Motley Fool Money: The Most Shocking Stories of 2025

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman and analyst Emily Flippen discuss:

• When tariffs shocked the world.
• When ChatGPT fell behind Google.
• Gold's outperformance.
• More.

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 Dec. 26, 2025.

Travis Hoium: It's the day after Christmas, so it's time to look back on 2025. Motley Fool Money starts now.

Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I am Travis Hoium, joined today by Emily Flippen and Lou Whiteman. Guys, when we look back on 2025, we're getting ready for this show, I almost forgot how much tariffs were a topic. Just a few months ago. This happened in April, there were sweeping tariffs put on all imports coming into the US. We have to start there when we're looking back on 2025 because that was thought to be a devastating hit to the US economy, and yet the S&P 500 is up about 40% since then, Lou. What did we learn about tariffs or are we still in this unknown territory?

Lou Whiteman: Full disclosure. I was one of the people saying the sky is falling, so I'm going to be very defensive in my answer here. I'm [inaudible] biased. That said, a couple of things I want to point out. First of all, we live in a world where we're used to hot takes, instant reactions and stuff. Tariffs, like fed moves, and so many other things in the economy, they take time to work through the system. I think if you looked at since April, no, there wasn't that instant. The world is terrible now. But we've talked about it on here, Travis, the boiling frog economy, it's slowly getting worse. I'm sticking with that. Under the surface, there's signs of distress, even if the stock market is up. Secondly, on the stock market, Main Street is not Wall Street. Yes, the market is up. The market is always ahead of the economy, ups and downs. Wall Street went through the shock. They went through denial, and then they normalized tariffs pretty quickly. It's I think, dangerous to say that stocks are up 40%, therefore, there's no pain on Main Street, because I do think they're separate things and they are going to play out differently. They did play out differently in 2025, and it will continue to do so.

Travis Hoium: Emily, how do you think about this? The market reaction was almost the pandemic.2020, things crashed in a few days, that's what happened after the tariffs. But then it doesn't seem like Lou's probably right, there is some maybe boiling frog things going on. But you don't go to the store and see prices up 40%,50% the way that we maybe thought they were going to be in April. How do we think about this as investors?

Emily Flippen: I love this question, because to Lou's earlier point, what's interesting is that, by the end of April, the market had already rebounded and regained all the losses after the announcement of the tariff. This was not in time, obviously, to actually see any impact from the tariff. The market was not reacting to whether or not we were going to see 40 or 50% price increases. It was reacting to something else entirely. To the Trump administration's credit, the economy clearly did not collapse due to tariffs, and there were pundits, myself included, that were predicting the worst. I always tend to be a bit of a pessimist. I like to be pleasantly surprised. Let's not forget that in April, that was the narrative. Remember all the big banks, CEO saying a global recession was likely. But it's also true that the economy hasn't exactly boomed, even though the stock market has. That is to lose point, an important distinction, just because stock market's going up doesn't mean the average life for Americans are getting better. The data that we do have to evaluate that average life of the American is pretty severely delayed, and lots of it's getting question regarding accuracy, too. But it's still fair to look at what we do have and see what it's telling us. Job additions this year have been lower than in the past, and Fed Chair Powell now believes those numbers are overstated to the point where we actually have been potentially losing upwards of 20,000 jobs a month since April. It's really impossible to say how much of that was due to tariffs versus AI versus business decisions, but they're all key impacts of economic policies. We're still actually looking to see the direct impact of tariffs. I think it is genuinely still it's crazy to say this because we're ending out the year of 2025, but it's too early to say that there hasn't been any economic impact from tariffs. It hasn't been what we expected it to be, but there are so many other variables going on today and a growing disconnect between the market and the average person that the real impact probably won't even come until 2026.

Travis Hoium: Emily, if you're a relatively young investor, let's say you started in the last 10-15 years, it seems like every one of these dips immediately gets bought. You mentioned it with April, April, things collapse, and then by the end of the month we're back to normal, and we're on an upward trajectory the rest of the year. Same thing happened in 2021. Oh, my gosh, the world is shutting down. The stock market collapses. That was when you wanted to be a huge buyer. Is this the trend that things are just collapsing so quickly that the reactions are almost instantaneous, and we should be ready to be really aggressive if the market does pull back? Or are these individual things, and we haven't actually seen a real recession in 15, 16 years now? Man, when one of those hits it's going to be real news for a lot of people who haven't invested through that before, because I'm having a hard time deciphering between those two things. It's almost like two things can be true at the same time. But how do you think about those pullbacks? Are you more excited to buy than ever because they're typically quick bounce backs, or are you cautious because eventually we are going to get to a real recession?

Emily Flippen: It's such an interesting thought, and I do lean on the side of typically staying invested regardless. I don't actually keep cash on the sidelines for the most part. I get a paycheck, I invest it whenever I get that paycheck. You could say that I view it as buying opportunities regardless of whether or not the market is up or down. But I do think to your point Travis, there is an appetite for opportunity, and I am one of those investors who has not invested through a recession. I am 31-years-old, and during the great recession, which is really the last time we saw any sustained long market pullback, I obviously was a teenager. I didn't have my life savings in the stock market the way that I do today. There are so many people out there who are like myself or people who maybe don't necessarily understand the risk that is associated with, say, a sustained pullback or recession, but are looking for ways to grow and expand their money because opportunities to do so have been so much more limited for younger investors. It's not a surprise at all that whenever the market pulls back, you see people who do have dry powder on the sidelines jumping in. It's only a matter of time before a recession does come. The dry powder doesn't last forever, so to speak, but it's so critically important for portfolio management in my opinion to encourage everybody to stay invested regardless of what happens to the market in the short-term.

Lou Whiteman: Agree 100% with Emily in terms of the fan the advice for investors is to try to block it out and just stay invested. That said, I'll play the role of the old man in the room because Emily I got two decades on you, so I guess it counts. But look, I think things bounce back quickly during COVID for good reasons because COVID was a weird recession. It was an artificial outside stimulus recession that was dealt with outside stimulus. That makes sense. I am going to be the grumpy old man and say it is way too soon to draw conclusions on this one. Yes, the stocks bounce back after the announcement, but I don't think we're out of the woods yet at all. I think we are wired to look for opportunities now. Definitely, with all the information comes at us so quickly, we can process. We can get all those hot takes.

Travis Hoium: Maybe that's a good thing. That's something that when I started investing that's not the way that it worked.

Lou Whiteman: We're not sitting alone in fear. We're hearing people give opinions. That said, I do think that while Wall Street moves separately from Main Street, there is a connection, and we will inevitably have a recession, and it will inevitably take longer to clear out than we had hoped. Buying in at the first site is going to bite us at some point. Again, as Emily said, the answer is to try not to sell when it's down and try not to save powder and all that, just to ride through it and focus on the long-term. But I don't think that we've eliminated cycles, and I think that there is one at some point that's going to really take people by surprise.

Travis Hoium: Tell you what? I was not expecting to learn in this segment that I bought my first stock when Emily was one-years-old, but here we are. This is my 30th year investing. Here's to 31. We can't go forward too far, looking back on the year without talking about AI and ChatGPT. I don't think anybody would have thought coming into 2025 that OpenAI would be on the defensive by the end of the year. Surprisingly enough, Google and Gemini are playing offense. They're leading in many benchmarks. The stock is up 60% for the year. Emily, it's up 110% since its April lows. Are you shocked by how quickly Google has made a comeback or is OpenAI losing steam from what seemed like a once insurmountable lead?

Emily Flippen: I actually am shocked Travis, and I do think it's maybe too early to say OpenAI is behind an AI, but there is certainly evidence that Google's Gemini has caught up and in certain cases, I think, surpassed their competitors. It was surprising to me just because OpenAI was basically the poster child of LLMs, but it really should not be for anybody who took that one level deeper in terms of their thought process. Because Google was able and is able to drop Gemini into all the places that Alphabet, their parent company already operate. Search Workspaces app enterprises, Google already has access to all those places that enable them to drive traffic and use that data plus their huge coffers to improve their model training. Despite the fact that there's no a black and white ranking of who has the best AI, there has been clear strides made by Google, but to your point, Travis, I am still worried for Google shareholders and Google as a company. Alphabet, I really should say, heading into 2026. That's not because their AI isn't great. I think Gemini has been an incredible product, but it's because they're fighting to retain revenue not expand it. Their business is 100% dependent upon advertising. As advertising dollars potentially move toward search-based off LLMs, what's happening is if you're a company and you have your ad budget, you have to determine where to spend that money. The budget doesn't just expand because there's new opportunities. Historically, Alphabet has been that key partner for advertising budget, and they need to retain that customer. They need Gemini to work, and they need to integrate advertising into Gemini. That way they can show, hey, we're still the best partner we have for your ad dollars. The more LLMs, the more search and other eyes go elsewhere. Even if it's only on the margin, it's possible that Google, despite having incredible AI, still loses some revenue dollars. That's what ultimately concerns me for this company [inaudible]

Travis Hoium: Isn't it then good that OpenAI hasn't built an ad business, though?

Emily Flippen: But they're trying to.

Travis Hoium: They're trying. That's a long learning curve.

Emily Flippen: It is.

Travis Hoium: We'll see again if they can get that. Fun fact that I learned today because you talked about distribution, Google has five of the Top 10 apps in the Apple App Store in 2025, just insane distribution.

Emily Flippen: These large companies, we're only seeing them grow their scale even deeper. If I hesitate to say the words that every investor fears, which is this time is different. We always talk about what the next Amazon, the next Alphabet is going to be. Increasingly, as I have joined, my older peers here, believe that the next Amazon is probably Amazon, and the next Google is probably Google. The scale these companies are creating, especially with the advent of AI is only getting bigger by the day.

Lou Whiteman: On the Google point, I think Emily is right that there is still a risk, but I am forever bullish on consumer inertia. I am forever bullish on the idea that we go to google.com today, and if they can offer a credible answer for me, I'm not going to look elsewhere. Whether it's AI search, whatever, I feel pretty good about that. As for the question of has openAI fallen behind? I'm not a techie. Benchmarks to me are like statistics easily cherry picked to do what you want. I can't say that. What I think has happened, though, when OpenAI debuted it was magic. It was this world that we never saw before. As Gemini and others have followed, that glow has faded. That's really what has happened. I think our perspective on OpenAI and what it is has changed more than really the race. Here's the important thing though, Travis, to me. It's not really to me about who has the most cutting edge model or who's behind because for most of us, they're all moving in the same direction. They're all good enough. But these things are expensive. In terms of financing, OpenAI was behind from the start, no customers, no revenue streams outside of AI. I don't think they've fallen behind, but I think they've always been behind from the all important financing position. That to me is the concern. It's not whether or not their model is slightly better than Gemini or slightly better than Anthropic. It's just who has the cash to throw at this. That's where I think Alphabet and others are way ahead of OpenAI, and it's always been that way. We just weren't thinking in those terms.

Travis Hoium: One of the tests I always use is what is my wife talking about? What are other parents at soccer games and basketball games talking about? That's moved away from OpenAI. We'll see if those boots on the ground anecdotal insights are true in 2026. When we come back, we are going to talk about something we don't often talk about. It's gold. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. This one has a couple of surprises for me. First off, gold has outperformed the S&P 500 by about 4X in 2025. That could have meant a flight to safety or hedging against the falling dollar. But Bitcoin is down about 12% as we're recording this year. Emily, what do we make of these dynamics?

Emily Flippen: Well, I think what you're supposed to make of these dynamics is that, not all commodities are made equal. In this case, Bitcoin is not seen as a store of value the way gold is. They're compared to each other.

Travis Hoium: Wasn't that the point of it, though? This is the theory behind Bitcoin as always, it's like a moving target. As we look back on some of these years, I'm always confused. I thought it was supposed to be an inflation hedge. I thought it was supposed to be a store of value, and it just doesn't quite seem to be what's being sold.

Emily Flippen: Ultimately, the purpose of it is what people are buying and holding it for. If people were buying and holding Bitcoin as a store of value or an inflation hedge, then we wouldn't see the correlation that we have seen over the last couple of years, which is that Bitcoin is heavily correlated to equities and not correlated to the performance of other commodities like gold. What that says to me is that the people who are buying and holding Bitcoin, or trading Bitcoin, are doing so more as a trading opportunity, an investment opportunity, a perception of value, as opposed to trying to control their risk or actually trying to hedge their portfolio with it. It seems like gold, whether that be the central banks of the world, whether it'd be individual consumers, it just has use cases and demand that is supported by people who are OK sitting on and holding this as a hedge or a store of value. In reality, we just don't see that correlation there for Bitcoin yet. People might want that. The creators of Bitcoin and other investors might want that to be the case, but it's not the case today.

Lou Whiteman: The bull case for Bitcoin is how many narratives have there been that have been proven wrong, and it's still here, which speaks to its flexibility. I mean, which is a weird way of saying it. As for gold, I do think it's interesting. I think probably, though, a prediction for 2026, too much is going to be made of a the demise of the dollar. I do think what we've seen here is that because of current events, a lot of foreign players decided to hedge their bets and go into gold. Even if everybody only does that five per 10% versus the dollar, that's a lot of players. That's a lot of gold, and that's what happened. The Euro wasn't looking much better, so that's not a great alternative. Other currencies have their issues. But look, the point to me still is, is that the dollar, for all of its bruising that occurred this year, there still aren't many better options. Gold is not a good option for actually doing commerce. It's a good option for store value. I think that, yes, if we keep maybe going in some of the directions that caused the interest in gold, the dollar eventually is going to be in trouble, but I'm not ready yet to say that, this seems like short term to me and not the beginning of new dollar age yet, and I'm going to stand by that until things get really worse with the dollar.

Travis Hoium: Lou, it seems like some investors are moving toward safety, as you would think about it, things like gold, we've seen bond yields actually rise, even though the Fed's reducing interest rates, bond yields, which are impacting the 30 year or the mortgage rate and things like that are actually up over the past few months. Does that tell a story about what the market's thinking going into 2026? Because coming into 2025, it was all go go. Everything's going higher, Yolo. It seems a little different if gold is hitting all time highs.

Lou Whiteman: I think it tells a story, but I think we have to be careful about what the story is. I think it's telling a story about thoughts on US deficits, thoughts on trade and how things are going. I think to some extent, as equity investors, we can lean into or observe it and learn from it. But I'm not ready to say, like, flight to safety, therefore, equities are doomed. I think there's a lot going on that doesn't involve equities. I think I worry about more over interpreting that than I do ignoring it, if that makes sense.

Travis Hoium: Of those reminders that the debt market is about 10 times the size of the equity market. The currency market is another enormous market with a ton of leverage in it, so not everything is going to be correlated. When we come back, we are going to play a little game and see how much Emily and Lou were paying attention in 2025. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

We're at the point in the show where we like to have a little fun with little post holiday game. Looking back on 2025, what do you remember, and what have you completely forgotten? Lou, I'm going to start with you. What was the first company to reach a $5 trillion valuation? Do you remember this in 2025?

Lou Whiteman: I got to say no, I don't, but I got to say in video.

Travis Hoium: Yes, you are correct. Sorry, Emily, you don't even get a guess.

Emily Flippen: That's great, because I was going to say Apple.

Travis Hoium: I think they hit a number of the other trillion dollar marks, but not that one. It will be interesting. What company do you think is going to be the first $10 trillion company, Emily?

Emily Flippen: Well, if history says anything and this IPO happens, I guess it's going to be SpaceX at some point next year.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, that $1.5 trillion valuation. If we get a good IPO bounce. Speaking of IPOs, that was my next question. In dollar terms, what was the biggest IPO of the year, Lou?

Lou Whiteman: Biggest IPO of the year. No. CoreWeave?

Travis Hoium: That is not correct. Emily?

Emily Flippen: I was also going to say CoreWeave, but you know what? Maybe I'll say Figma. Did they raise more money?

Travis Hoium: No, Medline raised $6.3 billion. That was just recently. I didn't even know that that IPO happened, to be honest.

Emily Flippen: Maybe we need to look into it.

Travis Hoium: That one is completely or not or not. What was the best performing stock in the S&P 500 so far? I have all these numbers in front of me, so if you want to go through all 500 companies, we can. But, Lou, I just want the Top 1. What is the top performing stock in the S&P 500?

Lou Whiteman: Oh, man. Someone told me the other day it was Build-A-Bear workshop for, like, last year or two years, but I don't think that was 2025. It's something AI adjacent, but it isn't going to be Netflix. Sand disk.

Travis Hoium: Emily, do you have a guess?

Emily Flippen: Yeah, the S&P 500, I mean, gosh, Build-A-Bear, certainly doesn't qualify for that.

Lou Whiteman: No.

Emily Flippen: Rates. I know Tesla has pulled back quite a bit, but it had a pretty strong start to the year. Is it Tesla?

Travis Hoium: Tesla is not even close. SanDisk.

Lou Whiteman: It is SanDisk.

Travis Hoium: It is SanDisk. 561% returns. A couple of other notable ones Seagate Technology, 250%, RobinHood, 230%, Micron, 213. I don't even know where Tesla is down here, but they can't be more than 100%. It's a wild list, if you look at the full list. I want to go in the opposite direction. What was the worst performing stock in the S&P 500. This is I will give you a hint. This is a company that you both are familiar with Lou.

Lou Whiteman: Man. I was about to say Fiserv on just recency, but I doubt that that's what you meant with the hint. I don't know. Fiserv.

Travis Hoium: Emily?

Emily Flippen: I don't know Fiserv, so I know Lou's wrong, if anything. I feel like it might be Lululemon, although I have to imagine there has to be a worse performer than Lululemon, right?

Travis Hoium: Both very close. The trade desk is the worst performer 68% drop in the trade desk. Fiserv, second, 67% drop. This was the really surprising one to me. Decker's brands. So Deckers Outdoor down 51%. That's Number 3. Lululemon is Number 6, down 45% for the year. Those consumer brands have just been absolutely crushed. Emily, coming into the year, I didn't think that that would be the story of the year. But if you look at what we talked about earlier with tariffs, I guess that's the stories that consumer spending is maybe not going where people thought it was in the past. The costs have gone up. Maybe that's the tariff impact that we're seeing in the market.

Emily Flippen: Yeah, it's a 1,2 punch in my opinion. There is impacts of tariffs and that has, for the most part, been eaten by corporations, not consumers yet, but we have seen a pullback in discretionary spending by consumers. We always talk about that K shaped economy. It's certainly impacting consumer brands a lot, too. But let's not forget that Decker is Lou limit. A lot of these companies had incredible run-ups coming out of the pandemic. A lot of what they've given up this year were gains from previous years. They're just seeing a slowdown across the board.

Travis Hoium: Let's go to interest rates because I think this one is interesting. The Fed funds rate on January 1st of 2025, Lou, was?

Lou Whiteman: Oh, man, I don't know. Four even.

Travis Hoium: Emily? What's Fed funds rate?

Emily Flippen: 4.5, 4.75.

Travis Hoium: 4.25% to 4.5%. Today, Lou, that rate is?

Lou Whiteman: I don't even know.

Travis Hoium: This is driving the market, Lou.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, I know. But all we focus on, is it up or down? It's not, which is, I think, there's probably a whole segment of that. Is that they've cut It's 3.5-375 if it's used to use your.

Travis Hoium: Lou hit it on the head, so, that's it.

Emily Flippen: I knew it, too.

Lou Whiteman: I was trying to count how many cuts. He gave it to you. Anyway.

Travis Hoium: But what I think is interesting about that is, you're right, Lou, that is what drives the market on a short term basis, but when you look back on the full year, you don't even remember any of these rate cuts. It's like that short term versus long term thinking. This is what we talk about all the time on The Motley Fool, but that's it at work right there. You don't even remember what the rate was a year ago.

Lou Whiteman: Right.

Travis Hoium: Related to interest rates, and this is a little bit more directly impacting people's pocketbooks. Maybe not the same trends. What was the 30 year mortgage rate on January 1st, Lou? Then as a follow up, I'm going to ask you what it is today. Let's start with January 1st.

Lou Whiteman: See, as someone who hasn't been in the market for a mortgage in a long time, I'm going to say it was at high fours, 4.825.

Travis Hoium: Emily is questioning that already.

Emily Flippen: There's no way. As somebody who bought a house semi recently, there's no way. I bought my house in 2023. If mortgage rates were below 5.5%, which is where my mortgage is sitting at the moment, I hope that I would have been wise enough to consider a refinance at that point. I have to believe that they were above 6% to start the year. Although I do know they've come down a bit. I still think they're above 5% today, though, right?

Travis Hoium: Emily, I'm going to have you guess a beginning of the year and end of the year.

Emily Flippen: Let's go. 6.25% at the beginning of the year and 5.6% end of the year.

Travis Hoium: This is coming from, I think it's bank rate, 6.9% at the beginning of the year, 6.2% today. Obviously, there's going to be variations depending on your credit score and the duration of your loan and things like that. But that's a standard 30 year loan. That's where rates are. Look, 6.2%. What's crazy is we have a 2.875% mortgage that we refinanced during the pandemic. I mean, we're not thinking about moving right now, but just almost impossible if you're giving up that rate. That's one of those things that I think is going to be, that's going last for 5, 10, 15 years for those of us who have that rate locked in. For 24 hours, about 24 hours, give or take, who was the richest person in the world in the month of September? But it was only for about a day, Lou, who is that?

Lou Whiteman: Is that Larry Ellison?

Travis Hoium: Emily?

Emily Flippen: Easy, Louise. Was it a celebrity? Was it Kim Kardashian?

Travis Hoium: Was that the Spinks IPO?

Lou Whiteman: I remember this story. I don't remember if it was Larry or someone else, though.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, it was Larry Ellison that one day that Oracle's stock popped 40%. He was the richest person in the world. I think that has changed now that SpaceX is planning to go public with a $1.5 trillion evaluation, but we'll see how that plays out. I wanted to get your thoughts on what would have made money over the past year. I have a couple of asset classes. If you had invested $1,000 in Bitcoin on January 1, how much would you have now.

Lou Whiteman: I don't know. What did you say 100,000 or 1,000?

Travis Hoium: $1,000.

Lou Whiteman: $880.

Travis Hoium: Emily?

Emily Flippen: 1,100.

Travis Hoium: 1,100. No. Bitcoin is down for the year. You would have $930. Now, here's the harder question, Lou. If you had turned your US dollars into euros on January 1, how much would those euros be worth in US dollar terms as of today?

Lou Whiteman: That $1,000 would be worth, gosh, it spiked up and then went back down. I go to say it's basically. No, that's boring. $10,050.

Travis Hoium: Emily?

Emily Flippen: Well, let's lock in 1,100, Travis.

Travis Hoium: Emily, $1,140. It's just crazy. This is what I wanted to bring this back to the tariff discussion that we had earlier. Were tariffs more important in 2025 to the economy, or was it the drop in the dollar? Emily, like, what do you think? Because the dollar dropping 11% is huge.

Emily Flippen: Yeah, it's sizable. It's not unusual to see currency changes like that, but I do think the reaction that we've seen from central banks across the world is very indicative of this. We already talked about the performance of gold over the course of this year, and about a quarter of that over the course of the past year was driven by buying by central banks. It's not that they're holding less US dollars or that US dollars are less important. I mean, it's still the global currency, but it is showing that they're diversifying away from US dollars, which is putting pressure on the US dollar.

Travis Hoium: We're going to end on this one. I'll give you a softball to end it. The S&P 500, and I'm going to go with SPY, the ETF. Well, how much is it up in 2025? The winner is going to be the one that gets closer here, Lou?

Lou Whiteman: 15%.

Emily Flippen: It was very close to what I was going to guess. I'm going to go higher than Lou, though, because I know our recommendations in Stock Advisor. It's been heck of a time trying to keep up with the market performance this year. I remember even some of our best performing individual stocks are still trailing the market, even though they've done some incredible work for the course of the past year. Even though 15% was maybe where my head was, I think I'm going to go 20% because I have to be contradictory and I also need to be right.

Travis Hoium: You were right in the direction, but the magnitude, a little bit off 16.2%. Our fictional winner for today is Lou. It's so interesting.

Lou Whiteman: At least I didn't say negative.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, true. It's so interesting to look back on the year and think about what we thought coming into the year, what actually drove the market because especially when you're looking at these things on a day to day basis, like we are, you can lose sight of that long term picture. Hopefully that was helpful and you guys have fun with this little game. When we come back, we are going to talk about stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Annie Bocel: Hello, listeners. This is Anne Bocel. Author, blogger and creator of the podcast. What Should I Read Next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I check all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. Of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. Join us each Tuesday for What Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.

Travis Hoium: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show note. I wanted to go back and look at what we thought about the market coming into 2025 because, Emily, a lot has happened, but the conventional wisdom coming into 2025 hasn't really played out. If you remember the election had just happened, Crypto was on an absolute tear. Elon Musk was entering the White House. It seemed obvious that crypto and Tesla, in particular, were going to be really well positioned, but that hasn't really happened. Is anything really obvious anymore? Because as we look toward 2026, it seems like uncertainty is the name of the game.

Emily Flippen: Yeah, it's funny, Travis. Look, I failed economics in college, at least once because I would get so frustrated with the professor who would say, Well, this is how things should work. I'd be like, Well, there's all these other different variables. It doesn't always operate like that. I would get frustrated about the concept of what's theoretical versus what's practical. And I think that same thing is true in life. You can believe things are supposed to work a certain way. You can come into a year thinking, Here's all the factors, here's how it's supposed to play out. But the reality is that the world we live in isn't black and white. There's a lot of different variables that continue to impact different aspects of what should otherwise be a pretty simple equation. Those factors change people and they change how they react. In my opinion, the lesson coming into 2026 is to focus on your process, not the outcome because sometimes the outcome is very different than the process and the work that you put into decision making.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, to answer the question, is anything obvious? No, and that's what makes this fun. It also might explain my lack of hair, but, that's just how it works. The big takeaway for me is that, look, we are terrible at predicting the future. But the more you focus on long term trends versus short term trends, we can't predict reactions. We can, it's the boring way to say it, but it's over and over again. Find good companies that can weather storms in bad time and are compelling cases in good times and just go out as far as you can, not that you can predict what things look like in ten to 15 years, but where we get caught up is the speed bumps, the turbulence, the air pockets, trying to predict what's next. Maybe other people are good at it. I am really crummy at it, so it's best to not try.

Travis Hoium: Lou, how do you think about those obvious things and that short term thinking and long term thinking? Then the disruption that ultimately happens, I mean, that was one of the stories coming into the year.I'll bring just another thing. Everybody thought Google was toast. We talked about them in Gemini and Chachi BT a little bit earlier, but there's one where you could have bought alphabet stock at 16 times earnings. That's a great company that is trading for a good value that ended up not being a value trap, but sometimes you get a Nike, and that just keeps going lower. Their trade desk, another one that we talked about earlier, how do you differentiate between what's a great company that the market has short term thinking and what is something that's fundamentally broken?

Lou Whiteman: To be honest, I don't think there is a set formula. I think you have to look at every situation and try and figure it out on your own. I do this a lot. Most of the time I spend looking at stocks are fallen angels, trying to figure out their value. I can tell you, for every one that's been a double I have one that hasn't worked out. Again, just the simple block and tackling lessons, don't be overly concentrated. Don't assume you know everything. Don't get too arrogant. Just look at the situation and try and filter out the noise from where is this company going long term? Easier said than done, but I think you just have to take a look and look at the individual situation and try and make sense of it if you can. If you can't, stay away.

Travis Hoium: We like to end the show by getting into stocks on our radar. Let's bring in Dan Boyd to get some questions from him. Emily, I think you have the most explaining to do. Why don't you go first here?

Emily Flippen: That I do. The stock on my radar this week is Coupang. The ticker is C-P-N-G. For anybody who's unaware, Coupang is a South Korean e-commerce business, often likened to the Amazon and South Korea. But to be honest, they do a lot more. They have streaming services. They have the Uber eats, food delivery, the Instacart grocery delivery. They're basically a way of life in South Korea, and it's unfortunately on my radar this week for or some bad news. They had a massive data breach that led to the exposure of the private information of the majority of the population of South Korea because that is how widespread Coupang is, and now the founder and CEO is coming under fire for not showing up for some of the court cases that are coming out of this issue in South Korea. They did oust the Korean CEO, but not the founder himself who lives here in the United States. They're in some deep water here, but the reason why I still like this opportunity, even though the stock has given back virtually all of its gains this year is because this is such a big issue, simply because Coupang is that important to the economy and the everyday life of people in South Korea. I think the company will get through this controversy, and I think it just goes to show how pervasive and how monopolistic this business is.

Travis Hoium: Dan, how do you feel about CEOs who don't show up for court appearances?

Dan Boyd: One of Emily's favorite things to do on this show is to bring companies. She likes to sandbag, basically. She likes to bring companies to radar stocks that are having trouble and she knows are in the news for bad reasons. I don't know. Maybe just to see what happens, she likes chaos that, Emily. Yeah, I don't know, man. This is a tough one. I don't know if I would want to be investing in a company like that.

Emily Flippen: You're a loss, Dan.

Travis Hoium: Lou, what's on your radar this week?

Lou Whiteman: Dan, I'm going to go on limb and say, I have one that you do know what they do. I'm talking about Boeing. Boeing has been flying through turbulence for it's been a half decade now. Numerous attempts have been made to call the bottom, and all have been proven way premature. With all that said, I'm going to call a bottom. I think Boeing has finally got management right, which it didn't do the first time around. CEO Kelly Ortberg has been there about a year now cleaning up the mess. Regulators are easing restrictions on airplane production, which should lead to a big boost in free cash flow. Boeing won't be free cash flow positive in 2025, but I think they can generate 10 billion plus by 2028. If they can fly straight, it's important to remember Boeing is one half of the biggest, most important duopoly in the globe, and it has nearly a decade worth of a backlog for orders and new jets. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Boeing, I think, is one of the best ideas for 2026.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what do you think about Boeing?

Dan Boyd: I mean, the meme is that Boeing planes fall out of the sky, so I'm not sure about either one of these companies, Travis, if I'm going to be honest, but I do like about Boeing that it is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

Travis Hoium: There you go. Well, we are apparently going dumpster diving today, so are you choosing the founder who won't show up to court or the planes that fall out of the sky?

Dan Boyd: I got to root for the home team, Travis, so we're going to go Boeing.

Travis Hoium: For Lou Whiteman, Emily Flippin, Dan Boyd, behind the glass, and the entire Motley Fool team, I'm Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money. We'll see you here tomorrow.

Emily Flippen, CFA has positions in Bitcoin. Lou Whiteman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet and Robinhood Markets. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Bitcoin, Boeing, Figma, Lululemon Athletica Inc., Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Coupang. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.