In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser and contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman discuss:
- The pulse of the market.
- $1.5 trillion for defense.
- Alphabet passes Apple.
- CrowdStrike's acquisition.
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 Jan. 09, 2026.
Travis Hoium: Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoium joined today by Jason Moser and Lou Whiteman. Guys, this is the first Friday recording that we've had in 2026. Last Friday, we had to record a little bit early because of New Year's. But I wanted to get your thoughts on where we are in the market to start the year. It seemed like everything was on fire the first couple of days of the year. I saw people post about how if this continues, I'm going to have 10,000% returns for 2026. We maybe slowed down a little bit from there. But Lou, in the absence of news, we're getting a little bit of economic news. But the vibes seem pretty good in the market, so is that good news to start the year?
Lou Whiteman: I hate to settle, but guys, I'll be honest, I'll take half of a 10,000% return this year, wouldn't it?
Jason Moser: Not bad at all.
Lou Whiteman: Travis is funny because I'm always wrong, but I was really curious how this week would go. I was worried that there were a lot of positions leading into the end of the year that were window dressing, because we've talked about all of these walls of worry, and I'm thinking that some of these money managers would just want to have these hot companies in their portfolio on December 31st. Then there might be some trimming of the sales on January 5th. Boy, was I wrong? We just took off. I'll say, though there's still a ton to worry about. There's always a lot to worry about. To me, the biggest thing I'm looking at for 2026 is there is this critical mass of spenders who are continuing to keep the economy going. I think things are still looking brighter on Watts.
Travis Hoium: Did you that from consumer standpoint or are you talking about the AI spender?
Lou Whiteman: No. AI spending is just in a way, is fueled by consumers because if any of these advertising companies just make all the money in the world off advertising, if you really saw pullback there, then they would have to rethink. I'm talking about Main Street. I'm talking about the fact that just sales numbers keep coming in. We talk about K-shaped or like, as if it's two groups. Really, it's just there's everybody's making decisions based on their own financial position. Right now, we have a critical mass of people who are business as usual. The question for me is will that critical mass erode? If so, how much does it erode? How fast and what that does to the economy? I think that over time, what's going on in the economy has to affect Wall Street, but there's still just enough right in the world to offset all of the things worried about. Hey, may it continue?
Travis Hoium: Jason, how are you thinking about the year? Because there is some worry that didn't really seem to impact the markets in 2025, but could that be peeking its head out in 2026?
Jason Moser: It could be. If you look back at 20:25, if you remember, we got off to a little bit of a rough start in March, going into April. We were all having the conversation, like, oh, man, this year could shape up to be a tough one. All of the tariff talk, we're trying to make sense of exactly how that was going to flow through the economy. Then, lo and behold, the rest of the year turned out quite nicely, and the markets had a great 2025 tariffs notwithstanding. Now, I think we have a couple of things coming on a pipe here in the front half of the year that I think will probably dictate to some degree how things play out in the back half of the year. We heard today that the Supreme Court is not yet going to rule on the the way that the legality regarding how the tariffs are being implemented that probably comes out by June. That'll be an interesting decision there. I think the going money right now is based on some of the opinions that we've heard, is that they likely will rule against the way the tariffs are being implemented. That can have an interesting impact. Then, obviously, we have a new fed chief coming in May, I believe it is. That fed chief is coming in on a more or less a mandate to try to figure out how to bring rates down. Fed can't just do that on his or her own. There is a democratic process in play there within the Fed, but they can carry a lot of sway in how those votes ultimately goes. If we start to see rates come back down in the back half of the year, maybe that loosens up the housing market a little bit, maybe that gets consumers feeling a little bit better about things, and maybe the good times continue.
Travis Hoium: We also heard that President Trump has, I think instructed, is Fannie and Freddie to buy $200 billion worth of mortgage backed securities, with the idea that that should bring rates down. But, Jason, this is always seems like a hard question is, like, we all want more affordable housing. We all want lower rates, but markets work the way that markets work for a reason. These long mortgage rates, in particular, and their driven largely by the tenure, are not necessarily responding to what politicians want. They're responding to what are the risks in the market? What's going on with currencies, what's going on with the economy. Those rates have the tenure in particular has not come down at the rate that I think that a lot of people anticipated late in 2025. You could even make a scenario where they would go up, even if short term rates go down. How do you think about this mixed bag of rhetoric and then markets that ultimately are going to drive what's going to go on with our investments?
Jason Moser: I think that's a very good observation, and you're right. Just because the Fed brings interest rates down doesn't mean that mortgage rates will follow. Mortgage rates are going to respond more to market forces than anything else. We saw that play out a little bit toward the end of the year where rates started to come down and mortgage rates didn't really budge and went up in some cases. That is an interesting dynamic to it. That remains to be seen how ultimately, number one, how quickly the Fed tries to move. Then, number two, how that shapes, all of the other market forces at play here. That's why you can figure the market is probably baking in a little bit of that at some point right now, but probably not a lot because there's just still so much hanging out there right now.
Lou Whiteman: Yes. The idea of buying mortgage bonds to bring down rates sounds good. Even in the 200,400 billion number they're talking about, that's back in the envelope, that's maybe good for a quarter percentage point. That's great if it comes down, but I don't think that would be homebuyers are holding out for a 25 basis point drop in mortgage prices. There's only so much you can do. Like you said, Travis, I think short term rates, especially a topic we'll get to later about maybe increasing government spending and what it means to the budget, that's going to impact long term rates a lot more than anything the Fed tries to do. All of this. It's great in theory. It's hard to pull off in practice. The good news is that inertia sometimes works to your favor. Again, as long as we can just have enough people feeling good enough to carry on, that will drive the economy. It's just making sure whatever that enough people number is that we keep it over that critical mass or else, we've seen what happened. It's called a recession.
Travis Hoium: Yes. Lou, you mentioned it. The spending is apparently going to go up. Defense was really the topic this week. President Trump said that he wants to increase defense spending from about $1 trillion to a trillion and a half dollars. That seems phenomenal for defense stocks. The challenge is on the flip side, he also said that he was going to be restricting buybacks and paying dividends and also even how much executives could be paid until such a time problems are rectified and gave some examples of what those problems are. But Lou, what in the world is going on? What is heads, What's tails in the defense space? Because this seems like it's incredibly complicated to follow right now.
Lou Whiteman: Yes. What's going on, if only anyone knew? I think it's important to focus on what we do know. It's a big difference between making declaration and setting policy. I'm skeptical of both that $1.5 trillion number and some of the things we're talking about, like holding back the restrictions in terms of just as blanket statements. I do think if you filter it all up out, what I hear is defense spending is going to increase. That should be long term bullish for the sector. I'll note that, a couple of things on that. That 1.5 trillion number, so much of the Pentagon budget is soldier salaries, healthcare, support services. Don't just do a like for like. Also, on big programs, it could take five, 10 years for it to hit the coffers. I'm always nervous when these stocks go to the moon on numbers like this.
Travis Hoium: This follows increased spending in some countries in Europe, as well. This is not just a US story.
Lou Whiteman: Yes. That's the funny thing about the restrictions. Like how you would do that. Also the biggest problem the Pentagon faces right now is having we let the industry consolidate after the Cold War ended. Right now, the Pentagon is struggling to get enough qualified bidders for their big programs to make sure they have innovation, competition, all those things we love. If you ratchet up the risk, especially in speculative forward looking programs where cost overruns seem to happen, I don't know if you're going to increase the number of bidders that are going in for this. It's be careful what you wish for. My bet as someone who has a lot of defense stocks is that the bark will be a lot worse than the bite on that, and that 1.5 trillion number won't really translate the way we hoped it did. But directionally we are moving in a way that should be bullish for the whole sector.
Jason Moser: Jason, what do you think? I feel like we could amend that old saying, death and taxes. It could be death taxes and defense spending because defense spending is as sure as the sun's coming up. I wonder in regard to limiting buybacks and dividends, I'm no lawyer, but I'm not even sure to what extent, he can actually go through with that. Now, if he's talking about doing it by saying,, if you don't do this, then we'll take away your business. I don't know. Good luck with that. Those contracts are set pretty pretty solidly, and there's not like this huge pool of providers that can just go in there and take that place, but it's not like these companies are spending absurd amounts on buybacks, for example. I'm looking at just over the last since 2020. Raytheon repurchased maybe $20 billion in shares. Share accounts down 11%. Lokey has repurchased more than that. Share accounts down about 17%. We saw general dynamics. They've repurchased around $7.5 billion, accounts down 5.5%. Northrop a bit over 10 billion. Their account is down just over 14%. That's good stuff. We like to see when companies are repurchasing shares that the share account is actually coming down. Massive businesses that make a lot of money. If he's just trying to stoke them a little bit to say, like, hey, we want you to do more and do it faster. I'm sure that there could be probably some efficiency squeezed out of that process. But I would imagine like Lou said, probably the bark is a bit more worse than the bite in this case.
Lou Whiteman: It's funny. You can write this as narrow as you want, so maybe they can do it. But you know who is a huge Pentagon contractor? Alphabet. Amazon. United Healthcare gets about 40% of their revenue from the government. Now, a big part of that is Medicare, but Tricare, which is what our military uses for healthcare, runs through private providers. There's just a quagmire here if you really tried to go here. Again, just to say, I'm watching it. I do think it's definitely gotten the attention, I think, of defense contractors, and they're watching closely. But if it happens, I think it's a short term thing, and I do worry about the ramifications for just bidding on future projects, innovations, all those things you're trying to solve for. My hunch is, you figure out pretty quickly that the unintended consequences might be worse than whatever you solved by, I don't know, lighting a fire under them to work harder?
Travis Hoium: Yes. Sometimes these short term discounts based on posts online are ultimately buying opportunities for investors. We'll see how this one plays out. When we come back, we're going to talk about Alphabet becoming the second most valuable company in the world. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Alphabet passed Apple this week to become the second most valuable company in the world behind Nvidia. Jason, is this something? Is this nothing? Is this going to be the next the first $10 trillion company? What are you thinking?
Jason Moser: I think it's something in the sense that for a few years now, Alphabet was taking it on the chin in regard to what they were doing at AI and like, ChatGPT, and OpenAI, basically taking over the market there. Lo and behold, it turns out that Alphabet was investing all along and is actually utilizing AI to make their business better. If you look at the performance of Alphabet versus Apple, for example, just over the last one, three, and five years, Alphabet's outperformance is just breathtaking, honestly. Why is that? I think it's for a number of reasons. It's the global mobile operating system of choice. The dominance on a global scale. Cloud hit the inflection point. We got clear leadership in the AI opportunities to date. Remember, Apple is going to be leaning on Alphabets, AI technology, and we haven't heard really anything from Apple other than Apple AI. I have an iPhone Travis. I don't even know what that means, man. But I think one thing that really stands out to me, also, is you look at the leadership part of the equation here, Serge coming back to play a big role within the company at Alphabet.
Travis Hoium: Interviews about that, by the way, were fascinating. He was just bored. I just found this so fascinating from an intellectual perspective that may have been $1 trillion boredom in a coffee shop.
Jason Moser: Very well could have been. I think getting him back and active is encouraging. By the same token we're hearing more and more talk about Tim Cook and how much longer he's going to be serving his role at Apple. Then, of course, if he steps aside, and he's done a tremendous job. Make no mistake. I have all the respect in the world for him, but that is a big leadership void that they're going to need to fill, whereas there's just a lot more certainty in regard to Alphabet.
Travis Hoium: The other thing to just bring into this because I always find Apple's numbers fascinating to look at. Over the past year, they have $109 billion in services revenue, $112 billion in net income. A services revenue very high margin. A lot of that services revenue, somewhere $20-30 billion of basically peer profit comes from Alphabet. Alphabet is also feeding the company that it just passed. But, Lou, what do you think? Is Nvidia next? Is this going to be a run that continues for Alphabet? Because like Jason said, they do seem to have a lot of momentum right now.
Lou Whiteman: Gosh is Nvidia next? Who knows? Dave, we were talking about this with Emily the other day, just that which we don't tend to have too long where one company's on top, so maybe. But looking at Apple and Alphabet, the comparison as investors, obviously, what we care about most is what from here. Like Jason said, the leadership is more stable at alphabet, just with rumors. I feel like if we were doing strengths and weaknesses on the two companies, it would almost be mirror images of each other. At Apple, they have this solid core, pardoned upon. They have that installed base that's going to buy from them and is going to refresh over time. But the question, over and over again, whether it's the car or the TV or whatever else, is what from here? What should we be excited about that's forward and wow. On alphabet, the question is about the core. It's still about what AI will do to search and how they adjust to that. But there is just so much potential from WIMO to AI to so many other things of just the future could be. It almost feels like a value stock and a growth stock. Maybe, I hate to do that to Apple, but it does feel like that these are just two companies that are almost mirror opposites of each other in terms of where from here, based on what we know.
Travis Hoium: The other thing that's interesting with Alphabet is they have such a big investment arm that when you look at some of these hot companies, not OpenAI, but Anthropic SpaceX, who's the biggest shareholder or one of the biggest shareholders, almost always ends up being Alphabet.
Jason Moser: I think that's a great point. The luxury that Alphabet has over something like an OpenAI, let's not forget, massive profitability, massive profit. OpenAI, it's just not clear. Exactly how well they're going to be able to monetize that business in the coming years.
Travis Hoium: Well, there you get to it. The business model, too, seems much clear. As we look at everything that's going on in artificial intelligence, if you have to start to ask yourself, how much are we going to charge for this? Maybe somebody values it at $500 a month, but the next person values it at zero because I'm just laying around and doing things with my kids. Whereas Alphabet can build this ad model around this.
Jason Moser: I think the prices that these companies are going to be able to charge for their AI offerings for consumers it's a race not to the bottom, but it's a race going lower. Alphabet right now, Gemini is terrific. I don't pay for Gemini, but I use it frequently, and I don't pay a penny for it.
Lou Whiteman: Apple over the years, has gotten so much credit for their ability to build based on the closed garden and it's almost like a mindset of the company. But Travis, as you talk about like, Google spreading its wings and everything they do. Won't it be weird if in the long run what really mattered was like spreading out, actually, for the win.
Travis Hoium: We'll be back in a moment? You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. In this segment, we usually like to have a little bit of fun, and I want to talk about some of the hot topics and big opportunities that we have to maybe these are 100 X, at least ten X opportunities for investors over the next 10, 20, 30 years. These are hopefully the things that we're going to be talking about as my kids get a little bit older. That's moonshots and moon flops. I want to know what Jason and Lou think about some of these new industries and companies. Lou, let's start with EV tolls. First of all, for people who are not familiar, just give us a elevator pitch on what these companies are and who the leaders are, what we should look for in 2026.
Lou Whiteman: They want to call them flying cars. But if you watch Suggestins, you're going to be really disappointed. These are basically airplane helicopter hybrids. They can vertical take off landing like helicopters, but they have the stability of airplanes. It's the total addressable market, at least for now, is everything a helicopter would do if helicopters were safer. Joby and Archer Aviation are both going to win certification this year, so these are the big names to watch.
Travis Hoium: Do we have a timeline on that, by the way?
Lou Whiteman: I'm going to say maybe we'll hear something first quarter, if not first half from one of them. Probably Joby first. In terms of moonshots or moon flops, I do think that as a design, this is going to revolutionize like what we use helicopters for. But Travis, helicopters are pretty small industry, and the stocks are very excited. I fear we're going to have a hard lesson when there's actually revenues, expenses, manufacturing, when we find out that it actually costs money to build aircraft, too, I'm more excited about, I think, the technology and the use cases than I am the stocks going to the moon from here.
Travis Hoium: What do you think the right business model is going to be for these companies? We talked a lot about air taxis, plugging into networks like Uber. Is that going to be ultimately what they do is they own these aircraft and then fly them around and make $20, $50, $100 per person per flight, or are they just going to end up selling these to a bunch of other companies who end up operating them?
Lou Whiteman: Well, the answer is both, and depending on the company, what they're planning on doing. Look traditionally, Boeing doesn't in fact, by law, Boeing can't run an airline, very long story, but Boeing Boeing started United Airlines and then had to break it up. We don't normally have that model. This is somewhere in the middle. I think most of the market is going to be third party operators over time, but there is at least some of them are attempting to run their own service.
Travis Hoium: Jason, are you excited to potentially fly in an EV toll, let's say later this decade?
Jason Moser: Not particularly, but maybe. Well, I'm an early adopter when it comes to things that aren't really putting my life at risk. This technology certainly exists. I think it's really cool. I think it's hard to see it probably gaining widespread adoption in the near term. But like you said, we watch as our kids grow up all of the things that change as they get older. I can see this becoming a market, and I think more of an Uber style market would make sense to me in that regard. I think it was just interesting to note Archer played its hand very well at CES this year, announcing a new partnership with Nvidia to integrate the IGX Thor platform into its aircraft. Anytime the companies are just champing at the bit to announce a partnership with Nvidia. Archer got that done this year. That's encouraging news for sure.
Travis Hoium: If any of these companies want us to do a live show and do some demos, I don't know. Maybe I can get Lou Lu to go to that one. I don't know if Jason.
Lou Whiteman: It's right around the corner from me, Archer's building them.
Jason Moser: I'll just watch and smile politely.
Travis Hoium: Let's talk a little bit about space because this has gotten a lot of attention over the past year. You have Rocket lab, you have AST Space Mobile. You potentially have the IPO of SpaceX. Lou, what's a moonshot worth paying attention to? What is potentially a moon flop?
Lou Whiteman: I'm grumpy. I'm a grumpy old man about all of this because of one thing, it's a concept called latency. Latency is basically the idea that if you're sending a signal from space versus sending it from a tower around the corner, you are never going to win in space. But, Lou, there's a huge market cruise ships, places where they don't have towers, all of that. But there also aren't a lot of humans in those areas. That's why there's not towers. I believe in the technology. I think some of it ASDS to me, I think we're way ahead of ourselves in terms of just m proving it out. But the valuations we've assigned to this and some of the assumptions we're making on this, I think bread and butter space, just the companies that are building stuff that can be used by corporate users and governments in space, that is where I'm excited about space. These communication things, to some extent, look like a solution chasing a problem or at least to the extent that the money's been flown into them, chasing a smaller pot at the end of the rainbow, I fear.
Travis Hoium: Jason is space an area that you're excited?
Jason Moser: Yes, I love space. Just from a personal perspective, I'm just fascinated by it. I think Lou is right on the latency side of things, and I think that that probably improves as these networks continue to grow. Now, you look at space companies. It's pretty well established already. You got StarLink in there with a pretty good lead. I think over 7,000 satellites in Orbit today, they're aiming for over 12,000.
Don't forget about Amazon, they have Amazon Leo, which was formerly project Kuiper, and that's aiming for a constallation of around 3,200 satellites and has FCC approval, and I believe they need to launch at least half of those satellites by the middle of this year with the remaining by 2029. I think those are they are one piece of the overall solution. I think it's like energy policy. We need to use it all. I think in regard to space Comms, I keep it simple. You can get exposure to these companies by owning companies like Amazon, for example, SpaceX goes public. I'm going to be fascinated to follow it because I find all of that stuff to be really neat. When you hear people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Must talking about the industrialization of space, I mean, you can't pooh-pooh that idea. These guys have built empire businesses. I feel like they know what they're talking about.
Travis Hoium: One of the fascinating stories that I remember from business school about satellites being a huge impact on a business was Walmart. I don't know if you guys knew that Walmart has its own private satellite network. Do you either of you know when Walmart's first satellite was launched?
Lou Whiteman: I've heard this.
Jason Moser: Is the '80s to track parking lots or something like that?
Travis Hoium: It was 1987, enabling instant voice data and video communications. I always remember it being This is how they got their inventory so much more efficient than everybody else. They could feed that information almost instantly from the store back to headquarters. Application you talked about this a little bit, Lou, but that application layer, maybe not owning the satellites, but what are you doing with them? That's going to be really interesting to watch. I'm sure there's a lot of companies.
Jason Moser: I think you also need to look beyond this and maybe the greatest opportunity, and this is not tongue in cheek, but the space junk companies. There is a lot of space junk building up out there, and the companies that are able to solve that, I think, stand to benefit greatly because you know that is just a hard job. I think the companies who figure out how to solve that problem stand to do well also.
Travis Hoium: I need to do some research. Maybe we should do a future show on space junk let's talk a little bit about autonomy and robots. And I wanted to put this in the humanoid robot. We had CES this week. Humanoid robots are once again a hot topic. Jason, is this an area where there are opportunities? Is this an area where you're waiting? Is there going to be a bunch of flops? I just I'm of so many minds about this, and I can't figure it out as an investor, but where are you at?
Jason Moser: I well, I've said it before. Like, if you gave me one of those humanoid robots to keep in my house, I would just sell it. Like, I have just zero interest. For me, I see the industrial applications so clearly because they already exist. I mean, modern warehouse technology, Amazon, obviously, about the KeyBa acquisition a long time ago, it continues to play out on the industrialized side.
Travis Hoium: How do you think about humanoid robots, though? Because this is what I really struggle with. I used to work in manufacturing, and this was 20 years ago, and there was robots driving around everywhere. There was robot arms all over the place. They did the same tasks over and over and over again, and the efficiency of manufacturing is not making something once, it's making something a million times. I have a hard time getting to humanoids or going to replace these people because most of the humans that are there are troubleshooting the robots.
Jason Moser: Right. And yeah, I don't know that humanoid robots, it feels like that's not necessarily a solution, right? I mean, robot technology does not have to take humanoid form. I think in most cases, it's probably more optimal that it doesn't in order to solve the problems that it's trying to solve in the industrial side. I think that's where humanoid robots run into a little bit of a buzz saw. It was funny. I was reading this piece from CES recently and Jeff Bernstein, president of the Association for Advancing automation, in that difference between the industrialized side and, like, the consumer home side, you know, he made the point. He said, home is very unstructured. You can't plan for a child running into the robot or the robot running over a pet. It was just interesting to note those are just simple but very obvious challenges as to where I just don't know about the widespread adoption of these things in the home, and I don't know that they necessarily are the optimal solution in the industrial sector, either. But it's amazing technology. Just
Lou Whiteman: I feel like I feel like it's an old Star Trek, The Next Generation episode. Like, you know, just we're marveling at the arrogance of thinking the human form is the best tool for most jobs. I am so bullish on robotics, and the humanoid robotics, to me, is the least It's the funest to see videos on, but it's the least interesting part of this.
Jason Moser: Think about Intuitive Surgical and all of the stuff that they're doing with their technology in robotics surgery. But, I mean, we're not talking humanoids.
Lou Whiteman: Would that be any better [OVERLAPPING] better doctors room.
Jason Moser: To me, it would be scarier. I think it's Yeah.
Lou Whiteman: I'd better I'd be a fun marketing trick, though. That, to me, is.
Travis Hoium: We'll see how this plays out. I think I agree that this is potentially a lot of flaps waiting to happen, but I've been proven wrong on some of these in the past. When we come back, we're going to get to stocks on our radar. You are listening to Motley Fool money.
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Jason, this week we learned that CrowdStrike is going to buy SGNL. For $740 million, what do we need to know?
Jason Moser: Yes, this is not a small deal by any means. Obviously, they're going to be able to use the cash on the balance sheet to fund it. I think there was a little equity component to it, but mostly a cash deal. I think this is really a shot across the bow for companies like Okta that focus primarily on identity security because that's what this acquisition is all about. CrowdStrike really wanting to pursue that identity security option, right, that market. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Okta is cooked. But the agentic AI threat, things like AI agents, non human identities or NHIs, I mean, that's a real concern, and it's something that's only going to grow in the coming years. You look at CrowdStrike. Their Falcon platform has proven to be a dominant force in the cybersecurity space. There's a reason why revenue has grown 43% annually over the last five years. And I think this just gives them another attractive market opportunity to pursue.
Travis Hoium: The other interesting announcement this week, Lou came from General Motors. They said that they're going to write off another $6 billion, bringing total EV related write offs to about $7.6 billion. A few years ago, GM was really going all in on EVs. I think they were going to be fully electric by 2030. Now things look very different. What should we take from this announcement for not only GE, but also the rest of the industry?
Lou Whiteman: I mean, I don't think it surprised anyone. We know everything going on with EVs. And, you know, I don't think the revolution is over. It's just going to take a lot longer than initially hoped to get there. A lot of people comparing this and rightly so to Ford where Ford took, I think, a $19.5 billion charge, a similar late in the year. Yes, similar. But to me, the interesting thing is where it's different. Ford took a bigger charge, basically saying we are going all in on hybrids. We think that this transition is going to take a ton of time, and in the meantime, hybrids is the way to go. GM, largely keeping the EV lineup in place with some unquote structural adjustments, you know, I think in reality, what they'll actually do is probably closer than that contrast I did, and I think the value of these companies is they can continue to make ice cars, hybrid cars, EV.
Travis Hoium: Well, wasn't that the thing that GM was really investing in was these platforms where they could build, a nice vehicle with a EV right behind it and a hybrid right after that. It seemed like that built into their manufacturing was the flexibility.
Lou Whiteman: But you still need to put the resources to developing good vehicles with the different power trains. And clearly, Ford is more interested right now in hybrids than GM, just based on their rhetoric. Look, we don't know how fast battery tech innovation will happen. So maybe GM is right, and we're right around the corner. But for me, for my from my perspective, thinking that it's going to be a snail's pace this revolution for now, I like the Ford's aggressiveness on hybrids. I think that for the foreseeable future, that is where the growth will come from.
Travis Hoium: Jason, are you a believer in hybrids?
Jason Moser: Yeah, I am. I mean, I just anecdotally. We're looking to buy my wife a new car here in the next few months, and EV pure EV is just off the table. We're not going to do it. She wants a hybrid. And we've been out already to test drive a number of different hybrids. That's just it's excellent technology. You've got both fuel sources. And yeah, I mean, Lou's right. Battery technology is going to advance and evolve quickly. Then the market, I think adoption will continue, but it's just going to be a lot slower adoption than I think people thought initially. And we're seeing the numbers bear that.
Travis Hoium: I think the cost curve maybe didn't come down the way that a lot of people thought. It's still pretty expensive to get into an all electric vehicle, especially if you're looking at, I mean, we bought a three row vehicle a couple of years ago. I just I wasn't going to spend $90,000 on the only option that was available. We like to end the show with stocks on our radar and get some comments from Dan Boyd behind the glass. Lou, you were first up. What's on your radar this week?
Lou Whiteman: Dan for years, I have held Cratos Defense and Security Ticker KTOS patiently waiting for the Pentagon to order the company's loyal wingman Valkyrie drones. These aren't those cute little backpack drones that, you know, the model sets. Think of this as a miniaturized fighter jet that can react and coordinate in real time with a piloted fighter on the battlefield to overwhelm enemy defenses. This is really cool stuff. But for years, no announcement. That all changed this week. The Marines issued an award for the first batch of Valkyries, stock up 35% for the week. Dan, I think it could go higher, I suspect this is the first of many orders to come. A lot of risk here, high valuation based on the current business, but a ton of potential. I'm holding steady. I'm really excited to see what from here.
Travis Hoium: Dan, what do you think about fighter drones?
Travis Hoium: I think that they're terrifying, Travis, that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, this seems really interesting here, Lou. Looks like there's a lot to look forward to with this stock. What are some headwinds?
Lou Whiteman: Headwinds is these are complicated. They have to work on the battlefield. But look, you say terrifying. But if we could put fewer humans at risk and still have the firepower we need to defend ourselves, that's a great win. I'm going to take glass half full on fighter drones.
Travis Hoium: Jason, what's on your radar this week?
Jason Moser: Well, Dan, this is a company that I actually called out I think back in 2024, July 2024, companies named Rubrik, ticker is R-B-R-K. Now, Rubrik is a cybersecurity company that's focused on making sure that customers can operate their businesses even when they have a successful cyber attack or a cyber breach. For example, think about a hospital that is able to continue admitting patients even when they've had a cyber attack. Or schools that can remain open when they've had a cyber attack or people when they swipe their credit card. They can get their money out of their bank, even if the bank is impacted by a cyber attack. It focuses on a specific capability in the cybersecurity market, which I think is interesting. Since I first dug into it back in July of 2024, the stock has really had a good run. I think a lot of that is just, we're looking at this AI trade and all of this excitement around AI, and Rubrik is a company that's certainly utilizing that to make their business better. It is a, I call it a $5.5 billion market cap back then. It's about a $15 billion market cap today, and closing in on $1.2 billion in revenue. No profits, of course, but it is founder led with a bit over 15% inside ownership, so they do believe in the business. I think cybersecurity is just going to be a massive market opportunity in coming years, and it's one that I'm getting personally interested in here for 2026.
Lou Whiteman: Dan, what do you think about Rubrik?
Travis Hoium: When Jason talked about it in July 2024, it was about half of what it is now, as far as stock price goes. That's a double since then. Yeah, I like that.
Lou Whiteman: What's going on your watch list this week? Let's go Rubrik. We're out of time. Thanks for listening.
