Making Sense of Market Hyperbole

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

• How they invest when broader signals say the market's overvalued.
• The massive cash pile sitting on the sidelines. 
• The fast-changing landscape in the space industry. 
• Second-quarter earnings surprises from DLocal, Circle Internet Group, and Sea Limited.

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

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on August 14, 2025.

Tyler Crowe: Making sense of market headline hyperbole, the space industry is taking off, and companies are still posting surprisingly strong earnings results. This is Motley Fool Money. This is Motley Fool Money. Thanks for listening. I'm Tyler Crowe, joined by longtime Fools, Matt Frankel and Jon Quast. We got a pretty busy slate today. We're going to cover big earnings from Sea Limited Circle Internet Group and DLocal, and we're going to tackle some of the most significant developments in space investing in quite some time. But first, we're going to talk about animal spirits and take a pulse of the market because I think it's something really on people's minds lately. Now, Gens, you and I have been writing about companies in the market for several years now, and one thing our editors love is when there's gigantic numbers in the headlines. Now, Jon, when we were doing a little show prep, showed us, going in that said there were some rather large headline numbers that made you, your eyes pop out a little bit. What did you see?

Jon Quast: Well, it regards money on the sideline, Tyler, and the most recent number that I've seen here is that there's $7.4 trillion in money market funds, which is far and away a record high. This is money that could be invested in stocks. But right now, it's just sitting there and passively earning interest. I think the knee jerk reaction to a number like this is that maybe stocks could soar if investors decide to suddenly move that money out of money market funds and into stocks. Maybe when the Fed lowers the rates, that will be incentive enough for people to change up their strategies, and then stocks will moon, as the kids say.

Tyler Crowe: As the kids say, certainly not the three of us are saying that because that's way beyond our age category. But, Matt, when it comes to big headlines and getting back to our editors, we actually got to deliver on what those numbers mean. When we hear 7.4 trillion, it sounds like a lot, but, in context, is that really a lot compared to what, the market is?

Matt Frankel: It is. Just to run down some of the numbers, there is roughly $60 trillion in US stock market valuations combined. That means more than 12% of it is in potentially investable money sitting on the sidelines. As long as interest rates remain relatively high, I don't see a big rotation into the stock market, and it is likely to be gradual over time. You get a quarter point rate cut, some of it would come into stocks. It wouldn't be seven trillion dollars jumping into the market at once. But if risk free interest rates come down, which a money market fund is a risk free interest rate, it could be another story altogether. There's only so much money that would ever rotate out. Investors always keep some cash. That wouldn't go from 7.4 trillion to zero. But it could have a big impact. It's also worth mentioning that's just money market funds. That doesn't include people who put money in, high yield savings, CD accounts, short term treasuries, and all these other, risk free investments just because rates are high.

Tyler Crowe: Look, we're not going to accuse anyone of clickbait here, but, let's be real. Investors being completely reasonable and holding 12% of their portfolio in cash, it's really not going to get a lot of people, looking at the top of the news site for that sort of information. But that said, beyond the $7.4 trillion, there's an important lesson here for investors when it comes to signal and noise, don't you think, Jon?

Jon Quast: I was being facetious earlier. There's totally a lesson here that we can learn. The headlines are what they're trying to get you to read. It's always better to have a good unprecedented record number in the headline to get your attention, but it's always good to keep an open mind and say, what is there more to this headline that maybe I'm not being told? Here's another unprecedented thing that's out there right now. If you've ever heard of the so called Buffett indicator, named after famous investor Warren Buffett. This is a measure of market valuations compared to the GDP. It just hit 212%, whereas Warren Buffett says 100% is a more fairly valued market. Essentially, what this is saying is that the market is two times or more overvalued. On the same token, a Bank of America just had a survey that said a record number of fund managers, 91% say that stocks are overvalued, 91% of these people who make a living by investing money, they're sitting there waving the warning flag. Stocks are overvalued. But again, maybe that's only half the story in both of these cases. Take the Buffett indicator. The economy wasn't globalized back when it first came out. We're a much more global economy. Comparing US stock markets to US GDP isn't as good of an indicator as it used to be. Then you take the Bank of America survey, 91% are saying it's overvalued, but at the same time, fund managers cash levels are dropping and are below four percent right now, so they're saying overvalued, but at the same time, they're still investing their money.

Tyler Crowe: It's throwing up a lot of, different signals here. You're talking about survey saying things are overvalued. The case Schiller cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio stands at 37.5. That's like the third highest reading after the.com bubble and the 2021 boom. Similarly, the potential growth indicator, which is a metric actually developed here at the Motley Fool, and something that's used to inform decisions about the hidden gems portfolio is also signaling similar market signals that things are a little overvalued right now. When you hear these things of, like, you know, overvalued, all these survey numbers, things like that. I'm going to start with you, Matt. Sorry. How does this inform or influence your investing decisions?

Matt Frankel: Well, it does, but it's important to mention what these valuation metrics are all talking about. When you hear the Buffett indicator says the stock market is overvalued. That essentially is talking about the S&P 500. That makes up over 80% of the stock market. You're talking about the big companies, and that's really what's been driving the growth. If you apply that same indicator to say just the Russell 2000 or just emerging markets or any of these other smaller indices, it tells a completely different story. But, yes, I absolutely use these valuation metrics to inform my decisions, especially in regards to deciding what parts of the market to invest in. Tyler, I know both you and I see a lot of opportunities in international stocks right now because they're not nearly as frothy looking as US large caps. That's just one example of how I use this in my thought process.

Tyler Crowe: Jon, same question to you. Do numbers about the market conditions that we just talked about actually change your approach to buying stocks?

Jon Quast: No, market conditions don't really change my approach. If I've learned anything over the last decade of investing, I've learned that it's really important to put new money to work regularly. This is a core part of the Motley Fool investing approach. It really works. I don't know what the market can do, and information can change on a dime. If you remember the banking crisis just a couple of years ago, that started with just a post on social media and quickly spiraled out of control. Nobody could have predicted that that would have been what happened. Why bother trying to predict something if it is futile at the outset? Especially when you consider every single year, every three years, over a five year span, there are always some stocks that have rewarded shareholders quite well. My job is not to find out what the market is going to do tomorrow. My job is to find those investment opportunities that are going to be good over the next 3-5 years.

Tyler Crowe: Letting businesses do the heavy lifting for you is always a great approach. Coming up next, we're going to look at space, the final frontier of investing.

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Tyler Crowe: We're back, and I'm glad that this is an audio podcast because the looks of exasperation from that really cringy transition from Jon and Matt would make for not so good video. But let's talk space investing because it has been a very busy week for the industry. We won't be able to cover all of it. I want to focus on three stories from the past week. One, the Trump administration has issued an executive order to loosen regulations on commercial space companies, especially around licensing and permitting or launches. The United Launch Alliance, the Boeing and Lockheed Joint Venture, that's been the backbone of commercial space for decades. Just launched its new Vulcan rocket for its first commercial mission and kind of trying to compete again with SpaceX. Then we also have Firefly Aerospace, which is another orbital launch company with its own, set of bona fides in terms of what it's capable of. Had a rather successful IPO last week where its shares popped 38% on its debut. Now, Matt, you follow Hidden Gems darling Rocket Lab very much in this space area. Now, when you see this trio of stories, you've got, looser regulations and then two competitors kind of showing bona fides again. Do you see this as a net positive or a net negative for Rocket lab?

Matt Frankel: Well, the Loser regulations are definitely a net positive, but when it comes to the competitors, the space economy, for one thing, it's so massive that there are terms for several big winners, especially in terms of future potential. I'm not terribly worried about the others. Rocket lab next to SpaceX is the most successful launcher ever and has done 64 successful launches. There's a lot of future need for, the simple way to say it is launching things into space. There's room for a lot of growth for a lot of companies here. Rocket labs also uses a lot more of a razor and blades model. They're more of an integrated provider of space. They not only manufacture and launch rockets, they manufacture components for rockets. They provide servicing. As the business grows and as the space economy evolves, there's a lot of different ways they could take that, which could give them a nice little competitive edge.

Tyler Crowe: I read the prospectus for Firefly Aerospace, and to be honest, knee jerk reaction is that this business model looks an awful lot like Rocket lab. Now, Jon, you recently studied up on and wrote about the Firefly Aerospace IPO. Did anything in particular stand out to you?

Jon Quast: I think the thing that stood out most to me was that this company really wants you to know that it landed on the moon. It feels like every answer to every question and every interview was that Firefly Aerospace has landed on the moon, and look, I get it. Landing on the moon is a really cool thing. I'm happy for the company. I'm fascinated by space exploration personally. I love the idea of a permanent moon base. The company has talked about maybe it can be involved in getting a nuclear reactor on the moon. That's something that the current administration wants to make happen. Look, I get it. The moon landing is reason for optimism when it comes to the long-term prospects of this business. Now, I will say that according to Firefly's own filings, it's targeting markets that could be worth $40 billion one day. It's not targeting the entire space economy. As of this taping, it's valued at more than seven billion. That's actually a pretty steep valuation in relation to the size of the market it's going after. It's also what stood out to me is it's still operating at a gross loss, and that's probably going to continue for a little while. Now, it is going to try to make reusable rockets. It's working in collaboration with Northrop Grumman, so that should be able to get some cost down eventually. But for now, the financials look pretty rough. It doesn't really have a predictable revenue stream. SpaceX has Starlink. That's a predictable thing I can count on. Firefly Aerospace is going to be a little bit choppier. It's going to depend on its launches. It's going to depend on its moon landings. I think there's still a little bit of risk here. The valuation is high. I'm on the sidelines personally, but very interesting company.

Tyler Crowe: I think my biggest thing from reading all of this, especially with the Firefly Aerospace IPOs, both for Rocket lab, Firefly, the biggest question I actually I have right now is how much success will they have building relationships with clients that basically aren't NASA, the DOD and Space Force, and basically government contracts? Those are great clients to have and customers, but, they can only spend so much money. This industry is becoming more competitive by the day. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a few more orbital launch companies go public in a year or two. I think it's something we certainly want to keep an eye on. Coming up next, the best of last week's earnings.

We're mostly through earning season, and the postmortem of the second quarter is starting to come out. According to FactSet Data aggregator, 81% of companies that have reported so far this quarter have reported earnings per share results actually above Wall Street analyst estimates. Now, if it holds for the entire quarter, we're only about 90% of companies reporting, it'll be the most companies to report above estimates in two years and well above the 10 year average for beating markets. Now, I'm tempted to rant about analysts giving easy hurdles to clear, but, this is a family show, so we'll keep that for another time. Well, what we know is that a lot of companies have beat earnings, but there were some recent results that, have really stood out in the past week or so. Jon, I want you to go first, and which one did you see?

Jon Quast: Thanks, Tyler. I was quite surprised with results from dLocal, symbol DLO. Stock is up nicely here after earnings. This is a small Uruguayan Fintech company that specializes in cross-border payments. It's led by former MercadoLibre Executive Pedo Arndt, so it does have some experience management, but investors have historically been really nervous with this one. Basically, dLocal is building some payment rails on its own that help cross-border payments. Over time, it's been taking a smaller and smaller cut of transactions. This is called its take rate. The gross profit margin has been going down over time, even though revenue growth has been quite substantial. You can see this in its most recent guidance here for 2025. It expects total payment volume growth of 40%-50%. That's red hot, but it only expects revenue growth of 30%-40%. A smaller cut of that payment volume to actually be its revenue. The fear here is that it's going to keep deteriorating more and more over time. The profit margins are going to go down. That said, even with that long-term concern, I think that at some point, there's a really interesting business here that could be worth earning. It's really focusing on these emerging market economies. That's where the growth is happening. Think Africa, think South America. Revenue has doubled over the last three years. It's getting approval to operate in more countries. Its net revenue retention rate of 145% says its customers are using it more over time. It's free cash flow positive. The share count is down. There's a lot of things to like here. If we can start getting clarity on how low is that gross profit margin going to go and stabilize, once it does stabilize, this could be a rewarding investment.

Tyler Crowe: It's interesting. There's a lot of growth because cross-border payments is one of those things that people can be very frustrated with. Somebody who spent some time overseas can very much attest to that. But also, like the discussion about space, there seems to be a lot of companies coming out of the woodwork to fix cross-border payments, which actually explains the declining take rate you alluded to here. Since we're talking about cross-border payments, Matt, I'm going to kind of interject and do mine first, but, it's the stablecoin Company Circle Internet Group, which is CRCL. Now, it didn't report an earnings beat because it actually doesn't have any earnings yet. It went public a couple of weeks ago, and as a result, it had a lot of one time expenses related to its IPO. Some of those things can be hard to sparse out of what precisely it was and wasn't a one time cost, which can be a challenge for a lot of investors. No matter what management says, sometimes, those one times become a little more recurring. What was impressive, though, was that 58% year over year increase in revenue for this company. There's a lot of buzz around stable coins and their ability to handle cross-border payments and transactions and things like that after the Trump administration passed the Genius Act, which sets some regulatory frameworks for stable coins, I would say legitimized in the space a little bit more for institutional investors and things like that. There's clearly an appetite for stable coins that Circle is serving with its USDC coin and its EURC stable coins, basically matching US dollars and Euros.

Now, here's what I find fascinating about this business, and it's a weird quick is that even though it is in the abyss of minting and redeeming stable coins in US dollar and Euros, the vast majority of its revenue actually comes from the interest earned on the cash of dollars and Euros that it holds, while, people own their stable coins. I am genuinely curious how circles business will perform in a declining interest rate environment, which is something that the Federal Reserve has been hinting at least certain governors and other players in government have been asking for for a while, if your entire business is making interest rates spread, that, might hit revenue, Matt, I know you're chomping at the bit to discuss Sea limited because I think we've seen it a couple times in some slack group channels and things like that. You have the floor.

Matt Frankel: First of all, I love Circle. I'm glad to see them having success. I've known their leaders since the early days. I had dinner with them at a 2014 conference when they were valued at something like five million dollars, so I'm so thrilled to see them having the success they are. Sea Limited was the best performing stock in my portfolio last year. Of course, I'm going to talk about it. It was up 162% last year, and it's up another 65% this year, including a 20% post earnings pop just last week. There's good reason because just a few years ago, the company was losing money hand over fist. In 2022, it reported a net loss of $1.7 billion and had just single digit really just agonizingly slow revenue growth. One of its segments was declining. Last year, it grew revenue by 28% and was nicely profitable. It really turned things around. This year, it's looking even better. In the most recent quarterly report, C increased its revenue by 38% year-over-year, and all three of its business segments were doing really well. For example, the SHAPE, which is their e-commerce platform grew sales by 34%. The digital entertainment platform, which was left for dead by investors a couple years ago, is a declining business is guiding for 30% bookings growth year-over-year. Not only that, but gross profit in the company grew by 50% year-over-year. Net income was roughly 5X what it was a year ago, so the margins are improving very quickly. The stock still trades for about 45 times forward earnings. It has large market opportunities. It's not cheap, but with the growth numbers it's putting up, it's not that expensive either.

Tyler Crowe: I would love to get into these numbers a little bit deeper, but unfortunately, that's actually all the time we have for today. We're going to have to, leave it at that and maybe a discussion we can have a little bit later on our next show. Matt, Jon, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. Let's hit the disclosure and get out of here. 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. Don't buy the stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and it's not approved by advertisers. Advertisers are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out the show house. Thanks to our producer Dan Boyd, for keeping this herd of cats together. For Matt, Jon and I, thanks for listening, and we'll chat again soon.