart (WMT), Home Depot (HD), Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco (CSCO), Dell (DELL), GE (GE), Columbia Banking (COLB), Axon (AXON). Host: Travis Hoium Guests: Lou Whiteman, Jason Moser Engineer: Dan Boyd Disclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement. We’re committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wall Street just had its best quarter since 2020. Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoyum, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Jason Moser. And guys, this was a surprise to me when the quarter ended, technically yesterday. But Lou, this was the best quarter that we've had in six years, since 2020. So what are your thoughts? What are the highlights here? All right. So first of all, I got to be that guy. You know, I'm that guy. We need to mention that the lows for the year were on March 30th, which you might realize if you're good at calendars is a day before the beginning of this quarter. So we timing worked out pretty well for us.

And it just so happened that the first day of the third quarter was not great either. So, yeah. Right, exactly. So there is a little asterisk here. But look, yeah, this is impressive. Amazing, even. We got pretty lucky on the starting point. But don't argue with the gains.

Even with that, we're up 9% for the year in the S&P, 12% for the NASDAQ. Hey, guys, I'm old fashioned, but I would take that for a full year every year. So this is still good. You know, a lot of this, we can get into the details what it was. But AI is still working. People are still the the optimists still outweigh the pessimists here. And we are may it long continue. Yeah, Jason, it does seem like there's certain segments of the market that are hotter than others. And AI is really the story, although not necessarily the same companies that were hot in 2024 and 2025. No, it's been a little bit different here. And we saw for the chips and AI infrastructure really are what are driving the bus here.

Right. If you look at the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index that was on track for its best quarterly gain on record, I think it was a close to 90 percent in the quarter. And then the single quarter, the index was up almost 90 percent. That's right. That's just wild. It is wild. And if you look at the iShares Semiconductor with the ticker, there's S-O-X-X, that's up 100 percent this year, year to date. And most of those gains came in quarter in the second quarter as well. So clearly a lot of interest in the chip makers and in the AI infrastructure providers. And yeah, I think Lou's right. It seems like that's poised to continue.

I know we kind of keep hearing that drumbeat of when is it going to end? I just don't think it's going to happen yet. The enthusiasm is still out there. And these hyperscalers are poised to continue investing big time capital expenditures. I think the question we had was with these huge numbers that they're investing in 2026, I think all total, you're talking about like somewhere around like $800 billion, something like that. Is that going to continue into 2027? And signs right now, based on what leadership at these companies are saying, signs all point to yes. Yeah, I just want to remind people that when no one thinks it's a bubble, that's when it's actually a bubble.

So that is. Yeah, the drumbeat is bullish, right? The drumbeat is bullish. And the other thing is, if we go back to 2000 and the telecom build out, which would be probably the most similar to now, the market started to go down when that AI spend or when the telecom spending flatlined. It didn't actually decline. It just flatlined for 20 years. So just a little bit of context there. Lou, the other thing I wanted to bring in here is some of the big names that are up. We've heard about Micron, a new trillion-dollar company, but Intel up 243% so far this year. You have semiconductor companies like Lamb Research up 124%. Applied Materials is up 146%. SanDisk, I used to have some SanDisk products.

Maybe I should have spent a little bit of money on SanDisk stock, up 741%. the the numbers and the concentration of the gains are what really seems striking to me if you just look at you can look up heat maps uh for the s&p 500 for the nasdaq 100 and you see those companies up huge and yet meta is down 10 tesla is down microsoft is down 20 so what here is actually sustainable that's a great question i will say though as far as the overall market i like the leadership change if it's only the same companies a handful of companies going up indefinitely. That seems less sustainable than the market continues to rise on the strength of others. I don't think these chip stocks, that's sustainable. I don't think that they are going

to continue to power us higher. If anything, I think I would look back to some of the, like the, the hyperscalers to mag seven. We are only a couple of weeks away from another earnings report and we'll see, but I am guessing all of these CEOs will have their pom poms out and it'll be a really, really, they will be bullish on AI, even if the drum beats are kind of skeptical. I don't think we're at a point of the cycle yet where they're going to say, yeah, guys, we were wrong here. So I, you know, I think if anything, we're poised for maybe the chips, you did your part, go hide in the corner again, and maybe other areas go again. But again, sort of the diversity of the gains. And one thing I noticed the second quarter is a lot of my non-AI stocks finally

showed some life. I actually feel, I get the macro headwinds, I get the Main Street worries, but this market, I can't believe I'm saying this, but the market feels pretty sustainable for the rest of the year. That worries me when you say that, Lou. It worries me too, trust me. No, Jason, the other thing that I think is so striking in a moment like this is when stocks go up that quickly, it is inherent that the multiples are rising. So whether you're looking at a price to sales multiple or price to earnings multiple, price to free cash flow, those multiples have to be going up when a stock goes up 100% in three months. The business doesn't typically change that quickly. Micron and Sandisk may be a little bit of an outlier there, but the business

isn't fundamentally 300% better than it was three months ago. So how should we be thinking about that as investors, as these multiples have gone up, those expectations have gone up, and now the price, the typical price earnings multiple, you know, price to sales multiple is maybe not something we used, you know, 30 or 40 years ago, but those are getting pretty high. Yeah. And I think that's, that's very fair. You know, I start looking at conditions like these with a little bit more trepidation, not to say that I'm not investing. I'm actually always investing if nothing else, I'm just putting money in, in, you know, my, my ETF in my retirement plan. But when it comes to individual stocks, you see that P go way up and the E just isn't

quite following it in those multiples. It's because that's all based on future expectations, right? A lot of these leaders are painting a picture of really, really high demand going on for some time to come. But, you know, like Lou was saying there in regard to the chip companies, at some point that demand is going to be filled. Then what? Right. And so I think it's it's difficult to try to time something like that, of course. And I think honestly, when I look at the chip space, I think if you're an investor today and you want exposure to the chip space rather than trying to pick the winner, I really would look at something like, you know, the iShares Semiconductor Index. It's an ETF we recommended in our trend service. Wonderful

performer. It gives you instant diversification and plenty of exposure to that one particular space. And it helps take some of that risk off the table. But there's no question there is just a very bright future baked into a lot of these valuations today. You know, it's funny, Jamo, you know this, but for full members, we have a live stream that we that we're on talking and every night you get to question what the best investment is right now. And my my go to answer has been the S&P 500. Like you use all of that market concentration that we worry about to your advantage. If AI is real, it works for you. One thing on the P.E. that I keep thinking of, and yeah, we look at the high P.E. ratio and we focus on the P part. The price has to come down to

resolve this. There's two ways to resolve this. And it could be that the E goes up. Little things that I don't think we give enough credit for, like say what you will about the big, beautiful bill last year or whatever, but the changes in that law to depreciation and different tax things those are real and those ripple through and resonate they have really been kind of a stealth contributor to earnings and i think that as that ripples in there's a real chance e goes up on things like that even if demand doesn't continue to go up like i say i i i can't believe i'm saying this because we're this far into a rally and i get the bubble talk but i think we can continue you to do this. Choose your spots wisely. Big tech, financials, the aerospace industry. I still

see a lot to like out there. There are some really good values out there as I, you know, kind of hunt for bargains in the market. There are areas that are not, you know, trading for 10, 20 times sales. All right. I want to end on this. What are you looking at for the second half of this year after we've had this record quarter and what are you expecting? Jason, I want you to go first. If you go back to the beginning of the year, I don't think any of us would have really kind of predicted where we would be right now. And I'm thinking if we could have predicted it, Apple wouldn't be charging so much for memory because it would have locked it up six months ago. Yeah. I mean, the explosion, the explosion in the chip space. Right. The resolution of tariffs and now seeing companies getting refunds.

I mean, Nike just just pulled in a billion dollar refund on that whole mess. I don't think any of us would have predicted we've been going into Iran. And then furthermore, I don't think many of us would have predicted the market would react in the way it is after we went into Iran and really still haven't resolved that. But but here we are. And I think what has gotten lost a little bit is just sort of the condition of the consumer and sort of the Wall Street versus Main Street. Right. And I know the administration pegs market performance as a real benchmark of success for for them. And so that's great. Right. The market's on fire. Investors are feeling great. You know, 58 percent of Americans are invested in the stock market, but that means 42 percent aren't. Right. And I guarantee you that 42 percent does not care what the market is doing.

Right. Because they're not invested. They're not paying attention. And of that 58 percent who are invested, well, a lot of us are focused on our finances and trying to make sure we can make ends meet. And some people are having a real tough time doing that now with inflation still not in check. Instead of talking about rate cuts like we were talking about at the beginning of the year, now we're talking about actually boosting interest rates. So I'm going to be very fascinated to see how Mr. Warsh deals with that going forward, because it seems like that would elicit a pretty strong market reaction. But I reckon we'll see. Yeah, everything JMO said. But here's the thing.

Main Street is not Wall Street. We know that at some point there will be a collision. I am, again, much more bullish on Wall Street than I am Main Street right now. All we need is a critical mass of consumers who can spend and continue to spend. And we get to gloss over a lot of landmines, at least in the near term. We're at 9% already through the first half. We can have a pretty meandering second half and still end up beating the market average. I think we are up from here, maybe not as good as the first half, but I think there

is more net positive than negative to come. So I think we're green in the second half. When we come back, we're going to talk about the latest news from Meta Platforms. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Meta is reportedly preparing to offer compute to third parties, just like a neocloud. Lou, this wasn't supposed to be the plan. Originally, the plan was that Meta was going to build these great AI models.

It has lots of use cases internally, but some other AI products, I think we can, I think we could say have been kind of a dud. So now they're saying, you know what? We got a little extra compute. we're happy to sell it to anybody the market's reaction was really positive yesterday stock was up about 10 i'm not sure exactly where it closed but here's the other thing is this is not the only company doing this spacex recently said you know what we got a bunch of extra compute so we talked about the great market in the second quarter a lot of that is driven by this ai trade the fact

that we're under supplied of compute that's going to mean exponential demand for a various number of companies, it also means that these, you know, hyperscalers, neoclouds just can't get enough compute. But then we find out that some of the biggest buyers of compute have too much compute. What is going on here? Yeah, so it'd be fun to do like the Zuckerberg picture. Life comes at you fast, right? It does feel like one of those moments. Yeah, I don't think Meta's AI has gone the way they looked on the PowerPoint two years ago when they were talking about this. But look, it's arguably bullish that they are able to spread the risk. And look, a credit to a management team that could say, all right, plan A isn't working. So let's go to plan B. If they get an ROI on this

investment, doesn't really matter. So I'd be credit to them for that if they can, like you say, if they can, because there is a lot of capacity here. Here's my attempt to square the circle because I really, I share your concerns. But look, we focus on these hyperscalers with the frontier models. If you talk to anyone in the corporate world, the real excitement isn't so much about the frontier models.

It's about all of these like kind of commoditized models and all the neat little things you can do on it. We're moving to a world where there's dozens of models that need capacity, that need compute to do boring, mundane chores. I don't know what the difference of this is. It just seems like it's AWS on steroids from a few years. We got new names.

We got new terms for this. But there is just talking to people. There is just this sense that we are going to need a ton of, quote unquote, boring compute to do the boring tasks. And so maybe there is demand for all of this. Yeah, Jason, Lou brings up an interesting word, which is boring. And when you think about the AI compute business long term, and I think about what that's going to be in five or 10 years, to me, I always think about it more like a utility, right? Like a boring business that people aren't excited about, you know, what's going on with Excel, Energies, earnings reports.

But they are right now about what's going on with, you know, companies like Micron. And so is this sort of a sign that we are moving towards a world where these super high margins for not only the hyperscalers, but also the AI companies themselves, we're going to start to see a little bit more of that, that constraint come off. And maybe, maybe the the E part that we talked about earlier, isn't going to stay quite as high as it is long term, because these margins for a lot of these companies are way out of historical norms. Yeah, I think in regard to the in regard to the compute business, I mean, I think you're right. You could kind of look at Meta's AI offerings to date while they use it internally. And yet they've been, you know, embedded it into their their apps. I mean, that's fine. That's that's to be expected. That's just the evolution of their their social media apps. But it's I think it's safe to say that that they are not witnessing the same success that your anthropics and your open AIs and your alphabets are.

And so this makes sense. Maybe I understand why they probably have a little excess compute because things haven't really gone like like like Lou said, according to plan A. So I do I do think it's a good thing that they're doing this. It makes perfect sense. And I commend them for being able to pivot a little bit on that. It's worth noting that this is a lower margin business. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's going to be something that could impact that margin line to an extent. I mean, depending on how much of the revenue mix it ultimately makes up. But again, I think you have to commend them for what they're doing in being able to sort of pivot and still make something out of this AI investment because it is clearly not stopping anytime soon. And if this can become a meaningful part of the business, well, then good for them. Lou, one of the big reactions from the market was to the neoclouds.

So the core weaves of the world, IRIN is another one that I believe is down 17% as we started recording today. But these were the companies that sort of entered this business first with the help of NVIDIA getting a lot of their funding. And the question that I have now is, look, they have massive plans to build huge data centers, but they also don't have the funding to do that. And so this is predicated on those high stock prices, relatively low interest rates if they're going to take out debt. when you see these stock prices fall, is that sort of a canary in the coal mine for some of these companies that, you know, are going to be coming to the market looking for money pretty soon? It could be. I mean, look, I think the day-to-day trading is reactions to headlines. So I don't want to read too much into that. Again, the thing, the scary thing as an investor

is I don't think any of us, maybe there's a couple of PhDs somewhere in computer science, but nobody really knows what the long-term compute demand is. We don't know how efficient these models get over time. We don't, you know, so there's just, capacity is unknowable. So it is also unknowable whether or not there's enough business for all of these companies, right? So you are sort of taking a leap of faith getting in here. My answer is too hard, to be honest, on these neoclouds for that reason. But look, there is a massive opportunity and massive downside risk. And the more and more players coming in, the more scary that gets. We'll be back in a moment with more on the market. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems

Investing. Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. It is the 4th of July weekend, 250th anniversary of the United States of America. So I thought it would be interesting to look back on at least the past few decades of investing in what I think has been unquestionably the most successful stock market in the world, at least over the past century. And what we've learned over that period of time, what are the big winners? What are the companies that really exemplify what's going on in a decade? So I want to ask you guys, which one is your, I'm going to give you three stocks. Which stock do you think exemplifies the decade of investing? We're going to start with the 2010s. We're not through the 2020s yet. So we're not going to,

we're not going to litigate that quite yet. But looking back on the 2010s, I was looking at Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon. Jason, which one of those stocks do you think performed best is my first question? Oh, I think probably Netflix would have performed best. Here's the wild stat. Netflix was up 4,135% in the decade. That is 10 times more than Facebook. Yes, Facebook went public during the 2010s, but Facebook was only up 437%, Amazon up 1280%. So when you think about those three companies, which one really is the one you're going to look back and go, man, this is the one that really exemplifies what happened in the 2010s. Yeah, I think, I mean, you can look at this from two different perspectives, right? I mean, if you're looking at it from pure returns

perspective, well, then Netflix wins hands down. But I think I'm looking at this from beyond just returns it's like what business was most consequential yeah and and and really changed the game and netflix to me would be a very close second but i'm gonna go with amazon and i think the main reason why amazon really did learn quickly how to change consumer behavior all of a sudden it became the norm to enter your credit card online and order something online and have it shipped to your house. And then, I mean, you introduced the Prime membership and that just changed the game completely, right? I mean, that's memberships, right? Retail memberships weren't anything new. I mean, I think Costco has been around forever. But they really, I think, took

advantage of that opportunity and built out something special with the Prime membership to where now most people just let it renew because there's just tremendous value in it. But I think ultimately what Amazon has done through their core retail model is they've given us as consumers a new way to sort of value our time. Right. I mean, before you'd have to get in the car, drive somewhere, go pick something up. And now you're like, OK, well, I can have it shipped to me. And if I have to wait a day, that's fine. I'm not even looking for the lowest price. I just want the convenience. Right. And so that's that's to me. I think I think they had the greater impact on changing consumer behavior. Lou, the other thing I want to bring into this is that Netflix

built on top of AWS, at least at least for the early days. So that is the tie between those two companies. So, yeah, so this is a great list of three companies, because if you think about it, these three are kind of the standard bearers for three of, as Jamo said, the biggest just trends that we're talking about today, right? Streaming, e-commerce, omnicommerce, and the rise of social media. I do think the word consequential, Amazon probably wins, but I don't want to be boring, so I'll take another one. The way I look at this is, look, Netflix actually is third here because all Netflix did was disrupt its own industry or disrupt entertainment. Amazon clearly is the winner because they disrupted everybody's industry, you know, in a lot of ways,

But retail, like, you know, they trickle through Facebook, social media, maybe not for the good, feels like somewhere in the middle where their impact has been much more than their industry. You can read a million self-help books on Amazon now about what social media is doing to our kids, to us, to the brain, to everything. That's the bad. But think about all the businesses that are built on top of Facebook. Shopify doesn't exist without Facebook. Right, right. Well, I was about to go there. I go on the other side, too. So consequential. I think you can make a case. Like I say, I still think I'd vote for Amazon. I think JMO is right. But I think you could make a case that the maybe the most or at least the second most consequential is the rise of social media. And that is Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. All right, let's go to the 2000s. So 2000, then you think about the dot-com crash all the way through the great financial crisis. What a decade to be an investor. The market didn't go anywhere for a lot of that decade. Three companies, though, I think really kind of identify what happened in the market. Apple, Google, which actually went public in 2004, so sort of a similar situation to Facebook, and Walmart. I wanted to bring Walmart into the equation here. Jason, my question for you is, how much do you think Apple was up during the decade that both the iPod became popular? They introduced iTunes on Windows devices and they introduced the iPhone. How much was their stock up for the decade?

Yeah, I actually remember reading something about I think it was like 700 percent or close to 700 percent. You are good at this. Six hundred fifty three percent. OK, OK. And we should do one of these. I'm not surprised. Some of you guys know these incredibly well. I just I was surprised that it wasn't more than that. We just talked about Netflix being up 41x in the 2010s. It does feel like it could have been more than that. But still, that's nothing to sneeze at.

We are so spoiled. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah. All right, Lou, I want to start with you. Which one of those three companies, Apple, Google, Walmart, exemplifies what happened in the decade? So I'm going to get nasty letters for this, but consequential. Look, the iPhone is great.

I know you all love it. But look, there was Palm out there. There were other choices. apple i apple to me is the least consequence or i don't know because walmart to me would be it would win the 80s uh so to me it's clearly google i remember the internet before google and i remember just what a walled garden it was and how it was so hard to find things all within aol and yeah google even before your chatbot and assistants and stuff google just kind of may just was the answer to every question. It is what brought all of this vast information,

all of this data to you in a way you could use it. And that simple, simpleness to it, whether it's Google Maps, whether it is everything they did as they brought it out, they are why we changed our behavior and moved everything online to me. So they are clearly the most consequential. Apple just really refined a wonderful product and made it better. But yeah, for me, it's Alphabet. Jason? Yeah, I totally actually agree here. I think if you're looking from a returns perspective, obviously Apple is the winner, but it's close enough. And to me, yeah, Apple has done a wonderful job of developing slick hardware that people love, the app store economy. There are a lot of things that they've done, obviously, very, very well.

So it's certainly not to look down on them at all. But I love telling my kids to this day about how I had to use, you know, big, fat encyclopedias to get work done for school, right? You're just sitting there. Research for investing. You had to go to the library. I remember Rick Maniara is talking about, you know, the first articles that he was writing for The Motley Fool. he would go to the library to get the information that he needed. I mean, I mean, I needed that even in college and college email was just getting started for me. Like, so, I mean, I didn't have internet in college. Like I know I'm dating myself there, but whatever. So I think to me, like, I, I just, I think that what Google now alphabet has done in, in regard to our ability

to access information has just been nothing short of phenomenal. I mean, it has been world changing. And then to be able to sort of parlay that model into building out these other tools, like Lou was saying, Google Maps, I mean, the Android operating system that they have and now their mobile presence. I just think it's hands down Google. Yeah, the interesting thing about this list to Walmart, I think just such a power player in that decade, but the stock was down 20%.

Was it? So that wasn't even part of the dot-com bust, but the higher multiples, when you got higher multiples coming out of the 1990s, you don't necessarily live up to those expectations. That's when stocks climb. That was their digestion period. Yeah.

They had already destroyed the Ma and Pa shop, to use the rhetoric, and yeah. All right, let's go to the 1990s. the numbers researching this are absolutely wild uh microsoft up 9 371 cisco up 69 230 percent and the winner and this is this is i will i will admit that claude helped me with this because they went private and then came public again but any guesses on dell's return for the decade i mean Dell was just on fire. Well, I mean, you said the winner, so it's got to be more than Cisco.

I don't know. 80,000 percent. Eighty nine thousand percent return. Almost a 100 bagger during the decade. Dude, you're getting a Dell. Yeah, that and Gateway commercials. Yes, that was. So, Jason, when you think about those three companies, which one is emblematic of the decade?

Well, nothing to take away from not taking anything away from Dell or Cisco, both very relevant businesses during their time. I think they were also victims of some really unbridled enthusiasm. I think consequential business to me, Microsoft stands out because I think this is when really, you know, Windows and Office just became the standard for consumers and enterprises globally. You know, we talked about Alphabet, Google revolutionizing the way we access information. And I think Microsoft really revolutionized the way that we were able to work for most people. And I mean, they still have obviously a very strong presence today. And I think, yeah, I mean, it became the most valuable company on Earth at some point. Right. I mean, that was like a $600 billion market cap in late 1999. So they have that to hang their hat on as well. And you fast forward to today, and I think Satya Nadella has been just a really, really good fit for taking this company into the future.

Yeah. I mean, we take so much for granted now. But it was April 6, 1992, that Windows 3.1 was released. And, guys, I had computers before then. DOS was just so tough to work with. My Commodore 64 that I brought to college was such a pain to work with. Yes, they stole some of the stuff. They stole the mouse from Xerox, but so much that we take for granted now came with that. And it's the worst performer in part because I think it was around before. But Dell is a chicken or the egg story. How many Dells would have sold if not for

the windows revolution cisco they were in the right place right time made the right product i kind of i'm dismissive of them because i think if they didn't someone else would have but again consequential is the word here windows changed everything windows the the heyday for that or or the low lights look windows was pretty crummy back then but that early 90s microsoft explosion allowed all of us dumb non-computer people to use computers and just again so much of what we're doing right now today we take for granted because of the early 90s Microsoft. It is wild we talk a lot about the bubble bursting but the returns if you were in early on some of those companies were absolutely tremendous and so doesn't mean that you know well a lot of people got in later this is

always the challenge with investing and i think you know one of the things that we've seen over the past few years is a lot of these consequential companies are just staying private longer they're not in public markets like like they once were all right i want to i want to just give some numbers here for the 1980s because this is you don't remember the companies that were so identifiable in the 80s and they're they're just not what they once were but the three that i had on my list were ge home depot and circuit city you guys remember circuit city oh yeah service with state-of-the-art so circuit city was up 9 300 but the winner in all of these decades that we have talked about home depot stock up 127 000 in the 1980s 1980s was very different this was not

a tech centric business this was you know building out physical stores having that physical infrastructure so i just thought that was fascinating that it was so things changed so much when computers and the internet came along yeah and it's a common trend with circuit city and home depot was and i joked about this with walmart was again just kind of the this was consequential was this was the end of main street i think is how you know the the doomsday would say But just the ability to build big boxes and kind of for the first time, bring those to mid-sized communities and give. I mean, the good news was pricing got a lot better. And so a lot of things became more affordable, just kind of the economy scale.

But both of those companies are emblematic of a period where you did see a lot of just changing on Main Street and for the good and the bad, I guess. When we look back on these companies, and I tried to pick out some of the biggest winners and also some of the companies that were just so identifiable with the decade. One of the things that I took away from this list is that the iconic companies of the decades aren't really hidden at the beginning of the decade. They're not as risky as they seem. They're just staring you in the face. We knew that Netflix was a huge player in streaming by 2010, beginning of 2010. Apple was on fire at the end of the 1990s. They came out with the iPhone during the 2010s.

You know, all of these companies, Microsoft was a giant in PCs. So sometimes to have huge winners, you don't necessarily need to buy these companies that are unprofitable, that, you know, you're trying to pick something that's so hidden. It's just right there out in the open. Isn't there someone around here that always talks about let your winners win? That is a well-known saying in the Motley Fool community. Yeah. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk about the stocks that are on our radar this week.

You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. 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, 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 stocks on our radar. Bring in Dan Boyd with his thoughts. Jason, you're up first. What are you looking at? Sure. So this is a company that a lot of listeners will be familiar with. It's Axon Enterprise, ticker is A-X-O-N. This is, like I said, a company a lot of people know about already, but it's had quite the

week here. We saw the headline on Monday that President Trump had purchased around $5 million in shares before ICE announced that it was seeking a $220 million taser deal. So you think of that what you will. But the bottom line is the stock has had a banner week. I mean, really, really good week. So investors, I'm sure, are feeling OK about it. But it's worth noting the company is performing, right? The most recent quarter revenue was up 34 percent.

AI product revenue up a whopping 700 percent. The AI airplane bookings showed strong performance up 140 percent. And it appears that they're really demonstrating actual ROI on their AI investments from a year ago. And I think another encouraging sign, international growth revenue there was up over 100 percent. And that is going to become a bigger part of the business going forward, which is encouraging as well. So just a lot to like here and just an interesting week for the company. Dan, what do you think about investing alongside the president in Axon? Yeah, Jason, does a good week mean it's going to be a good month?

And does that mean it's going to be a good year? And does that mean it's going to be a good five years? Based on this business model and its market presence, I'm looking for a good decade, Dan. Wow. And it has been quite the decade for Axon. This is one of my biggest holdings, been holding it for over a decade. So let's hear winners ride, as we have said. I guess we all own this one. I am for 32% a week indefinitely, right?

All right, Lou, what are you looking at this week? All right, Dan, mine is much, much below 32% up this week, but I'm looking at Columbia Banking System, ticker COLB. Look, financials is one part of the market where I just see a ton of opportunity right now. And Columbia keeps coming up when I do screens. They are the parent of Columbia Bank, which has quietly grown to be the fifth largest bank in the Northwest. 350 branches spread across eight states. The market has sort of shied away from this one after they did a series of deals to build the company. But I'd note that for all the fear around these deals, they've beaten estimates for four quarters in a row. Maybe analysts are just kind

of underestimating this one. If and when real estate recovers and mortgage activity heats up, Columbia is really well positioned to shine. You can buy today at basically the same price you would have paid in 2015, basically at book value and enjoy a dividend of about 4.5% while you wait for the market to rediscover this one. That looks really attractive to me. Dan, what do you think about bargain hunting and banking? Well, listen, gang, I don't know a dang thing about banking, but what I do know is that Astoria, Oregon, where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean, is a very beautiful place. And if you get the chance, you ought to go visit. Amen.

That whole coast, right? Which one is going on your watch list, Dan? Let's go Axon. I mean, 32% in a week. Ain't so shabby. Business that just keeps compounding. Again, let your winners ride. Thanks for listening, everybody.

For Jason, Lou, and Dan behind the glass, I'm Travis William. We'll see you here tomorrow.