Motley Fool Money - A $2 Trillion IPO & the Space Economy

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Oil has soared to $110 per barrel, but hasn’t hit the economy yet. We discuss why and than get to the hottest IPO ever, SpaceX, and what the future of the space economy might look like. Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Dan Caplinger discuss: - Oil markets - SpaceX’s $2 trillion IPO - Our mini-portfolio - Stocks on our radar Companies discussed: TransDigm (TDG), Truist Financial (TFC), Rocket Lab (RKLB), QXO (QXO), Nelnet (NNI), Booking (BKNG), Moderna (MRNA), Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), Microsoft (MSFT), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B), Alphabet (GOOG), Uber (UBER), Intuit (INTU), Workday (WDAY), Disney (DIS), Nike (NKE), McCormick (MKC) York Space Systems (YSS). Host: Travis Hoium Guests: Lou Whiteman, Dan Caplinger 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

Oil continues to climb, but is there any relief insight? Motley Full Money starts now. Why they call it? Global headquarters. This is Motley Full Money. I'm Travis Hoyam, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Dan Kaplanar. And guys, we're going to get to space. Space isn't going to be a big topic here today.

But we do want to start with the oil markets. This is kind of the thing that everybody in the market is thinking about, if not talking about. And Dan, I wanted to get your thoughts on what's going on because oil is not your typical market. It's a physical product. It's traded years out in the futures contracts. We have this straight-of-hor moves. It is more or less closed. 20% of the oil in the world goes through that straight.

What are we seeing in oil markets? Because it seems like prices are up. We're at about $110 per barrel for both West Texas Intermediate and also Brent crude right now. But it seems like people in the oil industry continue to be worried that things are going to get much worse, but they're not yet. So what's the real story here? Well, it's interesting because there are so many different perspectives to look at this from the perspective of the American consumer. Things look pretty bad. I mean, gas prices where I live were around $2.80 a gallon in December.

They're up about $1 per gallon, up around $3.80. I think that regardless of what the actual level is, that dollar increase is pretty consistent across the country. And it's interesting because a lot of folks have suggested that the U.S. is insulated from the impact of this because we don't necessarily depend directly on Persian Gulf oil. But when you look at some of the other countries that do depend more on Persian Gulf oil, they have not even seen the percentage price increases we have. Korea was up about 15%.

Japan's up in the 15 to 20% area. We're up closer to 30 to 35%. So it's kind of interesting how the macroeconomics are playing out here. The other thing, and this threatens to get a little bit wonky about futures markets and things like that. No, let's get won't. This is what I want to explain because you can spend your whole life just studying what the futures markets are.

There was an entire class that I took in grad school doing the formulas of how you price things like oil. And it's fascinating. It's a big reason that things are not higher than they are than they currently are. Yeah. So oil futures are in an unusual situation right now, just for those who aren't familiar with this. You can buy oil at a specific price at a specific point in time in the future. And the prices will be different depending on when you want it. If you want it at a high demand time, the price is going to be higher.

If you wanted at a lower demand time, the price is going to be lower. Right now, we have this huge disparity. Front month, the current month, if you want oil right now, $110 a barrel. If you are willing to wait until the end of 2026, much lower, $40 a barrel lower, still $70. Oil futures a year and a half out, they're only up. $10 a barrel. Prices of the front month are up like $50 a barrel. So what this is telling folks, this is a situation. It's called backwardation in the futures markets. What this is telling people is that at least the financial folks trading these futures don't think that oil supply

is going to be a problem for very long. They think that something's going to happen, supply is going to get restored, and prices are going to go back at least pretty close to where they were before all of this started, which is a little bit surprising because we've got some folks saying things like, well, the infrastructure is all messed up, and it's going to take a long time for everything to get back to normal. And so there's kind of a disconnect between what these futures markets are saying and what you're hearing, a lot of experts talking about as far as like the physical production and movement of oil across the global market. I mean, just to underline that, the oil futures market does a lot of things. It reflects

a lot of things. It reflects investor psychology. It affects some form of speculation, but also immediate financial hedging is a big mover of markets here. It does not reflect the underlying physical supply or demand for oil at any given time. So it's a tough thing to do right now, you know, to kind of look at it. I think we need to focus on supply and what is actually in the refineries and not on the price, but that's a lot harder to look at. So that's why we look at price. Well, that seems to be the other piece is the difference between, we talked to think last week

about crack spreads, which is the difference between the price of the refined products, so gasoline, and the price of oil itself. And that seems to be one of the challenges today is, hey, we can provide you gasoline, but we don't necessarily know, depending on where you are in the world, if we're going to have oil to actually refine in the future. And so there is this kind of delay, too. The other thing is, you know, the Strait of Hormuz, it's a couple of days to get to India. It's two weeks to get to the U.S.

So there is this time lag difference, too, Dan, that just seems to be kind of complicating things. But you're right. The market is typically smarter than any individual person, and the market is telling us that this is not going to be a big deal. So is it something we should just kind of look past in these kind of wonky pieces in the old market? are just going to kind of figure themselves out? I think it's too early to conclude that because you often will see these markets get, see major disruptions. They'll see major moves in one direction or another. They're very responsive to current events. You'll see $5, $10 barrel moves in a single day based on, okay, there was

an attack, there was damage to a major facility, or there was progress in negotiations, there was some sort of deal. Starting to get European countries involved with that. And, you know, oil is fungible. It kind of doesn't matter. Iran could say, we're never going to send oil to the U.S. again. But if it just continues to provide, if it opens markets back up, if it starts selling oil to European countries, to Asia-Pacific countries back at their normal regular volumes, then the global markets are fine. It's just a matter of allocating what's in the global market between the U.S. and other providers. So that, I think, to me, it's too early to conclude that the futures market is right and all of the technical experts are wrong. Because like Lou said, there's some financial wrangling going on with the futures markets. It doesn't always reflect what's actually happening in the physical world, what's happening at the individual oil well level, at the pipeline level, at the tanker level.

You've got to look at all of that. Lou, the other piece that I'm ultimately more concerned about than specifically what's going to happen with oil is what happens to the economy. And one of the data points that we got before we started recording is that the jobs market is actually doing pretty well. Jobs were up. Unemployment was down slightly. I think everything was better than expected in that report by and large. So it doesn't seem like this incremental step up in prices. And this is only, we're only a month or so into this. So maybe we wouldn't see some of that data yet.

But is an economic impact something that we should at least be thinking about investors as investors? Because the market is at or near correction territory with the NASDAQ. So the market's starting to pull back a little bit if oil stays elevated. And this backwardation that, you know, Dan is talking about doesn't stick. And we start to go to $140, $150 a barrel. It seems like that would impact the economy. But that's not actually what we're seeing. Yeah.

So let's take a step back because I think it helps answer this question about this whole, because we talk about a lot that the U.S. is a net exporter and what, you know, Dan's talking about, like how much, how insulated are we? We are a net exporter, but that can kind of be deceiving because that is refined products too. We export a lot of petroleum. We still import crude. So we are actually still very dependent on the world for crude. We're not energy independent. Fortunately, less than 10% of that comes through to golf. So, you know, Again, the Saudi oil doesn't really mean. What's going to straighten our news isn't too important for us.

That's a global story. But we still do need this idea that, well, since we have energy, we can just stop exports and shut it down and let the rest of the world have a problem. That really doesn't work. So where does this leave us with the economy? Should we be watching it? Yes, absolutely. Does it lead to a recession?

I mean, I hate to answer this way, but the answer is maybe. It's definitely a headwin. We definitely have headwinds already. Seems like the U.S. consumer is doing okay in aggregate. We've talked about that. You know, like the consumer, that's a tough thing to read. Jobs number is strong. If I had to guess, I do think there's enough headwinds that we will end up in at least a mild recession in 2026. As all of this ripples in, as remember, we still have the tariffs rippling in. There's just so much going on. I don't know if I'm worried about a tariff. recession and I don't you know it's not a given it's never a given yeah I'm worried if nothing else it's funny though because we've been saying this for so long we have so many of these factors that have been like oh well the consumer's got to give up now consumer sentiment is terrible right now nobody's certain about what's going on and yet the economy just keeps plugging along and so I agree with you 100% Lou but I have agreed in the past with that sentiment and that sentiment has just been 100% wrong, right? In the past, in the recent past.

Yeah, this is why I think, you know, as foolish investors, we talk about the long term. What sort of investments are going to do well over the next 5, 10, 20 years because it's so hard to predict what's going to happen over the next six months, particularly with the economy. The other thing to throw into this is the dollar is getting stronger. So, you know, I don't know how that will complicate things from an economic perspective, but lots to think about as, you know, this conflict continues. And oil price is going to be something we're probably going to be talking about for quite a while here on the show.

When we come back, we're going to talk about the space economy, a potential $2 trillion IPO. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. This episode is brought to you by Tell us Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms.

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Let me play among the stars. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Space is hot and so is Space X. They have apparently. officially filed for a confidential public listing. It doesn't really sound like it's that confidential if everybody knows that it happens. But they're looking at potentially, Lou, a $2 trillion valuation. That's a huge number. Can you help me make sense of this? Well, see, I can't because the part that's confidential is all of the numbers, which is what we'd like to talk about. But look, let's talk about

what's going on here because there's a lot of market dynamics going on here. Nothing illegal, Nothing unfounded, but this is just how it works. SpaceX, as we all know, has a huge number of shares outstanding. All of its investors, employees, all of that, but they don't sell all of those shares in an IPO. They don't need to come up with $2 trillion. And I think that's so important because we're talking about, oh, can the market support a $2 trillion IPO? They only need to come up with $80 billion or whatever they end up pricing, just that small sliver they're going to sell. Given how hot space is, and given investor interest in Elon Musk, I don't think it's a surprise that they can raise 80 or 100 billion. And that's a lot more reasonable sounding than the 2 trillion

number. There's a lot of other levers here. I know Dan loves to talk about the index. So we can get into that. But look, this is a very, very big company with a very large share count. All they need to do is sell this small amount. And gosh, there's interest. So, yeah, I mean, 2 trillion, 3 trillion? Who knows what they can get to if they squeeze enough? Eventually that matters, though, doesn't it? Because eventually the lockup period, you talked about all the investors. Those investors, this is what you would call an exit. And that means that they get to take their money out. And even if there's a three-month or a six-month lock-up period, you would think that eventually the number of shares being sold in the public

market, the float is going to increase pretty dramatically. Absolutely. The better question is, can they sustain that valuation? Not the valuation they can get on the first day. Can they look? I mean, I feel like we're redebating Tesla. As people have been saying for years, we can't sustain that. I don't, you know, I think I'd probably take the under on whether or not it's still over $2 trillion, you know, if it goes out of $2 trillion in six months. But I don't think it's going to fall dramatically. I think there is a lot of excitement, a lot of interest here. There is definitely market support for this IPO. It's a big numbers, it matters and stuff, but we're almost talking semantics, whether or not, you know,

like on what level can it support? There is interest here, and that's what you need to do an IPO. Travis, I want to point out one thing about the exit that you talked about. It's true that the most obvious exit is just selling the shares outright. But recently, we've had more and more investor, more and more employees, high-level employees with big stockholdings. They never sell shares. Instead, they'll go to a broker. They'll make an arrangement. They will Pledge shares is collateral. They will have a loan facility that lets them draw money out of it. The shares never get sold. It is at that point in everyone's best interest, the shareholder, the bank, the lending bank to keep the share price as high as possible. And so those shares never

actually trade hands. Elon Musk has done that to great success over the course of his career. I suspect that his best employees have seen that and are willing to emulate it. And so I will be curious, to what extent the investors that have gotten in on SpaceX pre-IPO decide to fully exit versus using one of these alternative strategies. The other thing a lot of these investors can do is just distribute the shares so that they can take their management fees for being a hedge fund or whatever sort of fund you're investing with. Lou, I wanted to ask you about the space economy, because this is ultimately what we're buying, if we're going to be buying the SpaceX IPO, and just so people are aware, I believe the date now

is they're looking at June as a potential IPO date. So sometime between now and June, we will get the full S-1. That's where you get the information about the financials, how many shares are going to be sold, all of those kind of details. We'll, I'm sure, cover those on the show when they come out. But what is interesting about the space economy? me because that's really what we're buying. I'm still a little bit confused of exactly what that's going to look like five or 10 years from now. Travis, Space is the final frontier.

It's a chance to boldly, oh, sorry. No, okay. There are estimates all over the place here. The most famous one is Morgan Stanley saying a trillion dollars in space revenue by 2040. That's like the North Star. SpaceX, we don't know exactly, but it's maybe 16 billion today. So they're not going to have half of that trillion, even if it comes. but there is at least a there there for growth.

How's it going to grow? I mean, in theory, there are a lot of things you can do in space. I'm going to take the under on the databases in space, at least for the foreseeable future. A lot of the exotic things, but there are a lot of ways that companies can benefit from the data you can get from space, the incremental positives. The government, militaries are increasingly interested there.

There's a lot of revenue potential there. Just like every other market excitement, there are winners and losers here. Not everyone is going to make it. Valuations are all over the place, but they're mostly high. It's the Wild West, it's early days, just like all of these markets go. But there is a real path towards revenue growth on both the global government and commercial side. And that is what SpaceX, as a leader here, and given credit, they are a leader here. That's what they're leaning into with the IPO.

Dan, the other piece of this is you have a social media and AI business attached to SpaceX. That seems like, you know, it's like the new version of a conglomerate. Yeah, and kind of the negative version of a conglomerate. I mean, space stocks are hot, but boy, social media is kind of taking it on the chin lately. And so putting X Twitter in with SpaceX seems like the negative side of putting things together in a conglomerate. at the same time, you also have XAI, which, you know, I think that there's probably some investors who would have preferred that the AI side be a pure play and be divorced from the space stuff because they share lose confusion about, okay, well, what is the space economy? What is

SpaceX really focused on? If you mix those two in, well, it's kind of like, well, AI is not just a space data center play. AI is much more than that. And so the combination here, I'm not sure what Musk gets out of it. It seems to complicate things, but like Lou said, we have to wait for the paperwork before we actually know what this thing is going to look like for investors. I'll just say, I'm kind of pro just one ticker to invest in Elon Musk's vision. If anything, that's an argument. Just merge with Tesla too, but I kid. We're not going to do that. Elon Musk doesn't need my advice. Not yet. Yeah, every banker is already on this deal. But Elon, I might say, you know, we talked at the beginning.

They're only selling a small number of shares to get a massive valuation. That's impressive on paper. Given the X-A-I need, maybe, though, get a lower valuation, sell more shares and actually fill the cash coffers? I don't know. Just an idea. I know it wouldn't be as cool as $2 trillion, but maybe they're making the wrong move here, Travis. When we come back, we're going to talk about the stocks we like in the market right now. You're listening to Motley Full Money.

Ground control to Major Tongue. When Johann Raul received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later. Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside. But what it actually was, was a warning, delivered to the Hessian colonel, letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces. The next day, when Rawl lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pockets. As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox,

I feel like there's a lesson there. Oh well, this is the Constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at Constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. In this segment, we like to have a little bit of fun,

and so I thought today we could all draft a little mini-port portfolio. So we've got a lot of concerns what's going on with the market dropping a little bit in 2026. We talked about oil and the economy. There's always opportunities in the market. So where are we seeing those opportunities? We're going to each pick five stocks. I'm even going to play along this week. Lou, you are up first. Who's the first stock you're putting in your little five-stock portfolio? So I'm going to play the hits here. I'm going to play my hits. And I'm going to start out with one of my oldest investments. And I think it's just a great opportunity today.

Franstein, T-DG, this aerospace parts manufacturer that somehow over time has managed 45% plus gross margins and continuously. They do it in a neat way. This is a stock. This is only up 2,360% in the last two decades, Travis. So not bad. That's not bad. They are right now trading near a 52-week low. They are sort of not exposed to the right part of the cycle right now, which has kind of been holding them back. But this has always been a private equity firm masked as an operating company. They're very good at dealmaking. They have $10 billion in M&A firepower at the disposal. Now, it's a reasonable valuation. I just hold this company as long as I can, and now looks like a good time to add. Dan?

First up for me, booking holdings, ticker BKNG. This is the online travel agency that It has the namesake booking. It has price line. It's got kayak. It's got a whole bunch of different properties underlying there. And it has been slaughtered under attack lately because people are worried that artificial intelligence is going to get good enough that you're just going to ask your favorite chatbot to set you up with a trip with the hotel and the airfare and, you know, rental car, whatever else you need. And it's going to take care of everything for you. That, they say, is going to hurt booking, but I'm skeptical. I think that AI users are going to end up appreciating the customized AIs that these legacy companies have put together, booking, working hard,

to make sure that its AI capabilities are up to snuff. And I think that with proprietary data, they will be able to do a better job than all-purpose models will be able to do. booking also about to do a stock split. Its shares have been over $4,000 a share, and that's going to change. I think that, you know, stock splits don't add any value, but they do attract investor attention, and that is why I am suggesting that as the first stock I'm talking about today. The forward-priced earnings multiple for booking is 15. I don't remember ever seeing it that low. Yeah, yeah. I haven't looked at them in a while, but I like that. The growth has slowed, but not to the extent that you would expect a sub-20 forward PDE for sure.

Yeah. I'm going to kind of stick with the theme of AI is not going to disrupt the way that people actually use technology. Alphabet, look, this is an AI play in a lot of different ways. It's also a play on when my wife uses AI, she's just using the Google search bar. That's the way that most people are going to use artificial intelligence in the future. I don't think that we're going to be wearing some sort of AI pin or anything like that. It's going to look a lot like it looked in the past. Guess what?

The winners are going to keep winning. Alphabet is going to be the biggest of those. The KappaX numbers are insane right now, and I think they will eventually come down. But guess what? If they come down, you get more cash flow from Alphabet. So I love where they're sitting. YouTube is undervalued. I think Waymo is probably hiding a ton of value in there.

So this is the easy button in AI alphabet, my first pick. Lou, you're up. All right, so I'm contractually obligated to have at least one Brad Jacobs company, right? Because, you know, I've got to do my stick. The one I chose is QXO, the newest one. Jacobs, for those who don't know yet, I'd say, serial entrepreneur behind United Rentals, United Waste, XPO, two of the three biggest winners in the Fortune 500 over the last decade. QXO is a roll-up of building product distribution.

products, they just did their second acquisition, Kodiak and distributor of construction supplies, lumber, windows. If I'm honest, it's fairly valued for what it is today. It's a $13 billion or so company, but their plan is to get to $50 billion in sales in a year to come. Tons of risk, very much an M&A story, but no one is better at M&A. I like this as a growth story. Dan? Up number two for me, Moderna, Ticker M-R-N-A. Everybody wrote this stock off. This is one stock. This is like the one time that I have been successful in averaging down. I was a big loser on a small portion that I bought above $200

a share. It ended up getting down below or almost to $20 a share at one point. Obviously, the company famous for its COVID-19 vaccine, but I saw the COVID-19 vaccine not as a long-term producer in itself, but as a proof of concept for the MRNA technology. which the company would then apply to other diseases, other treatments. I think that that plan is kind of on track, really. And investors are starting to see it. That stock price has gone up from 20 to, it was recently up to about 50 or so. I think there's more upside ahead. And the stock and the company have been kind of unexpectedly resilient in the face of a hostile environment from the federal government at this point for the core COVID stuff,

just kind of proves that I think the company is making big strides towards diversifying its portfolio and kind of proving the value of its technology in being able to treat a wider variety of diseases and health conditions. Yeah, while the stock is still in a 90% drawdown from its peak during COVID, but it has almost doubled in just the past, I guess, four months or so. So, a wild run here for over the last few years for Moderna. I am going to go with another easy button stock that is Uber. Look, self-driving vehicles, particularly Tesla, we're supposed to destroy businesses like Uber. I think we're seeing now with all of the announcements

that they have, all of the companies that are putting fully autonomous vehicles, a lot of them still have safety drivers. We're starting to get to the point where they're pulling those safety drivers. Uber is going to be the app that we interact with, whether you're looking for a ride, whether you're looking for some food, or even to order physical products. I think you can buy a TV from Best Buy and get Uber to deliver it to your house. This is just one of those businesses, I think, is going to be much bigger a decade from now than it is today. So that's why it's number two on my list. Lou, you're up next.

All right. Next up, I'm going to go at NellNet, a silly little company with a weird name, but they are all over the place. Student loans, servicing, payments, school software. They have a venture capital arm, including Huddle, which is very, very popular among high school athletes, expanding its banking and financial services. This company has quietly beat the S&P 500 over the last five years and even longer. I think that they are just now hitting its stride, gaining momentum.

I really, really like this company. I wish they rename it, so maybe investors would get more interested, but really, really solid under the radar overperformer. Dan, what do you got? So I'm taking a page from Ray Dalio's playbook over at Bridgewater Associates and trying to incorporate some inflation hudge, commodity exposure. My pick here, Freeport MacMaran, Ticker FCX, major copper and gold producer, big copper producer. It has had its share of operational challenges, its biggest copper mine in Indonesia has

has faced some operational issues. But we all know what the gold market has done over the past year or so. It has been an effective diversifier for portfolios. That's the whole Dahlio approach, is basically put yourself in a situation where you can benefit from growth, but you're not overexposed to recessionary conditions. You can benefit from stable pricing, but you are able to fend off inflation. I think that Freeport MacMarran gives you that commodity exposure in the form, of a stock so you don't have to deal with all those futures markets that we were talking about earlier in the show. And it gives you an ability to kind of counts a little bit as an allocation to gold, which a lot of people have been wondering, okay, well, how do you do that? Is that

something that you should do when the price has already gone up so much? I think it's a good balance with Freeport MacMran because their big thing is more copper than it is gold, but you still get the gold exposure as kind of an icing on the cake. I'm going to go with another Unloved company in the market. I like the contrarian plays Disney. Disney gets a lot of flack right now, but shares are trading for 14 times earnings, basically on a forward and trailing basis. I was talking with a friend last night who was just at Disney World, about the run that they've been on. We talk about not having original IP. In the last 13 years, we have Frozen, Moana, Enkanto, Zootopia. Is there actually a better 13-year run for Disney? I don't know.

you could maybe say, you know, the 90s, the 94-year run or so that they had in the 90s. But for original IP, this is actually kind of a boon for Disney. And they don't get credit for that. They're investing $60 billion in the parks. The parks alone are generating $10 billion a year in operating income. And guess what? They're all under construction. So they're going to be bigger.

They're going to be getting more people in. They're going to be charging more money in the future. I think this is, we're going to look back at this as one of those opportunities with Disney, just one of those companies that if you think about things are going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence, one thing that isn't is those real world experiences like going to Disney World. So Disney, add it to your watch list. Let's rapid fire here. We got two left for each of us in a couple of minutes.

So Lou, why don't you drop two on this? So this is my, I'm just sticking with my weird name portfolio here, I guess. But two more real quick, Truist Financial, TFC. I really, I mean, regional banks are out of favor. They might remain out of favor for a while, but you get truest financial, a good company in the southeast and mid-Atlantic, a decently run bank trading below book value and with almost a 5% dividend yield. These are the times to kind of ride through the headwinds and find good banks. Last one, we talked about space economy. I have to have my rocket ship. Rocket Lab is my pick for this space economy. I like it better than SpaceX, even if they're

both public. 38 billion today. I can't justify it today, but if they do what they hope to do, 38 billion is going to look cheap. So high risk, high reward. Travis, my last two. I'm going with one, Microsoft. It's in the same category as you put Alphabet in, kind of the beaten down Mag 7, unappreciated company. I had good experience with Alphabet when Alphabet was out of favor. Alphabet's now in favor, and Microsoft has moved out. people are concerned. I think concerned about open AI status in AI adoption, concerned about Microsoft's ability to get its users to use its co-pilot AI program. But I believe Sotia Nadella has been, established himself as being able to recognize these cross currents and navigate them and

find a way through. So I think that if you're looking at a Mag 7 stock, Microsoft's the one I'm looking at. And then Berkshire Hathaway, Ticker, B.R. It's the biggest holding in my portfolio. It kind of never goes out of season. It has some energy exposure, which I like. And we have recently gotten word that there is sort of a Greg Abel put in the form of stock repurchases. The company said it started making stock repurchases earlier this quarter for the first time in quite a while. And so that kind of reassured shareholders that the transition away from Warren Buffett as CEO may, it'll be a major. not have the price disruption in the stock that people were worried about. I'm going to throw out

into it. A couple of companies that I don't think are going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence in the way that a lot of investors currently do into it. We're going to have to do our taxes somewhere. You know, accounting has got to happen somewhere. I don't think we're just going to throw it into a chatbot. They're trading for 16 times forward earnings. Nobody likes paying that bill into it when you got to do your taxes. But, you know, in the next couple of weeks, A lot of us are going to be paying them a little bit of money to help file our taxes. The other one is workday. Guess what?

All these AI companies use workday. So why not own workday? 12 times forward earnings. I just think another one disruption, probably not on their horizon. Possible, but definitely like the pricing there. When we come back, we're going to need to the stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool money. Boys, 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're gear. All personal finance content follows the Molly Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are a sponsored concert and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. All right, I wanted to touch on brands a little bit here before we get to radar stocks. And the news this week was that Nike had a pretty weak earnings report. Their sales are down on a constant currency basis. Dan, are we at the point where these brands, Nike has been an

outlier. You think about the rise and fall of Reebok, Fubu, Jirbo, if you go back to my youth. Was this just inevitable that Nike would hit this wall eventually? And this is just what happens to brands? It often happens. I don't think it's inevitable. You can find some outliers out there. I mean, chocolate bars are boring. So Hershey and Nestle went beyond that. They brought in Kit Kat. They got 8,000 different Kit Kat flavors and now people care about it again. You know, when you and I, Remember when I was kids. When Lou and I were kids, you know, you got the Lego sets that you had to build it yourself. You had to come up with what you were doing. Oh, we had the bucket. Yep. Now it's like you buy the F1 car set. You charge 900 bucks for it. There's like sophisticated

instructions and stuff. So, you know, some brands survive, but a lot aren't able to make that disruptive move. You know, I mean, look, Nike is what it is. I don't find it an attractive investment, but this is still a massive company that is profitable and is kind of growing. At least, you know, we're getting benefit of doubt. I think this is like one of these cases, and I see it so much. I'll even be controversial throughout like Starbucks and Lulu Lemon. As investors, there's a difference between the company is fine and I want to invest in it. And I think Nike's just at the point that, yeah, there are better investments out there, at least to my eye.

Yeah, we'll likely see their shoes for a long time to come. doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a great stock. All right, we like to end the show with stocks on our radar. We'll bring in Dan Boyd from behind the glass. Dan Kaplinger, you're up first. What's on your radar this week? All right, Dan, the stock I'm bringing to you today, York Space Systems, ticker YSS. It just went through its IPO in January.

This is a company. It's a pure play in this new space economy. And what it's trying to be, it's trying to be sort of the cost-conscious provider. of a lot of these services, satellite launches and things like that. They are using modular manufacturing to try to keep costs down. This is something that the Department of War has really liked to see, and it is gaining acceptance in the U.S. government and with other providers as well. The stock did lose half its value after its IPO, but it has started to bounce back. It's regained almost all of that. Artemis II's launch. They had a big day, the day after that.

I do think the SpaceX IPO is going to initially pull away capital from investors who are interested in these space stocks. But if it is helpful for space overall, York should benefit from it at some point eventually. Dan, what do you think about York space systems? I mean, it sounds like Mr. Kauffinger is telling us to get in on the ground floor here for York space systems. But such a recent IPO, I'm a little bit wary. Lou, what's on your radar this week. So, Dan, JMO couldn't make it, so I feel it's my responsibility to talk about McCormick, ticker MKC. It was a big week for our favorite spice maker. They delivered a top and bottom line quarterly beat, also announced a massive merger. McCormick is going to combine with the food

assets of Unilever in a deal valued at more than $40 billion. And Dan, finally, someone has the courage to combine Franks Red Hot with mayonnaise, right? We've all wanted it, right? Yeah, I don't know. But look, the market didn't react well to this deal. It's huge and failed combinations like Kraft Heinz spring to mind. And I'll concede McCormick management has a full plate here. You see what I did? J-M-O would like that. But I think scale matters in this business. And I think McCormick is better managed than Kraft-Hines. I am at least intrigued here, kind of watching this. A lot of risk, but a lot of potential rewards here as they kind of fill up the shopping cart. Dan, we didn't make any spice must flow puns during the oil segment, but what do you think about

the spice flowing with McCormick? You know, mixing hot sauce and mayonnaise there, Lou, has been a restaurant. No, no, it's a restaurant staple for decades at this point. Any, like, tangy, spicy sauce that you're going to find next to your chicky tendies at the restaurant is probably just a mayonnaise and hot sauce mixture. McCormick's got them both, the big ones, Tallulah and Frank. Red Hot, which is saying something about their catalog. All right, Dan, which one is going on your watch list?

I like it. Spicey today. Mr. Travis, I'm going to go McCormick. There you go. Sorry, Dan. Next time. There was a lot of space stocks today. So if you are interested in space, hopefully we give you some good ideas to research. Dan, pro tip, you might have done better with the York Pepper and McPaddy. I know. That's what I was thinking. How we're talking. All right, thanks to Lou and Dan and Dan Boyd, behind us. In The Glass. I'm Travis William. We'll see you here next time.