Consumer Check-In & AI’s Progress

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Dan Caplinger discuss:

• Are consumers OK?
• Interest rate takes.
• AI this week.
• Bargain stocks.
• End of an era.
• Stocks on our radar.

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 Sept. 18, 2026.

Travis Hoium: Is the consumer all right? Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoium, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Dan Caplinger. Guys, I think we've got a lot of AI news. There's interest rate news, but I want to start with something that's maybe a little bit more close to home for regular people. That is, "Is the consumer all right?" Consumers still drive about 70% of the economy. Federal spending data, as Lou keeps reminding me, is not actually all that bad.

But you start looking at consumer goods stocks and these earnings reports, and things look a little less bright. Lennar said this week that their new orders were down for new homes were down 9%, and prices are actually down 30% from a year ago. I know they may be able to build a little bit different houses. There's a lot of things that go into that, but that's a pretty big number. Nike's sales were down last fiscal year, and both HOKA and ON reported weaker than expected results in lower guidance. GM said sales have fallen 6.8% early this year. Escalade sales are down 18%, Tahoe is down 8%, Suburban down 18%. Lou, it seems like things are a little weaker than we would like in the consumer space. Am I reading this right?

Lou Whiteman: I don't know how to read this because, for one, you have the whole macro-micro issue. We'll get that in a second. But look at the data you just cited. The GM sales were in the first half of 2026. That's not current. It's not without value, but it's not current. On Holdings, yeah, they aren't doing as great as they were before. On Holdings is like 2% of the U.S. shoe market.

Travis Hoium: If you want to talk about Nike, a much bigger percentage, they are doing worse.

Lou Whiteman: Nike, too. I haven't seen a lot of barefoot people, so I do think people are still buying shoes. US home sales, long-running issues there. I don't think that is new. It might be getting worse, but let me give you some counterpoints, too. US retail sales were up 1.2% in August. That's the biggest jump in five years. Bank of America credit card data shows household spending up 4.5% year over year. Now, some of that might be inflation. I'm not saying the consumer's healthy, but the point is that they are spending more; they are somehow able to spend more than they did. Labor market remains quietly solid, if not unspectacular. Always come back to this, but I think it's so important to say, the consumer: we talk about the consumer, but the consumer is not one guy. It's not one family. It is the aggregate of 130 million-plus US households. Some of those households are struggling. Yes, I'm guessing some of those households are struggling more than two years ago, and I don't want to be dismissive of that when you're not trending in the right direction. But as long as there is a critical mass among those 130 million households that are "business as usual," spending what they spend, the consumer is fine, even with the stresses. Two things can be true. A lot of brands, especially brands that are selling premium products, are finding it harder to sell those products today. Yet the economy: the consumer, is somehow humming along.

Travis Hoium: Dan, one of the reasons that I brought up the names that I did is, Lou has been talking about this K-shaped economy for a while, and a lot of those brands that I talked about are the top of that K. They were the people that are supposed to be doing well. The people who are buying Escalades, and I use the SUVs because that’s where the money is made in the auto business, is still those big, expensive SUVs and trucks. There's more deals on trucks. I talked about all the SUVs and sales are down. It seems like if we're have a K-shaped economy and the part of the K that's doing well is not doing nearly as well as it was a year ago, that's something.

Dan Caplinger: Agree. But I wonder if we're starting to head more towards maybe, I don't know what you'd call it an E-shaped economy or something like that with the top end of the K brakes [OVERLAPPING]

Travis Hoium: We should protect the rights on that E-shaped economy.

Dan Caplinger: A couple different legs there, though, you know, because I think that you have a decent number of people in the upper middle class who thought that they had secure jobs, thought that they were, they still are at the upper end of the income spectrum, but they're looking ahead, and they're seeing trends. We're going to get to AI later in the show, I think, but you're seeing things that might put that at risk. I think that in some of those cases that makes those folks think twice about, OK, yes, things are good now, but do I want to really go out and get another big car payment? Do I really want to spend money on another premium good that maybe I don't desperately need at this moment? I think that you're starting to see some of those cracks in the armor get a little bit bigger in an area that, like you point out, up until now has been at the top end of the K.

Travis Hoium: Let's talk about those interest rates because I think that's another piece of this that is ultimately important and drives things like home sales, which drives jobs in certain segments of the market. The same thing with auto sales. That's a big jobs provider. Lou, interest rates up in the short term, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates this week. They are also expected to raise rates at least once more in the next, maybe a few months. But we've also seen Treasuries increase yields. Borrowing cost is going up not only for companies, but for consumers as well. This just seems like another headwind when we look at the consumer.

Lou Whiteman: I'm not sure this is a headwind for the consumer, but the only reason why is I think the Fed is way behind the curve here. The Fed finally walked outside and got wet and said, "Hey, you know what? It's raining." That's what I think happened this week. The rates in the real economy are way out ahead of the Fed, and there's some good news there, because for that reason, I don't think rate hikes will do much to affect lending rates in the real economy. If anything, I think we were this close to the Fed's rate hike actually bringing down rates, and we can get into that if you want. But a lot of it, I think there was a scenario just briefly until someone opened their mouth, where mortgage rates actually traded down after the Fed announcement.

Travis Hoium: Why is that?

Lou Whiteman: Because look, nobody is buying or nobody is deciding to buy a 20-year Treasury based on the Fed's overnight lending rate. That's just not how it works.

Travis Hoium: Which, by the way, is the one thing that the Fed controls, is that short term.

Lou Whiteman: Right. The Fed can influence the direction of rates there. But that is a market decision, and it's based largely on how much premium do I have to take on to accept the risk that I might not be paid back? And for most of our country's history, that has been a pretty low premium because Treasuries get paid back. But over the last year, we have had issues about, Fed independence, Fed credibility. I think the Fed going against the White House and saying, "We have to raise rates, and we were unanimous here," that helps credibility and could put pressure on rates. But then, of course, later that night, we had the President saying, "Oh, well, the Chairman only voted that way because I told him to." I don't think that helped things, but that's what's going on right there right now.

The Fed can't set rates. Supply and demand for capital, coupled with perceived payback risk, is what sets rates. We've been here for a while. The economy has shown it can survive and some parts of the economy can thrive at these levels. This isn't Goldilocks because there's a lot of pressure in a lot of areas. But for now, interest rates are something I'm watching, not something I'm worried about.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what about the corporate side of things? Because corporations are affected by this as well, profitability will be affected. Investment. If we're going to put several trillion dollars into artificial intelligence, that's going to mean a lot of borrowing, and now those rates are going up to levels that maybe makes that a little bit more questionable. How do you see these rates on a corporate side?

Dan Caplinger: It's true that those corporate rates should be going up, but a lot of corporations are finding ways to go ahead and borrow anyway. This past week, Axon Enterprise, ticker AXON, went in and went into the convertible corporate bond.

Travis Hoium: I see a lot more of those, yeah.

Dan Caplinger: Raised $1 billion at 0% with an equity kicker. If you have a company with growth prospects, you can get around the higher interest rates by giving people a piece of hopefully your appreciating stock price. But we just haven't seen these higher interest rates slow down anybody who needs money, whether it's the big hyperscalers or even folks lower down on the technology chain. There's an arms race going on, and whoever gets the finish line has the best potential to win, that makes short term credit decisions, pretty easy to make. Especially you consider, yeah, interest rates are high, but they're only high relative to where they were in the 20 teens. We're really just back historically to a relatively normal level, and there's a bunch of my parents would be laughing at me saying, "Oh, no, mortgage rates at 7%." [LAUGHTER] Come on. Make it 17 and maybe they'd start having a conversation.

Lou Whiteman: That is so important to consider right now because it doesn't make things any less painful for those having to borrow when you could have borrowed at 2.5% a few years ago. But historically, we have seen that we can survive and be OK at these levels. I think that, that is what we're seeing. Look, corporations are basically paying the same thing on debt now that they were paying 3, 6 months ago, and that hasn't slowed the momentum. Again, there's so much right now going on, so many moving parts. Bottom line is, I don't see any easy way out of the current rate situation. In fact, I think that the target rates that the Fed sets are weirdly low. I think everything's going to be inching up. I think we just have to find companies that can, long-term, survive and do OK with these rates.

I'll say, Dan and I talked about this on The Motley Fool livestream earlier in the week. In a period of 0% interest rates, a lot of companies that, in hindsight, I don’t want to say frauds, but just weren’t great business plans, were able to continue on and kind of deceive investors because, look, when money was free, they used that money and they kept going. There's actually a useful filter as an investor to having money cost something and there to be a cost to capital, and actually to filter out the companies that can't survive that. Again, it's a different environment. It's not as easy as it was. There's downside for those trying to get mortgages, but I think it's actually a healthy environment right now, so I'm not too worried about.

Travis Hoium: A lot for investors to think about in the back half of 2026. When we come back, we're going to catch up on AI this week, listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. My big question for you guys is: what did we learn about artificial intelligence in this multitrillion-dollar market that is driving over half of the S&P 500? We started the week. I remember just five or six days ago that we were all worried about an extinction-level event coming from AI. The market seemed to be impacted by that on Monday, recovered by late in the day, and Tuesday, we had completely forgotten that that was a thing. We're getting more deals signed, more debt taken out, like Dan alluded to earlier. Dan, what is really going on here? Is this all just normal course of business now with AI?

Dan Caplinger: I just don't think safety was ever going to be a change to the investment proposition for the same reason that nuclear armageddon was never really a change to the investment proposition. There's risk out there, and maybe it happens. If it does, the last thing anybody is going to be thinking about is their investment portfolio. You just set that aside and say, yeah, it's there or whatever. But in terms of regulation, you have the US government more than happy not to provide regulation. That's the market that I think AI investors are most comfortable with because it lets everybody do their thing. It lets everybody try to attack the opportunity, try to take their view, pick whatever niche they think they can execute best in, and move forward with that. I think it refocuses investors on the long-term question, which is still the same. Are companies, are consumers going to adopt AI? At what level will they do that? And how will the companies that have made these AI products? How will they monetize that? I think that's the question that we're refocusing on now, and at least for now, things look generally good in that.

Lou Whiteman: You always see the world through the prism that you've set up for yourself. But my cynical, I guess, look at this is that I don't see a lot of economic value from the frontier models. I think what we're seeing so far is that lesser models, the ones that we aren't spending a quadrillion dollars and hiring people for $100 million to develop. That's where a lot of the actual enterprise value and just economic value is being generated. If I was the CEO of one of these companies that has been promising imaginary friends and artificial intelligence forever, like general intelligence, and suddenly I realize ahead of my IPO that a lot of the actual revenue is coming not from the frontier where I'm spending all this money, but on lesser models, I would think of ways to both save face but also redirect the business towards where the revenue is.

Maybe I'm way off here, but this is a pretty convenient way. We have to slow these frontier models, not because we're losing trillions on them and there may not be the value that we thought. They may be more science projects than businesses. No, we're doing it to save humanity. I don't discount the fact that one of these could do something. Most technologies have had unintended consequences over the years, so I don't want to be too dismissive. But I feel like the narrative here, the take is that maybe OpenAI and Anthropic deemphasize some of that and emphasize on where they're making money, and maybe that turns them into better or more palatable investments once they're finally public.

Travis Hoium: Dan, this is the thing that I keep thinking about with this AI space. There's so much money going into it, and yet, the two leading companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, the question this week was: do they really have a moat? Is there a real profitable business underneath, or do they need to invent something like this to get regulatory capture? Lou and I talked about these AI moats earlier in the week, but how do you think about investing in this space, and what the potential competitive, durable advantage is? Because it seems like the market is saying everybody is going to win right now, but historically, that's not the way that this works.

Dan Caplinger: I don't have a great answer for that, just because history has been up and down on that question. I mean, certainly, when Dawn of the PC generation, you had Microsoft jump into the software market; it was a dominant player in the software market, but it was not the only player in the software market because other companies came in, they attacked specialty problems that needed specialty software to run, and now you have thousands of different companies operating in the software space. It doesn't mean that Microsoft didn't find a way to succeed in the long run; there was more than ample opportunity for that to happen.

I think on a positive vein, maybe that is an answer for the AI frontier model companies. It's like, yeah, they may not have a long-term competitive mode in the areas where they are concentrating now because they're just building the foundation. But once they have identified those competitive threats, then they can say, Okay, yeah, we're going to need to let this one go, but we still feel like we have expertise in some other area that can be the seed that grows the business into the second phase of its existence.

Lou Whiteman: Right. That's the thing. Another word from mode is: Who is definitely going to win? Who is going to predict the future? There's definitely there with AI. There's definitely a lot of value. But right now in the U.S., we have 13 companies valued at over a trillion dollars. One of them is an AI company. We have two more that hope to go public and are talking trillions. So these are the best of the best. A lot of forward revenue is priced into that trillion, correct? I mean, they're not worth it today. The idea that I am forced to assume all three are going to be big winners is I think, the real sticking point for the markets right now. One of these companies, maybe two of them, are likely to be worth a trillion dollars or more or to be among the top 15 companies in the world. To invest in any one of them right now assumes that that is definitely a winner at this valuation, and that's a tough assumption to make.

Travis Hoium: The other thing you're assuming is that the existing big tech companies who are also spending trillions of dollars are going to be losers. I think this week has been Google and Alphabet. Where are they? Muse came out of nowhere. That's a great product. Where in the world? We may be talking next week about Google taking over AI because they introduced Gemini 4 and a new great product on top. So we will see when we come back; we are going to see where Dan and Lou are seeing value in the market. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. At the top of the show, we talked about weak consumer numbers and some of the numbers that are coming out of companies that don't look all that great. That means that the stocks, a lot of them are down significantly over the past year or two. So I wanted to get an idea where Lou and Dan are looking at values and what factors they're looking for if you're looking for values in some of these beaten up areas of the market. I'm going to give you a group of companies. I want you to pick your top stock in this group and tell me what is attracting you about those specific companies. We're going to start with apparel and shoes. The companies are Nike, Lululemon, Deckers Outdoor, which makes HOKA, and On Holdings. The common thing that all these companies have together is they are all down over 50% from their high. So, Dan, when you look at those stocks, what do you like and why?

Dan Caplinger: Yeah, so it's hard for me to be objective about this because I own Lululemon Athletica. I owned it before the big rise, and I have owned it all the way down. So I am now a proud owner of a round-trip stock. But the thing that I look at with Lululemon is just how many mistakes it has made recently. But historically, how it has been able to recover from those mistakes. I do think that that is still an option that Lululemon has. They still have a core audience that is interested in them. They have shown in the past a willingness not to give up even after some pretty big mistakes, and I am hopeful that that is what will happen again, that the company will eventually stop making mistakes. They've been making more than I had hoped, which is why that drawdown is as big as what you said it was, but I still think that the consumer demand for the product is there and that eventually that should help the company recover.

Lou Whiteman: I'm going to throw back the curtain a little here, people listening. Travis managed to find four categories that I just have no interest in investing anything in right now, on top of Lulu.

Travis Hoium: I'm trying to make it tough on Lou every day.

Lou Whiteman: Maybe one of these for a cycle. But yeah, so he always does that boilerplate at the end about how this is not personalized advice. Do not. My real answer here is none for all of the above. But look, here's the way I see it. Lululemon caught lightning in a bottle. They managed to get people to overpay for yoga pants. They might do that again, but I'm not betting on it. Otherwise, it is just an incremental retailer from here. On Holdings, the same story, but it was shoes. They have managed to capture something. May it will continue, may it bounce back, but I don't think you can predict that something that is a red-hot trend will come back to it.

Travis Hoium: This morning, they signed Mbappé. You don't think that's a needle mover for them?

Lou Whiteman: But, look, everybody has someone. Everybody signed someone, which gets to Nike? What's special about that anymore, too? I'm taking Deckers here only because they have three brands. They have shown a willingness to acquire brands and buy lightning in the bottle again here. I don't think any of these are really I can find better alternatives to put my money than anything in apparel right now, but Deckers has a history of diversifying further. I'll lean in there.

Travis Hoium: I would love to see Dan in some Lululemon and Lou in some Uggs, if we can do a live recording one of these days. Let's look at Home Builders. There's a bunch of names here, but the thing that was striking to me was the Lenar numbers this week and the fact that they have had to go to a much lower price point than we had just a few years ago. There was a spike during 2021 and 2022, but things are definitely down over the past couple of years. So Lennar, D.R. Horton, Toll Brothers, Meritage Homes, Lou, those are the names that I picked out. If you're looking in this space, what are you looking for in a homebuilder?

Lou Whiteman: I know there are differences here, but here's my honest, and this is the one segment that we're going to get to that I would invest at the right point of the cycle. I don't think it's the right point in the cycle. For right now, for me, none of these work. There are just too many headwinds on housing. We mentioned rates before. We talked about just labor issues with immigration policies, tariffs, and for the supply chains, this is just not a good time. I probably NVR is one that's not on this would be my first choice just because they're so well run. I think, though, if you make me pick one, it's Horton for the diversification, and it's a decently run business. But again, I don't see why that catalyst is going to come, and housing is going to rebound anytime soon. I'd be reluctant to jump in here. I'd rather be late.

Dan Caplinger: It's funny because I've had some of the same thoughts. We've had homebuilding has had such a I don't know, secular tailwind from we hear about affordability, we hear about a lack of good entry level homes. That's been an arguable bull market thesis for a lot of these companies, and yet it just doesn't seem to materialize. Whether it's rising costs from materials, there's demand, but not in every area, and where there is demand, it's not always at the entry level. Out of these four, I go with Toll Brothers, ticker TOL. That is the one that I see benefiting the most from this continued, maybe it's decaying K, but it's still K-shaped, and I think that the emphasis on the higher end of the market is something that will continue to pay off longer than at the lower end of the market, and hopefully Toll Brothers will be able not to have to make some of the same concessions to the same level that we're likely to see entry-level homebuilders make as mortgage rates rise. A lot of time when mortgage rates rise, it's the builders who end up eating that on the new home side by giving enough incentives to effectively reduce the mortgage rate to something that's affordable for those one area that I hope you guys are both in agreement is that restaurants have some sort of future.

Travis Hoium: So it seems like there's got to be some sort of value here. We've got five stocks on this list, but I have a question for you, which is, which one of these is in the biggest drawdown and how big is it? The five stocks are Chipotle, Sweetgreen, Dutch Bros, Wendy's, and Wingstop. Lou, you have a guess?

Lou Whiteman: I guess Sweetgreen or Wingstop, probably.

Dan Caplinger: I think maybe Chipotle was around 60%, something like that.

Travis Hoium: Chipotle is down 52% from its all-time high. Sweetgreen is down 91.1% from its all-time high. All of these stocks are down over 50% in a current over 50% drawdown. If you look at those five stocks, Dan, where are things getting a little bit tasty?

Dan Caplinger: Yeah, so I still go by Chipotle restaurants when I'm traveling on the road. Nobody local here, but when I'm traveling, I definitely see them. I definitely see the lines are long. People are still going. Yes, they've had that CEO transition. Yes, they've had some growing pains, but they still have those big expansion plans. From a competitive standpoint, they face many of the same challenges that all the other restaurant stocks do. But I just think that that concept is a popular one. It has bridged generations to some extent. I think that there's enough timeline for them to bounce back and figure out how to adapt to this new environment in the restaurant world where you're getting more automation and dealing with a different supply chain than you used to.

Lou Whiteman: You said tasty, which made me think of Cava because that's obvious.

Travis Hoium: I left Cava off just for you because I didn't want to make this too easy for you, Lou.

Lou Whiteman: I wouldn't buy Cava either, though. Again, just restaurants, there are easier ways to make money in my mind. Chipotle the interesting thing, I've stopped going there because I think quality is down, and I know I'm not alone there. I don't know if that's true or not. Of these, if I was to lean in because again, I'm not good at seeing where lightning can be caught in a bottle. But the one company on this list that is still on the right side of early in the growth curve is Dutch Bros. I don't know if it's going to be a huge market beater or not, but I'll buy that and just see if they can pull off. The time to get into these is early in the trend when the trend still is working. Sweetgreen's has run into problems. Sweetgreen's is a good example of why this doesn't always work. But maybe Dutch Brothers can continue and be a shooting star for a while and I can ride it and hopefully get off before it falls.

Travis Hoium: I've been told by a listener that Cava is coming to our area, so I may have to make a pilgrimage. I will say, what you said in Chipotle is totally right and what's so wild about Chipotle and, just talks about their previous management team and what a good job they did. It is so dependent store to store, what your experience is. We ordered something this week. We have items, five people in the family. Every single one of the items had something wrong. I went through there, at the app. It's really hard to make a complaint. There's detailed forms, they have an AI running it. It took six seconds to deny my claim that they're calling me crazy for getting the wrong items delivered to our house. I have kids who are upset. It is one of those companies that seems so easy because it's something that, people crave. But when you get those mistakes and those operating errors, it is pretty infuriating for customers. I do think that Lou is right that the quality there just isn't what it used to be. Let's end with auto stocks. I know an area that Lou doesn't typically like to invest, but, these companies are profitable. It is a driver of the economy, lots of jobs. Auto stocks I have GM, Ford, Ferrari, on the complete other end of the market, and Tesla, anything interesting for you, Lou?

Lou Whiteman: Again, the problem with autos is this is an industry that over 100 plus years of data. When times are good, it's low margin. Why would you buy that when you can get a Garrett Motion or one of their suppliers that just had better margins, better profits? But, look, if you force me to pick one here, Tesla, I just don't understand evaluation. I get it's not an auto evaluation, but I can't go there. Ferrari, Ferrari is the one that has escaped this business model I'm talking about, which is just brutal. Ferrari's issues are all just self-harm. They have a waiting list that stretches out almost to the end of a decade. All you have to do is make the daggone cars and get them out and you can make money. I will take that just because it's a different business model and one that if the right people are running it should work better than a normal automaker.

Travis Hoium: Dan.

Dan Caplinger: I'm there with Ferrari. I think GM and Ford, a lot of Americans are underplaying the impact that the tariffs on Canada are having just on the Canadian mindset on the North American market, generally, not just in autos, but especially in autos, because so much of Southern Ontario's economy depends on this. GM and Ford, if that starts to unravel, if we start to get signs that this is not just a negotiating chip, and things are never going to go back to the status quo, which just seems as this goes on and on, it seems more likely. It's going to be a problem. They're going to have to undo a lot of the things that they did in order to take advantage of these trade agreements. If the trade agreements go away, then they're going to have to do things. It's not necessarily that they're going to be less efficient in the long run, although plenty of people will make that argument. It's just that they invested heavily to make it the most efficient for what may now be a time that is in the past.

With that in mind, I prefer a company that can stand the test of time that has minimal tariff exposure, just in the sense that hey, if you buy a Ferrari, you're going to go ahead and pay the extra 100,000 or whatever it is. You've been on that waiting list for however long you've been? What are you going to do? Leave the waiting list because there's a 20% tariff or whatever it might be. I just don't see it. From that perspective, I think Ferrari, again, playing that K- shaped economy, as well, just has the most staying power, the most predictability going forward.

Travis Hoium: Definitely a company with a lot of pricing power. When we come back, we're going to talk about an end of an era at Berkshire Hathaway. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gem Investing.

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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 Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our Fool advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes.

Guys, the other news that came across the wire this morning is that Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He's inserting his son as the new chairman. Dan, what were your thoughts there?

Dan Caplinger: It's no big surprise. The succession plan has always been multivariate. He wanted to have somebody that would be able to make smart investments and run the company well. That's CEO Greg Abel, and he's been in place now long enough. Warren Buffett, in his letter to shareholders today, said that Greg’s performance has exceeded his expectations, and so that’s the vote of confidence that shareholders would have wanted there. With respect to Howard Buffett, the idea has always been that the chair of the board would be the person who was charged with guarding and protecting the corporate culture, avoiding getting seduced by Wall Street’s short-term thinkism, and picking Howard seems like a reasonable choice. It means because it's just a shift on the board, there's going to be three Buffett's on a board of 13 directors, and that's not changing. It's just the first name of the person on the chair name plate is going from Warren to Howard.

Lou Whiteman: Let's remember, the Buffetts still, they should control this company. Between the foundation and the family holding, it makes sense the Buffetts’ in charge. Yes, Howard is the son, but before we call nepo baby, he's been on the board since 1993.

Travis Hoium: His time on the board basically is as old as Warren Buffett was when he took over at Berkshire.

Lou Whiteman: We're not exactly just throwing in the boss's kid here. Look, the real question is, should we care? What do Berkshire become from here? I still think a dividend would help making the case that it is just ballast, waiting for that contrarian moment where it works. But increasingly, it's just so big. I don't know if they can beat the market consistently, and that's a bigger problem than the first name of the chairman.

Dan Caplinger: Just like when they have strong returns, the way that they have them. I can't tell you the number of days when I've seen a big AI stock route. It's Berkshire Hathaway among that top 10 that's going up. I'm willing to see a little bit of it. It's somewhat true in reverse, as well, but I'm willing to put up with that just for diversification and my somewhat tech-heavy portfolio.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, everything has become pretty tech-heavy, and Berkshire Hathaway is a bet against that. We like to end the show with the stacks on our radar bringing Dan Boyd for his thoughts behind the glass. Dan Caplinger you're up first. What are you looking?

Dan Caplinger: I'm looking at little stock for a change Kraken Robotics. Ticker over the counter trades KRKNF. This is a company in the national security industry, a drone maker, but it specializes in drones and supporting systems for subsea ocean-based autonomous operation. It's got things like sonar systems, optical sensors, complex navigational equipment and communications equipment, along with the power systems to these operational for long periods of time. Much stuff happens under the sea that can otherwise escape detection. This is an important way for the government to support its national security obligations to us, the public.

Travis Hoium: Dan, not only does Kraken have a cool name, they have a cool logo, which is a scary-looking octopus. What are your thoughts?

Dan Caplinger: That was actually what I was going to talk about with this [LAUGHTER] is cool name, cool logo. It seems like high-technology stuff. I don't know. It sounds like it might be a winner here.

Travis Hoium: Lou, you have a lot to live up to here.

Dan Caplinger: Don't bring a boring airline to us.

Lou Whiteman: I'm going to. [LAUGHTER] Dan, the logo is a tulip, which is not as cool as a sea monster. I'm going to admit right now, but the Tulip Airline is United Airlines, Ticker UAL. Dan, I'm looking at it now because shares are down more than 20% since July 1. Investors, I think they're pretty right to be worried, a combination of high fuel prices and that weaker consumer we discussed earlier, that would finally catch up to the airlines need in the profits. It makes sense, but United management this week said, not so fast. They say bookings remain, and I quote tremendously strong with about 35% of tickets already sold for the December holiday period. Fools, get them in now. You better start buying now. Management believes that demand is strong enough to cover those higher fuel costs with ticket hikes. They're also in the process of renegotiating a credit card deal with JPMorgan Chase, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental revenue. Dan, investing in airlines can be dangerous. You have to play to cycle right, but it appears this cycle still has room to run, and if so, United trading at just barely 10 times earnings. That looks like decent value here.

Travis Hoium: Dan, how much do you love airlines raising their prices?

Dan Caplinger: With a looming affordability crisis and fuel prices going through the roof, gang, I don't know if it's the time to be investing in airlines.

Travis Hoium: Kraken or United Airlines. What's going on your watch list this week, Dan?

Dan Caplinger: Well, I believe the listeners can call me a broken man on a Halifax pier because we're gonna go with Kraken.

Travis Hoium: Congratulations to Dan Caplinger. I got to look at Kraken, as well. I think that one's interesting. That's all the time we have for the show for Dan Caplinger, Lou Whitman, and Dan Boyd behind the glass. I'm Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening. We'll see you here tomorrow.

JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Dan Caplinger has positions in Alphabet, Axon Enterprise, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, Lululemon Athletica Inc., Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nike. Lou Whiteman has positions in Axon Enterprise, Berkshire Hathaway, and Garrett Motion. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet, Axon Enterprise, Berkshire Hathaway, and On Holding. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Axon Enterprise, Berkshire Hathaway, Cava Group, Chipotle Mexican Grill, D.R. Horton, Deckers Outdoor, Dutch Bros, Ferrari, Garrett Motion, JPMorgan Chase, Kraken Robotics, Lennar, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, NVR, Nike, On Holding, and Wingstop. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors, Lululemon Athletica Inc., Meritage Homes, and Sweetgreen and recommends the following options: short December 2026 $38 calls on Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.