Behind Wall Street’s Scorching Quarter

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman, along with Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser, discuss:

• Record Q2 performance.
• How AI ruled the day.
• Meta the neocloud?
• What happened to compute constraint?
• History of U.S. stocks.
• 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 July 3, 2026.

Travis Hoium: Wall Street just had its best quarter since 2020. Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoium, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Jason Moser, and guys, this was a surprise to me when the quarter ended technically yesterday, but Lou, this was the best quarter that we've had in six years, since 2020. What are your thoughts? What are the highlights here?

Lou Whiteman: First of all, I've got to be that guy. You know, I'm that guy. We need to mention that the loss for the year, we are on March 30th, which you might realize if you're good at calendars, is a day before the beginning of this quarter, timing worked out pretty well for us.

Travis Hoium: It just so happened that the first day of the third quarter was not great either.

Lou Whiteman: Exactly. There is a little asterisk here, but look, this is impressive, amazing, even. We got pretty lucky on the starting point, but don't argue with the gains. Even with that, we're up 9% for the year on the S&P, 12% for the Nasdaq. Hey, guys, I'm old-fashioned, but I would take that for a full year every year. This is still good. A lot of this, we can get into the details of what it was, but AI is still working, the optimists still outweigh the pessimists here, and we may at long continue.

Travis Hoium: Jason, it does seem like there's certain segments of the market that are hotter than others, and AI is really the story, although not necessarily the same companies that were hot in 2024 and 2025.

Jason Moser: No, it's been a little bit different here, and we saw for the car, chips and AI infrastructure really are what are driving the bus here. If you look at the Philadelphia Semiconductor index, that was on track for its best quarterly gain on record. I think it was up close to 90% in the quarter.

Travis Hoium: A single quarter, the index was up almost 90%, that's just wild.

Jason Moser: It is wild, you look at the iShares Semiconductor, the ticker there is SOXX. That's up 100% year to date, and most of those gains came in the second quarter as well. Clearly, a lot of interest in the chipmakers and the AI infrastructure providers. I think Lou is right, it seems like that's poised to continue. I know we keep hearing that drumbeat of when is it going to end? I just don't think it's going to happen yet. The enthusiasm is still out there, and these hyperscalers are poised to continue investing big time capital expenditures. I think the question we had was with these huge numbers that they're investing in 2026. I think, all total, you're talking about somewhere around $800 billion or something like that. Is that going to continue into 2027? Signs right now, based on what leadership at these companies are saying, signs all point to yes.

Travis Hoium: I just want to remind people that when no one thinks it's a bubble, that's when it's actually a bubble.

Lou Whiteman: You have the drumbeat is bullish.

Travis Hoium: The drumbeat is bullish, and the other thing is, if we go back to 2000 and the telecom build-out, which would be probably the most similar to now, the market started to go down when the telecom spending flatlined. It didn't actually decline, it just flatlined for 20 years, so just a little bit of context there. Lou, the other thing I wanted to bring in here is some of the big names that are up. We've heard about Micron, a new trillion-dollar company, but Intel, up 243% so far this year, you have semiconductor companies like Lam Research up 124%, Applied Materials is up 146%. Sandisk, I used to have some Sandisk products. Maybe I should have spent a little bit of money on Sandisk stock up 741%. The numbers and the concentration of the gains are what really seems striking to me if you just look at it. You can look up heat maps for the S&P 500, for the Nasdaq-100, and you see those companies up huge, and yet Meta is down 10%, b is down, Microsoft is down 20%. What here is actually sustainable?

Lou Whiteman: That's a great question. I will say, though, as far as the overall market, I like the leadership change. If it's only the same handful of companies going up indefinitely, that seems less sustainable than the market continues to rise on the strength of others. I don't think these chip stocks that sustainable. I don't think that they are going to continue to power us higher. If anything, I think I would look back to some of the hyperscalars to Mag-7. We are only a couple of weeks away from another earnings report, and we'll see, but I am guessing all of these CEOs will have their pompoms out, and they will be bullish on AI, even if the drumbeats are skeptical. I don't think we're to the point in a cycle yet where they're going to say, guys, we were wrong here. I think, if anything, we're poised for maybe the chips, you did your part, go hide in the corner again, and maybe other areas go again, but again, the diversity of the gains. One thing I noticed in the second quarter is a lot of my non-AI stocks finally showed some life. I actually feel I get the macro headwinds, I get the Main Street worries, but I can't believe I'm saying this, but the market feels pretty sustainable for the rest of the year.

Travis Hoium: That worries me when you say that, Lou.

Lou Whiteman: It worries me, too, trust me.

Travis Hoium: No, Jason, the other thing that I think is so striking in a moment like this is when stocks go up that quickly, it is inherent that the multiples are rising. Whether you're looking at a price-to-sales multiple or a price-to-earnings multiple, price-to-free cash flow, those multiples have to be going up when a stock goes up 100% in three months. The business doesn't typically change that quickly. Micron and Sandisk may be a little bit of an outlier there, but the business isn't fundamentally 300% better than it was three months ago. How should we be thinking about that as investors? As these multiples have gone up, these expectations have gone up, and now the typical price-to-sales multiples, maybe not something we used 30 or 40 years ago, but those are getting pretty high.

Jason Moser: I think that's very fair. I start looking at conditions like these with a little bit more trepidation, not to say that I'm not investing. I'm actually always investing if nothing else, I'm just putting money in my ETF in my retirement plan. But when it comes to individual stocks, you see that P go way up, and the E just isn't quite following it in those multiples, it's because it's all based on future expectations. A lot of these leaders are painting a picture of really high demand going on for some time to come. But like Lou was saying there in regard to the chip companies, at some point, that demand is going to be filled. Then what? I think it's difficult to try to time something like that, of course. I think, honestly, when I look at the chip space, I think if you're an investor today and you want exposure to the chip space rather than trying to pick the winner, I really would look at something like the iShares Semiconductor Index. It's an ETF we recommended in our trend service, a wonderful performer. It gives you instant diversification and plenty of exposure to that one particular space, and it helps take some of that risk off the table, but there's no question there is just a very bright future baked into a lot of these valuations today.

Lou Whiteman: It's funny, JMo, but you know this, but for Fool members, we have a livestream that we're on, talking, and every night you get to question what the best AI investment is right now, and my go-to answer has been the S&P 500. Use all of that market concentration that we worry about to your advantage. If AI is real, it works for you. One thing on the PE that I keep thinking of and we look at the high PE ratio and we focus on the P part. The price has to come down to resolve this. There's two ways to resolve this, and it could be that the E goes up. Little things that I don't think we give enough credit for, say what you will about the big beautiful bill last year or whatever, but the changes in that law to depreciation and different tax things. Those are real, and those ripple through and resonate. They have really been a stealth contributor to earnings, and I think that as that ripples in, there's a real chance E goes up on things like that, even if demand doesn't continue to go up. Like I said, I can't believe I'm saying this because we're this far into a rally, and I get the bubble talk, but I think we can continue to do this. Choose your spots wisely. Big tech, financials, the aerospace industry, I still see a lot to like out there.

Travis Hoium: There are some really good values out there as I hunt for bargains in the market, there are areas that are not trading for 10, 20 times sales. I want to end on this, what are you looking at for the second half of this year after we've had this record quarter, and what are you expecting? Jason, I want you to go first.

Jason Moser: If you go back to the beginning of the year, I don't think any of us would have really predicted where we would be right now.

Travis Hoium: If we could have predicted it, people wouldn't be charging so much for memory because it would have locked it up six months ago.

Jason Moser: The explosion in the chip space, the resolution of tariffs, and now seeing companies getting refunds, like Nike just pulled in a $1 billion refund on that whole mess. I don't think any of us would have predicted we've been going into Iran. Then, furthermore, I don't think many of us would have predicted that the market would be reacting the way it is after we went into Iran and really still haven't resolved that, but here we are. I think what has gotten lost a little bit is just the condition of the consumer and the Wall Street versus Main Street. I know the administration pegs market performance as a real benchmark of success for them, so that's great. The market's on fire, investors are feeling great. Fifty-eight percent of Americans are invested in the stock market, but that means 42% aren't. I guarantee you that 42% does not care what the market is doing, because they're not invested, they're not paying attention. Of that 58% who are invested, well, a lot of us are focused on our finances and trying to make sure we can make ends meet, and some people are having a real tough time doing that. Now, with inflation still not in check. Instead of talking about rate cuts like we were talking about at the beginning of the year, now we're talking about actually boosting interest rates. I'm going to be very fascinated to see how Mr. Walls deals with that going forward because it seems like that would elicit a pretty strong market reaction, but I reckon we'll see.

Lou Whiteman: Everything JMo said, but here's the thing. Main Street is not Wall Street, we know that. At some point, there will be a collision. I am, again, much more bullish on Wall Street than I am on Main Street right now. All we need is a critical mass of consumers who can spend and continue to spend, and we get to gloss over a lot of land mines, at least in the near term. We're at 9% already through the first half. We can have a pretty meandering second half and still end up beating the market average. I think we are up from here, maybe not as good as the first half, but I think there is more net positive than negative to come. I think we're green in some of that.

Travis Hoium: When we come back, we're going to talk about the latest news from Meta Platforms. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Meta is reportedly preparing to offer compute to third parties just like a neocloud. Lou, this wasn't supposed to be the plan. Originally, the plan was that Meta was going to build these great AI models. It has lots of use cases internally, but some other AI products, I think we could say, have been a dud. Now they're saying, you know what, we got a little extra compute, we're happy to sell it to anybody. The market's reaction was really positive yesterday. Stock was up about 10%. I'm not sure exactly where it closed, but here's the other thing is, this is not the only company doing this. SpaceX recently said, you know what, we've got a bunch of extra compute. We talked about the great market in the second quarter. A lot of that is driven by this AI trade. The fact that we're undersupplied of compute, that's going to mean exponential demand for a various number of companies. It also means that the hyperscalers' neoclouds just can't get enough compute, but then we find out that some of the biggest buyers of compute have too much compute. What is going on here?

Lou Whiteman: It'd be fun to do the Zuckerberg picture. Life comes at you fast. It does feel like one of those moments. I don't think Meta AI has gone the way it looked on the PowerPoint two years ago when they were talking about this. But look, it's arguably bullish that they are able to spread the risk. Credit to a management team that can say, Plan A isn't working, so let's go to Plan B. If they get an ROI on this investment, doesn't really matter. I credit to them for that if they can. Like you say, if they can, because there is a lot of capacity here. Here's my attempt to square this circle because I share your concerns. But look, we focus on these hyperscalers with the frontier models. If you talk to anyone in the corporate world, the real excitement isn't so much about the frontier models. It's about all of these commoditized models and all the neat little things you can do on it. We're moving to a world where there's dozens and dozens of models that need capacity of knee compute to do boring, mundane chores. I don't know what the difference is. It just seems like it's AWS on steroids from a few years. We got new names, we got new terms for this, but there is just talking to people, there is just this sense that we are going to need a ton of "boring compute" to do the boring tasks, and so maybe there is demand for all of this.

Travis Hoium: Jason, Lou brings up an interesting word, which is boring. When you think about the AI compute business, long term, and I think about what that's going to be in five or 10 years. To me, I always think about it more like a utility, a boring business that people aren't excited about, what's going on with Xcel Energy's earnings reports. But they are right now about what's going on with companies like Micron and so is this a sign that we are moving towards a world where these super high margins for not only the hyperscalers, but also the AI companies themselves, we're going to start to see a little bit more of that constraint come off, and maybe the E part that we talked about earlier isn't going to stay quite as high as it is long term because these margins for a lot of these companies are way out of historical norms.

Jason Moser: I think in regard to the compute business, and I think you're right. You could look at Meta AI offerings to date, while they use it internally, and they've embedded it into their apps. That's fine, that's to be expected, that's just the evolution of their social media apps, but I think it's safe to say that they are not witnessing the same success that your Anthropics and your OpenAIs and your alphabets are, and so this makes sense. Maybe I understand why they probably have a little access to compute because things haven't really gone like Lou said, according to Plan A. I do think it's a good thing that they're doing this. It makes perfect sense, and I commend them for being able to pivot a little bit on that. It's worth noting and this is a lower-margin business. It's going to be something that could impact that margin line to an extent, depending on how much the revenue mix ultimately makes up. But again, I think you have to commend them for what they're doing in being able to pivot and still make something out of this AI investment because it is clearly not stopping anytime soon. This can become a meaningful part of the business, well, then good for them.

Travis Hoium: Lou, one of the big reactions from the market was to the neoclouds. The core weaves of the world, Iran, is another one that I believe is down 17% as we started recording today, but these were the companies that entered this business first with the help of Nvidia, getting a lot of their funding. The question that I have now is, look, they have massive plans to build huge data centers, but they also don't have the funding to do that. This is predicated on those high stock prices, relatively low interest rates if they're going to take out debt. When you see these stock prices fall, is that a canary in the coal mine for some of these companies that are going to be coming to the market, looking for money pretty soon?

Lou Whiteman: It could be. Look, I think the day-to-day trading is reactions and headlines. I don't want to read too much into that. Again, the scary thing as an investor is, I don't think any of us. Maybe there's a couple of PhDs somewhere in computer science, but nobody really knows what the long-term compute demand is. We don't know how efficient these models get over time. There's just capacity is unknowable. It is also unknowable whether or not there's enough business for all of these companies. You are taking a leap of faith getting in here. My answer is too hard, to be honest, on these neoclouds for that reason. But look, there is a massive opportunity and a massive downside risk, and the more and more players coming in, the more scary that gets.

Travis Hoium: We'll be back in a moment with more on 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. It is the 4th of July weekend, 250th anniversary of the United States of America. I thought it would be interesting to look back on at least the past few decades of investing in what I think has been unquestionably the most successful stock market in the world, at least over the past century, and what we've learned over that period of time. What are the big winners? What are the companies that really exemplify what's going on in a decade? I want to ask you guys, I'm going to give you three stocks, which stock do you think exemplifies the decade of investing? We're going to start with the 2010. We're not through the 2020s yet, so we're not going to litigate that quite yet, but looking back on the 2010s, I was looking at Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon. Jason, which one of those stocks do you think performed best is my first question?

Jason Moser: I think probably Netflix would have performed best.

Travis Hoium: Here's the wild stat, Netflix was up 4,135% in the decade. That is ten times more than Facebook. Yes, Facebook went public during the 2010, but Facebook was only up 437%. Amazon up 1,280%. When you think about those three companies, which one really is the one you're going to look back and go, Man, this is the one that really exemplifies what happened in the 2010s.

Jason Moser: Yeah, you can look at this from two different perspectives. If you're looking at it from pure returns perspective, well, then Netflix wins hands down. But I think I'm looking at this beyond just returns. It's like what business was most consequential and really changed the game? Netflix, to me, would be a very close second, but I'm going to go with Amazon. I think the main reason why Amazon really did learn quickly how to change consumer behavior. All of a sudden, it became the norm to enter your credit card online and order something online and have it shipped to your house. Then you introduced the Prime membership, and that just changed the game completely. That's memberships, Retail memberships weren't anything new. Costco's been around forever. But they really, I think, took advantage of that opportunity and built out something special with the Prime membership to where now most people just let it renew because there's just tremendous value in it. But I think ultimately what Amazon has done through their core retail model is they've given us as consumers a new way to sort of value our time. Before you'd have to get in the car, drive somewhere, go pick something up, and now you're like, OK, well, I can have it shipped to me and if I have to wait a day, that's fine. I'm not even looking for the lowest price. I just want the convenience. I think they had the greater impact on changing consumer behavior.

Travis Hoium: Lou, the other thing I want to bring into this is that Netflix built on top of AWS, at least for the early days. That is the tie between those two companies.

Lou Whiteman: A good point. This is a great list of three companies, because if you think about it, these three are the standard bearers for three of as JMo said, the biggest just trends that we're talking about today. Streaming, ecommerce, omnicommerce, and the rise of social media. I do think the word consequential Amazon probably wins, but I don't want to be boring, so I'll take another one. The way I look at this is, Netflix actually is third here, because all Netflix did was disrupt its own industry or disrupt entertainment. Amazon clearly is the winner because they disrupted everybody's industry, a lot of ways, but retail, they trickle through. Facebook's social media, maybe not for the good feels like somewhere in the middle, where their impact has been much more than their industry. You can read 1 million self help books on Amazon now about what social media is doing to our kids, to us, to the brain, to everything. As that's the bad.

Travis Hoium: But think about all the businesses that are built on Facebook to Shopify doesn't exist without Facebook.

Lou Whiteman: Right. Yabba is about to go there, on the other side, too. Consequential, I think you can make a case. Like I said, I still think I'd vote for Amazon. I think JMO is right, but I think you can make a case that maybe the most or at least the second most consequential is the rise of social media. That is Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

Travis Hoium: Let's go to the 2000, so 2000 and then you think about the.com Crash all the way through the great financial crisis. What a decade to be an investor. The market didn't go anywhere for a lot of that decade. Three companies, though, I think, really kind of identify what happened in the market, Apple, Google, which actually went public in 2004, a similar situation to Facebook and Walmart. I wanted to bring Walmart into the equation here. Jason, my question for you is, how much do you think Apple was up during the decade that both the iPod became popular? They introduced iTunes on Windows devices, and they introduced the iPhone. How much was their stock up for the decade?

Jason Moser: Yeah, I actually remember reading something about it. I think it was like 700% or close to 700%.

Travis Hoium: You are good at this, 653%. We should do more of the I'm not surprised. Some of you guys know these incredibly well. I was surprised that it wasn't more than that. We just talked about Netflix being up one X in the 2010.

Jason Moser: It does feel like it could have been more than that, but still, that's nothing to sneeze on.

Lou Whiteman: We are so spoiled.

Jason Moser: Yes, exactly.

Travis Hoium: Yeah. Lou, I want to start with you. Which one of those three companies? Apple, Google, Walmart exemplifies what happened in the decade?

Lou Whiteman: I'm going to add nasty letters for this, but consequential, look, the iPhone is great. I know all love it, but look, there was Palm out there. There were other choices. Apple to me is the least consequence or I don't know, because Walmart, to me, would win the 80s. To me, it's clearly Google. I remember the Internet before Google, and I remember just what a wall garden it was and how it was so hard to find things.

Travis Hoium: All within AOL and all these other.

Lou Whiteman: Google, even before your chatbot and assistance and stuff, Google just was the answer to every question. It is what brought all of this vast information, all of this data to you in a way you could use it. That's simple simpleness to it, whether it's Google Maps, whether everything they did as they brought it out, they are why we changed our behavior and moved everything online to me. They are clearly the most consequential. Apple just really refined a wonderful product and made it better. But yeah, for me, it's Alphabet.

Travis Hoium: Jason?

Jason Moser: Yeah, I totally actually agree here. I think if you're looking from a returns perspective, obviously Apple is the winner, but it's close enough, to me, yeah, Apple has done a wonderful job of developing slick hardware that people love the app store economy. There are a lot of things that they've done obviously very, very well. It's certainly not to look down on them at all, but I love telling my kids to this day about how I had to use, big fat encyclopedias to get work done for school. You Research for investing. You had to go to the library. Yeah.

Travis Hoium: I remember Rick Miyares talking about, the first articles that he was writing for The Motley Fool, he would go to the library to get the information that he needed.

Jason Moser: I mean, I needed that even in college. College, email was just getting started for me, I didn't have Internet in college. Like, I know I'm dating myself there, but we know me, too, Jamo got. I just I think that what Google now Alphabet has done in regard to our ability to access information has just been nothing short of phenomenal. I mean, it has been world changing. Then to be able to parlay that model into building out these other tools, like Lou was saying, Google Maps, I mean, the Android operating system that they have and now their mobile presence. I just think it's hands down on Google.

Travis Hoium: The interesting thing about this list, too, Walmart, I think just such a power player in that decade, but the stock was down 20%. That wasn't even part of the dotcom bust, but, the higher multiples, when you got higher multiples coming out of the 1990s, you don't necessarily live up to those expectations. That's when stocks decline.

Lou Whiteman: That was their digestion period. They had already destroyed the ma-and-pa shop to use the rhetoric.

Travis Hoium: Let's go to the 1990s. The numbers researching this are absolutely wild. Microsoft, up 9,371%. Cisco up 69,230% and the winner and this is I will admit that Claude helped me with this because they went private and then came public again. But any guesses on Dell's return for the decade?

Jason Moser: I mean, Dell was just on fire. Well, you said the winner, so it's got to be more than Cisco. I don't know 8,000%.

Travis Hoium: 89,000%. Return. Almost a 100-bagger during the decade.

Jason Moser: Dude, you're getting a Dell.

Travis Hoium: That and Gateway commercials? Yes, that was great. Jason, when you think about those three companies, which one is emblematic of the decade?

Jason Moser: Well, nothing to take anything away from Dell or Cisco, both very relevant businesses during their time. I think they were also victims of some really unbridled enthusiasm. I think consequential business to me, Microsoft stands out because I think this is when really, windows and office just became the standard. For consumers and enterprises globally. We talked about Alphabet, Google, revolutionizing the way we access information. I think Microsoft really revolutionized the way that we were able to work for most people. They still have obviously a very strong presence today. I think, it became the most valuable company on Earth at some point, it was like a $600 billion market cap in late 1999. They have that to hang their hat on, as well. You fast forward today, and I think Sati Adela has been just a really, really good fit for taking this company into the future.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. We take so much for granted now, but it was April 6, 1992, that Windows 3.1 was released. Guys, I had computers before then. Dos was just so tough to work with. My Commodore 64 that I brought to college was such a pain to work with, yes, they stole some of the stuff. They stole the mouse from Xerox, but so much that we take for granted now. Came with that. It's the worst performer in part because I think it was a round before. But, Dell is a chicken of the Egg story. How many Dells would have sold, if not for the Windows revolution? Cisco, they were in the right place right time, made the right product. I kind of I'm dismissive of them because I think if they didn't, someone else would have. But again, consequential is the word here. Windows changed everything. Windows the heyday for that or the low lights. Look, Windows was pretty crummy back then, but that early ‘90s Microsoft explosion allowed all of us dumb non-computer people to use computers. Just again, so much of what we're doing right now today we take for granted because of the early ‘90s Microsoft.

Travis Hoium: It is wild. We talk a lot about the bubble bursting, but the returns, if you were in early on some of those companies were absolutely tremendous. It doesn't mean that a lot of people got in. Later, this is always the challenge with investing. I think one of the things that we've seen over the past few years is a lot of these consequential companies are just staying private longer. They're not in public markets like they once were. I want to just give some numbers here for the 1980s because this is you don't remember the companies that were so identifiable in the 80s, and they're just not what they once were, but the three that I had on my list were GE, Home Depot, and Circuit City. You remember Circuit City?

Jason Moser: Oh, yeah.

Lou Whiteman: Service was State of New York.

Travis Hoium: Yeah. Circuit City was up 9,300%. But the winner in all of these decades that we have talked about, Home Depot stock up 127,000% in the 1980s, 1980s was very different. This was not a tech-centric business. This was, you know, building out physical stores, having that physical infrastructure. Lou, I just thought that was fascinating that it was so things changed so much when computers and the Internet came along.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, the common trend with Circuit City and Home Depot was, and I joked about this with Walmart was, again, just this was consequential wise. This was the end of Main Street, I think, is how, the dooms they would say, but just the ability to build big boxes and for the first time, bring those to midsize communities and give I mean, the good news was pricing got a lot better. A lot of things became more affordable, just the economy of scale. But both of those companies are emblematic of a period where you did see a lot of just changing on Main Street and for the good and the bad, I guess.

Travis Hoium: When we look back on these companies I tried to pick out some of the biggest winners and also some of the companies that were just so identifiable with a decade, one of the things that I took away from this list is that the iconic companies of the decades aren't really hidden at the beginning of the decade. They're not as risky as they seem. They're just staring you in the face. We knew that Netflix was a huge player in streaming by by 2010, beginning in 2010, Apple was on fire at the end of the 1990s. They came out with the iPhone during the 2010. All of these companies, Microsoft was a giant in PCs. Sometimes to have huge winners, you don't necessarily need to buy these companies that are unprofitable, that you're trying to pick something that's so hidden. It's just right there out in the open.

Lou Whiteman: Isn't there someone around here that always talks about let your winners win?

Travis Hoium: That is a well known saying in The Motley Fool community. When we come back, we're going to talk about the stocks that are on our radar this week. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems 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 full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. We'd like to end the show with stocks on our radar, bring in Dan Boyd with his thoughts. Jason, you're up first. What are you looking at?

Jason Moser: Sure, so this is a company that a lot of listeners will be familiar with. It's Axon Enterprise, ticker is AXON. This is like I said, a company a lot of people know about already, but it's had quite the week here. We saw the headline on Monday that President Trump had purchased around $5 million in shares before ICE announced that it was seeking a $220 million taser deal. You think of that what you will, but the bottom line is the stock has had a banner week. I mean, really, really good week, so investors I'm sure feeling OK about it. But it's worth noting the company is performing, the most recent quarter revenue was up 34%, AI product revenue up a whopping 700%. The AI Airplane bookings showed strong performance up 140%. It appears that they're really demonstrating actual ROI on their AI investments from a year ago. I think another encouraging sign, international growth revenue there was up over 100%, and that is going to become a bigger part of the business going forward, which is encouraging as well. Just a lot to like here and just an interesting week for the company.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what do you think about investing alongside the president in Axon?

Dan Boyd: Yeah, Jason, does a good week mean it's going to be a good month, and does that mean it's going to be a good year? Does that mean it's going to be a good five years?

Jason Moser: Based on this business model and its market presence, I'm looking for a good decade, Dan.

Dan Boyd: Wow.

Travis Hoium: It has been quite the decade for Axon. This is one of my biggest holdings been holding it for over a decade, so.

Jason Moser: Let your winners ride, as we have said.

Lou Whiteman: I guess we all own this one. I am for 32% a week indefinitely.

Travis Hoium: All, Lou, what are you looking at this week?

Lou Whiteman: Dan, mine is much below 32% up this week, but I'm looking at Columbia Banking System. Ticker, COLB. Look, financials is one part of the market where I just see a ton of opportunity right now, and Columbia keeps coming up when I do screens. They are the parent of Columbia Bank, which has quietly grown to be the fifth-largest bank in the Northwest. 350 branches spread across eight states. The market has sort of shied away from this one after they did a series of deals to build the company. But I'd note that for all the fear around these deals, they've beaten estimates for four quarters in a row. Maybe analysts are just underestimating this one. If and when real estate recovers and mortgage activity heats up, Columbia is really well-positioned to shine. You can buy today at basically the same price you would have paid in 2015, basically at book value, and enjoy a dividend of about 4.5% while you wait for the market to rediscover this one. That looks really attractive to me.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what do you think about bargain hunting and banking?

Dan Boyd: Well, listen, Gang. I don't know a dang thing about banking, but what I do know is that Astoria, Oregon, where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean, is a very beautiful place. If you can have a chance, you ought to go visit.

Lou Whiteman: That whole coast, right?

Travis Hoium: Which one is going on your watch list, Dan?

Dan Boyd: Let's go Axon. I mean, 32% in the week ain't so shabby

Travis Hoium: Business that just keeps compounding. Again, let your winners ride. Thanks for listening, everybody, for Jason, Lou, and Dan, the glass I’m Travis Hoium. We'll see you here tomorrow.

Jason Moser has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Axon Enterprise, and Home Depot. Lou Whiteman has positions in Axon Enterprise, Columbia Banking System, and Walmart. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet and Axon Enterprise. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Axon Enterprise, Cisco Systems, GE Aerospace, Home Depot, Meta Platforms, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, Walmart, and iShares Trust - iShares Semiconductor ETF. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.