money

Business class can mean champagne before takeoff, big seats, and stress-free boarding. But who can pay the price tag of three to five times what economy costs?! (Not me.)

But here’s the secret: savvy travelers rarely pay full price. Copy these habits and you could be flying business for far less.

1. Buy tickets with miles, not money

Most airlines give you two ways to book a ticket: pay cash or redeem miles. And while paying cash might work fine for economy, business class prices often offer discounts for redeeming miles.

For a long international route, it’s not uncommon to see fares north of $3,000 if you pay in dollars. But you might be able to book the same business class seat for around 70,000 miles (plus a small amount for taxes and fees). That’s an incredible deal.

So how do you rack up enough miles to pull that off? Well, it starts with joining an airline’s frequent flyer program. But if you want to speed things up, using credit cards will help.

2. Use travel credit cards for everyday spending

Travel credit cards are the secret weapon for earning enough miles to fly business class. There are two main types you can choose from:

• Cobranded airline cards that earn miles with a single airline.
• Flexible travel cards that earn points you can transfer to various airlines.

Personally, I prefer cards that give me transfer flexibility. For instance, I use travel cards from Chase and Capital One. Each one earns points I can send to a dozen or more airline partners, which gives me way more choices when I’m ready to book.

The best part is it doesn’t cost you anything. Since you earn points on everyday purchases like groceries, gas, and shopping, you can continue doing what you’re already doing, but quietly build up points/miles in the background.

Many travel cards also offer large welcome offers for new customers. So you could even snag a quick 50,000 points or more after you meet the spending requirement.

See our top-rated travel credit cards here and start stacking points toward your next business class upgrade.

3. Keep travel dates flexible

Award seat availability is limited, and airlines release business class deals sporadically. So being flexible — even by just a day or two — can save you thousands of dollars (or tens of thousands of miles).

Some tools, like Google Flights and airline award calendars, make it easy to spot the cheapest days to fly. Flexibility isn’t always convenient, but it’s often the difference between flying up front or in the back.

4. Shop for airfare way in advance

Landing a business class bargain often comes down to playing the numbers. If you’re booking last minute, you’re stuck with whatever high-priced seats are left. So you need to shop as early as possible.

So, when should you start your hunt? According to Going, a site that tracks flight deals, the sweet spot is about one to three months before takeoff for domestic trips, and anywhere from two to eight months out for international flights.

These windows are when airlines typically drop their best fares.

If you’re planning to fly during busy seasons — like summer holidays or spring break — you’ll want to extend that search window by a few extra months.

5. Join loyalty programs and try to score elite status

Most airline loyalty programs are tiered. The more you fly and spend, the higher you climb up the ranks. The top tiers often come with free upgrades to business class when seats are available.

Chasing elite status is only worth it if you travel a lot. But even if you’re not aiming for top-tier perks, signing up for loyalty programs never hurts anyway. It’s usually free.

And pairing a good travel rewards credit card with airline loyalty programs gives you more ways to earn points and snag better seats. From there, it’s just a matter of keeping an eye out for business class deals and working your way up to those elite perks.

Ready to earn your first business class ticket? Explore our favorite travel credit cards and start turning your everyday purchases into luxury travel rewards.

Predicting where a company will be a decade from now is no easy task. Few could have imagined the ride that Nvidia has taken its shareholders on, as it has risen from a $12 billion company to become the world’s largest, currently valued at more than $4.1 trillion.

Ironically, IonQ (IONQ -1.91%) has a $12 billion market capitalization right now and is investing in high-powered computing that could have massive implications for the business world. So, where will this quantum computing start-up be a decade from now? Let’s find out.

Image source: Getty Images.

IonQ’s approach differs from the competition

Quantum computing is an exciting technology that could allow more accurate computations of problems that don’t have a singular answer. One area where quantum computing could thrive is logistics network planning. There are numerous ways a delivery route could be planned, but it’s hard to calculate all of those possibilities simultaneously to determine the best outcome.

Quantum computing doesn’t process information in bits (only a zero or a one). It can handle these calculations better because it uses qubits, which are better described as the probability of an answer being a zero or a one. This makes quantum computing an ideal technology forresearching drug discovery, training AI models, predicting weather patterns, or logistics. However, quantum computing is still working toward proving its relevance.

The biggest issue in quantum computing right now is calculation accuracy; because qubits don’t provide an exact zero or one answer, errors can occur in the calculation. The company that can provide the market with the most accurate computer first will likely be a huge success, which is why IonQ is one of my top picks for quantum computing.

Most quantum computing competitors are using a superconducting approach to perform quantum calculations. IonQ is utilizing a trapped-ion approach, which offers several advantages with a minor trade-off. The trapped-ion approach offers superior accuracy compared to superconducting methods and can be performed at room temperature, rather than near absolute zero, which reduces costs.

On the downside, the gate processing speed for trapped-ion computers is slower than that of superconducting computers. I believe the market will value cost and accuracy over pure speed, which leads me to think that IonQ could be a significant winner by capturing a substantial market share first.

If IonQ can bring a commercially viable product to the market first, it will be a massive winner in a huge market. But just how big is this market? IonQ estimates it to be about $87 billion by 2035.

Massive upside if IonQ can capture a chunk of the market

It’s unlikely that IonQ will be able to capture the entire $87 billion market, but if it’s first to market, it could capture a significant share. For reference, Nvidia has about a 90% market share in the data center GPU space.

If IonQ could capture a similar chunk of the market, it would be a massive success, easily growing into a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. However, that’s not a sure thing.

The trapped-ion approach may have a limitation that prevents it from being commercially viable, which hasn’t been discovered yet. Another possibility is that the market values speed over accuracy and cost, making products from its competitors more attractive.

So, just as easily as IonQ could increase an investment by tenfold, it could go bankrupt. There’s nothing wrong with investing in high-risk, high-reward stocks like this, as long as position size is kept relatively small to manage risk. By devoting no more than 1% of their overall portfolio value to IonQ, investors can be protected from downside risk while also potentially benefiting significantly if the stock becomes the next Nvidia.

IonQ is a promising investment in quantum computing, but we’re still a long way away from knowing what the company will look like a decade from now, if it even exists at all.

September is here, and it looks like the Federal Reserve‘s Federal Open Market Committee just might lower its benchmark interest rate again when it meets next week. Many stocks, especially those of companies that are particularly sensitive to interest rates, are already climbing in anticipation.

As a bank and credit card network, American Express (AXP -0.28%) is very sensitive to interest rates. It was a standout stock last year, gaining 58%, and its gains so far this year are roughly in line with the S&P 500. If the federal funds rate gets the expected cut, Amex could benefit in a big way, and its stock could start to outperform again.

Standing out in finance

American Express is known for its credit and charge cards, but the company has become a lot more than that. It has a large banking segment that works together with its card network to create a closed-loop model, but each segment adds its own unique value to the whole.

American Express targets an upscale clientele that prizes its card rewards programs, which offer travel perks and points, as well as discounts at premium shopping locations and restaurants. The company charges annual fees to cardholders for these privileges, and the fee income is a major part of its model. As a bank, American Express targets small businesses and offers a more boutique experience than many larger institutions.

Image source: Getty Images.

The bank also provides the credit to people using its cards, so it doesn’t need to work with partner institutions. This also makes American Express a business that can perform well in different economic environments. When interest rates are higher, it makes more net interest income on its deposits. When the economy is doing well and customers are spending, it thrives. However, it usually demonstrates resilience when the economy is under pressure since its core customers have more money to spend, and since it collects its annual fees regardless of the macro conditions. That important recurring revenue stream keeps its profits coming in smoothly.

Gaining momentum

This all played out perfectly in 2025’s second quarter. American Express’s revenue increased 9% year over year (currency neutral) despite continued macroeconomic pressure, and adjusted earnings per share were up 17%. Card fees increased by 20% and accounted for almost 14% of the total.

There was record cardmember spending in the quarter and high demand for premium products. The company frequently “refreshes” its card offerings and perks to stay relevant and attract new members, and it said it’s going to launch a “major upgrade” to its U.S. business and personal platinum cards in the fall. If that coincides with greater access to money due to lower interest rates, it could be a recipe for robust growth.

It’s also focusing more on appealing to younger people, and that’s paying off. While there was 7% increase year over year in cardmember spending in the second quarter, there was a 39% in Gen Z spending, and a 10% increase in millennial spending. Gen X still accounted for the most total spending of any age category at 36%, but the higher growth in younger categories bodes well for the bank’s future.

A longtime Buffett favorite

Warren Buffett has praised American Express’ global brand and the fact that it doesn’t have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money. He also loves to invest in companies that pay dividends and give back to shareholders through stock repurchase programs. American Express’ dividend yields 0.9% at the current price. That’s not a high yield, but its payouts are reliable, management has a long track record of maintaining or hiking them, and it repurchased $1.4 billion in stock in the second quarter. American Express is the paradigm of the Buffett stock, and he frequently references it as an example of a great business.

If the Fed cuts interest rates as expected this month, American Express stock should jump. More importantly, higher economic activity should boost its business.

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss:

• Google keeps Chrome.
• Kraft Heinz to split.
• An IPO frenzy.

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. 03, 2025.

Travis Hoium: Alphabet stock is up 9% today. Did the courts save Google’s cash cow? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I’m Travis Hoium joined by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren. Let’s start with the big news today, and that is Alphabet. The stock is soaring today. After the market closed on Tuesday, we learned that Google, will technically still a monopoly isn’t going to have to change a lot about its business, not going to have to spin off Chrome or Android. They can still pay to be the default on devices like the iPhone. That’s going to be a benefit for Apple as well. There were some changes. They have to share data with competitors. We don’t know exactly what those details are going to look like. The idea is to bring more competition into the market, but ironically, OpenAI and the competition from artificial intelligence may have saved Google’s massive search business. What did you take away from this, Rachel?

Rachel Warren: I think this is definitely a case that shareholders in Alphabet like myself have been watching closely for a while now, and I think the key takeaway here is, Alphabet has avoided the worst case scenario that I think a lot of investors had feared, and shareholders like myself should be happy with that. But I think there’s also been a lot of confusion around this case, trying to understand why is this so important to Alphabet’s future as a business? Well, Chrome plays a really instrumental role. Really in the ecosystem that Alphabet has, it’s a key distribution channel for its profitable Google search business, its advertising services. The Chrome browser itself isn’t directly monetized, but it has this key and dominant market position, and so that allows Alphabet to maintain control over user data, over the flow of Internet traffic. It also reinforces the dominance of Google search, because Chrome has been set historically as the default search engine. It’s also a really crucial mechanism for collecting data on user browsing habits. It serves as a really key entry point to the broader Google ecosystem. It encourages users to adopt other products, like Gmail, Google accounts, their AI product, Gemini. I haven’t wavered on my thesis for this business. We’ve seen the stock really beaten down in the last months in anticipation of this ruling. Shares soaring today. I think that this ruling reinforces the strength of the business as it moves forward in the AI revolution, and I think investors should be happy with these results.

Travis Hoium: Lou, this is one of the companies that has been the cheapest in the Mag 7 for quite a while. Earlier this year, trading for less than 20 times earnings. We’re now up to 22, 23 times earnings, but it seems like this is a sigh of relief for a lot of investors in Alphabet, given that Google, and we’re going to use these names interchangeably, but Alphabet is the parent company, Google is the business that we all probably know and use, but it’s a sigh of relief for investors right now.

Lou Whiteman: Google’s to cash cow. For these purposes, we can go ahead and talk. This is Google. It isn’t status quo. I think, the lawyers would argue with me on that, and both sides are going to appeal because that’s what they do. But as far as we need to look at it, it is the status quo, that the important tenants that have made Alphabet the business they are, that they remain. I think, Travis, the lesson for investors here is, yes, it’s underperformed. I think a lot of that has been just vague fears but antitrust. We probably were too clever for our own good beating the stock down, worrying about this stuff. Yes, we’re getting a bounce back rally here. We were probably overly worried about it before, but the Alphabet we know, this cash cow generate money making machine, there’s still threats out there, but the government isn’t going to break it up. We can just keeping on.

Travis Hoium: One of the reasons they’re not breaking it up that I thought was really interesting in the opinion was because of artificial intelligence and companies like OpenAI. They basically said, you know what? A few years ago, I believe the term was a no fly zone for investors, and then said, you know what? There’s hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into these AI companies that have explicitly said they’re going after Google’s business. Lou is, this one of these cases where disruption or the potential for disruption came out of nowhere? This suit was filed long before ChatGPT was launched. OpenAI existed at that time, but ChatGPT was not the name that it is today. Now you do have this vector of competition that has allowed Google to keep these points of strength and maybe give it a little bit of a leg up, trying to compete with these companies that everybody thinks is going to disrupt the core search business.

Lou Whiteman: Definitely. It’s a fascinating case. I guess, to the court’s credit, they did adapt at times. Because the court wasn’t stuck in the past here, which they could have been. But now, look, disruption is real. As an investor, you always have to be watching all things. We were so focused on the court case. I don’t think we’ve ignored AI, but I do think, AI is coming, whether or not that’s a threat to Google or an opportunity both, probably. But it’s funny to think about how the world has changed since this suit was first filed. I think the court appropriately reflected that change in their decision. They’re not anchored in the past, which they could have been.

Travis Hoium: Rachel, one of the companies that we probably aren’t talking enough about today is Apple. Apple is the company that is getting that $20 billion or so check from Alphabet, from Google, every single year to be the default on the search engine. That’s one of the things that was kept in place in this. They can pay for this. The logic here was pretty interesting. It wasn’t that this wasn’t going to help Google maintain its previous monopoly status. It was going to harm the ecosystem. That check that they write gets the most attention. But if you think about companies like Mozilla, I think, it’s 80% of Mozilla’s revenue comes from a similar deal with Google to be paid to be the default search engine. If that money goes away, Mozilla has a really hard time building their browser. But this is a big benefit for Apple, who’s going to continue getting this cash cow, for essentially doing nothing but saying, hey, default is Google.

Rachel Warren: Well, even though Alphabet can’t enter into deals that would prevent other search engines or browsers from being pre-installed on different devices, as you noted, it can continue to pay these fees to distributors. Apple being a key entity there to be that go to or default search engine. There is a real positive impact for Apple, which interestingly, hasn’t seemed to really respond in terms of a share price perspective, the same way that we’ve seen Alphabet shares rocket today, but that essentially secures what is something like an annual payment of $20 billion from Google for being the default search engine on iPhone. There are certainly reverberations from this ruling that go far beyond just the Alphabet ecosystem.

Travis Hoium: Final question for both of you, and just to put some numbers on Apple. Apple stocks actually down as we’re recording. We’re about an hour into trading on Wednesday. That’s a shocker to me, because I think that was really financially the biggest risk if they were deemed not able to pay that fee to Apple to be the default search engine, that could have just been money that Google kept rather than paying to Apple. But the market is not seeing it that way. Alphabet stock is up about 8% as we’re recording. We now know that this is at least for now behind us. Lou said that there are going to be appeals. Rachel, I’ll start with you. Do you own shares, and does this make you more bullish or does it change your thesis with Alphabet at all?

Rachel Warren: Interestingly, I own shares of both Alphabet and Apple. Speaking to Alphabet specifically, I think my thesis on the company remains unchanged. I had not been, perhaps, as alarmed by what we had been seeing in this particular element of the antitrust case in recent months as, perhaps, the market’s broader reflection was. I had an inkling that this would be something that would perhaps end in Alphabet’s favor, based on just the trends we’re seeing in the AI space. I think, as Lou mentioned, the judge’s ruling was very much within the context of the changes we are seeing rapidly amid the AI revolution. For Alphabet shareholders like myself, I think this really bolsters the underlying thesis that this is a business that has a really key role to play in the AI space moving forward.

Lou Whiteman: I don’t know, neither. I’m the Mag 7 through all my mutual funds, so I just don’t bother. But I will say, Alphabet still looks intriguing to me. We were caught up in this anti trust thing. We’re still caught up in the AI threat that could be an opportunity. There’s always dramas. There’s always something to worry about. Alphabet is a really well run good company. I think buy good companies for the long haul, focus on that long haul. I think it works here. I think if I was to buy a Mag 7, Alphabet would be on the top of my list.

Travis Hoium: Alphabet is another one that I own, as well. I just have not understood why this was so overlooked by the market, but maybe that sentiment is going to be changing just for a little bit of perspective. They’re still growing their revenue double digits. Apple, three-year growth rate 1.8% on a compound annual basis. Yet, Google even after today’s move is trading for about 22 times earnings. Apple’s trading for 35 times earnings. Maybe we see an inversion of those in the future, but I think Alphabet is probably much better positioned today knowing that they’re going to keep Chrome and Android in house. When we come back, we’re going to talk about the resplit of Kraft Heinz, and Lou is going to explain what dis-synergies are. You’re listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Kraft Heinz has plan to split again into companies that they are currently calling Global Taste Elevation and American Grocery Company, inspiring names coming out of Kraft Heinz. The other thing that they talked about was the dis-synergies of this deal. Lou, this has been, I think, probably a failure up and down. It’s hard to look at this merger, what was it a decade ago and see really any positives. But first of all, what are these dis-synergies? What are you taking of this resplit of the company?

Lou Whiteman: Those terrible names are probably the icing on the cake. They’re the perfect final chapter of this. Dis-synergy seems like the perfect term because there is no way this drives efficiency, getting smaller, doubling up back off, because everything we talk about when we talk about the advantage of M&A, they are getting rid of. They are using terms like simplicity, but for logistics, for negotiating just share in grocery stores, scale matters. Bottom line here, Travis, like you said, this has been a disaster. This has been a failure of management. The deal made sense. The compelling, if you get it right, made sense, but the execution was wrong. Now it’s back to the drawing board. They’ve already divested some assets. Honest to God, I wonder if that isn’t just a better way to go here, see what they can sell off to others, because scale does make sense, but it has to be scale in the hands of a management team that knows what to do with it.

Travis Hoium: This seemed to be, at least when the deal was initially announced, a management team that should have known what they were doing. 3G ran the deal. Buffett was involved. Rachel, how does this go so wrong for investors, because this seemed like one of those slam dunk businesses. Kraft and Heinz aren’t going anywhere. Turns out they are.

Rachel Warren: Look, I mean, the namesake brands aren’t going anywhere, even if they’re under different entities moving forward. But it’s very fair to say that this merger, which was engineered by Buffett along with 3G Capital back in 2015, it has not performed as expected. There’s been a lot of challenges for the Kraft Heinz business in particular. I mean, that’s very much been reflected in the share price of the company in recent years. There’s been a shifting consumer preference toward healthier options and away from a lot of the process products that Kraft Heinz sells. They have, as a business, had to enact significant asset write downs. All of this has created a picture of difficulty for the business, and it’s also been a difficult dynamic for Berkshire Hathaway. This is a company that is the largest shareholder of Kraft Heinz. They hold a 27.5% stake in the business. Buffett has been doing the interview rounds the last few days. He said he believes this is code a repudiation of the original vision of the 2015 merger. There’s a lot that’s gone wrong with the business the last few years. It’s really unclear, though, whether trying to turn the ship around, so to speak, from that decision made a decade ago is actually going to solve the problems that Kraft Heinz is facing.

Travis Hoium: Lou, I’m going to put you on the spot. We have two companies. I’m going to know which one you like better. Global Taste Elevation, $15.4 billion in 2024 sales, $4 billion in adjusted EBITDA. They will have Heinz, Philadelphia cream cheese, Craft Mac & Cheese or you get North American Grocery, $10.4 billion in sales, 2.3 billion in adjusted EBITDA. You get craft singles and lunchables. Which one are you taking?

Lou Whiteman: Probably want to take the first one, but gosh, you can’t get enough craft singles. The world revolves on craft signals.

Travis Hoium: Which one do you want, Rachel?

Rachel Warren: I got to say, Global Taste Elevation just sounds more exciting as a business.

Travis Hoium: It just rolls off the tongue.

Rachel Warren: It really does. It’s just so easy to say. Say it 10 times fast.

Travis Hoium: When we come back, we are going to talk about the hot IPO market. You’re listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. The IPO market has suddenly opened up again with some huge IPOs from Circle Figma and Chime already this year, and we learned that Klarna, Figure Technology Solutions and Gemini Space Solutions are pricing their offerings. Stripe and Databricks seem to be waiting in the wings. Is this a healthy IPO market? Are we entering some 2021 style frenzy, given some of these stocks? I think Circle was up almost 10X from its IPO price. What do you think is going on here, Rachel?

Rachel Warren: I think, first, it is worth noting. In July of this year, we saw the most IPOs since November of 2021. We have seen a lot of recent IPOs really focus on areas around AI, crypto. There’s been a lot of strong first day or first week’s gains. There’s been a lot of focus as well in the IPO space this year on Fintech and other service oriented business. I don’t think it’s a one-to-one with what we saw in 2021. We obviously haven’t reached those levels yet in terms of companies entering the public markets, but it’s also a very different environment for the market for investors. A lot of these companies that are going public are tech, blockchain, crypto companies. With the passage of the Genius Act, there’s been a heightened appetite for those types of businesses. I think that that is very much being reflected in the types of companies that are now entertaining public offerings. Klarna, we’ve been waiting for a long time for them to actually formally announce their IPO after they had halted those plans earlier in the year. They’re targeting a valuation of up to $14 billion in their US IPO. Figure is another blockchain lender that said they’re going to go public. They’re looking at a valuation of about four billion. Then notably, you have Gemini. That’s the crypto exchange that was co-founded by the Winklevoss Twins, and they’re looking for a valuation around 2.2 billion. I think a lot of this is hype around AI and crypto, not all of it, certainly, but as always, it’s so important to take each company on its merits. The opportunities are there, but there’s a lot of hype and excitement right now, and sometimes differentiating that from a viable business, I think, can be really tough in this market.

Travis Hoium: Lou, IPOs are good. We need to have exits for some of these companies that have been staying private for longer than we have seen historically. Amazon and NVIDIA came public in the 1990s. When they were really small businesses, we don’t really see that today, even a company like Figure, Circle very well established, if Stripe does come public, that’s been rumored for what seems like a decade at this point. But how are you thinking about the IPO market that we have today, and potentially, considering these investments?

Lou Whiteman: For some context, yes. We’ve had a couple of hundred IPOs already this year. That’s up from 154 in ’23, so we are up. But there are over 1,000 in 2021. We are not anywhere near that level. Travis, I think a lot of a frenzy, and I do think there is some frenzy. But like you say, these are names that they’re quite mature. We know the names. There is just this demand because there’s built in familiarity. We want these companies. But look, the best advice is that, two things can be true at the same time. These can be great companies, and there can be a frenzy that makes the IPO dangerous. I think both of those things are true. If you look at Figma, Figma has lost half of its value since August 1st. I welcome these companies to the public. This is much different than the SPAC boom when it was all pre-revenue. I think this is healthy. But if I’m an investor, I’m not diving in on Day 1. I’m going to let these things play out. I don’t know if all of them will do what Figma did, but I think patience is the best bet now. If these companies are as good as we think they are, you can get in after a couple of months and still do fine over time.

Travis Hoium: One example with that is CoreWeave, and this is something we need to consider as well, there’s typically some lockup period for insiders who are not selling during the IPO. Their lockup period just ended. I believe insiders sold seven million shares of CoreWeave. Lou, that may just be another reason to wait it out. It’s OK to be six months late not get in on Day 1. Even some of the best companies in the world, Facebook [Meta‘s] traded below its IPO price. That was, I think, the first few weeks, but eventually the hype cycle typically wears off, whether it’s 2022 or 2023 that you jump into those 2021 IPOs or whether it’s just a few months later.

Lou Whiteman: Exactly. Look, everybody loves the excitement on Day 1. You love the pop. You love all that, but real wealth is created over the next five, 10 years by investing in good company, so you don’t have to be in Day 1.

Travis Hoium: Even getting in late on a IPO, like Google, a few years late would have been very good for investors, so something to keep in mind with that long-term. 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 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. For Lou Whiteman, Rachel Warren, 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.

There’s certainly no shortage of hype surrounding relatively new stock Figma (FIG -4.22%) these days. And understandably so. This seemingly simple company is growing like crazy, recently reporting a year-over-year quarterly top line of improvement of 41%, with more of the same on the horizon.

Unfortunately, hype alone doesn’t guarantee bullishness. This stock’s down by more than half of its early August post-IPO surge high, in fact, with much of that setback in response to what seemed like healthy Q2 numbers posted this past week.

Still, many investors insist this weakness is an opportunity rather than an omen, and are using the pullback to step into a position they expect to ultimately soar. Are they right? Could a $10,000 investment in this young ticker turn into a million dollars or more in the foreseeable future?

First things first.

What is Figma anyway?

What’s Figma? The correct answer to the question seems too simple to be true. Yet, it is. Figma is an online collaboration platform that allows multiple members of the same team to co-create and edit visual user interfaces for mobile apps and websites. That’s it. That’s all it does.

OK, this description arguably understates the power of the technological tool. Figma’s cloud-based software helps users build the look of an interactive app or web page from the ground up, change it as often as needed, and facilitate communication between a team’s members as any updates are made. And, though it’s meant for non-coders and non-engineers, a feature called Dev Mode (“dev” being short for “developer”) can easily turn a layout into the computer code needed to make it work in the real world. Figma also offers digital whiteboards and slideshow presentation templates.

By and large, though, the company’s core competency is simply helping organizations easily build what their customers see when using that organization’s app or website.

The thing is, there’s a clear and growing demand for such a solution. Figma’s recently reported Q2 top line grew 41% year over year to nearly $250 million. The company’s guidance calls for comparable growth through the rest of the year, too, with the bulk of its mostly recurring revenue coming from existing customers simply adding more features or users to their subscription. Figma’s also reliably profitable (albeit only marginally, for now) despite its small size and fairly young age.

And yet, Figma’s stock tumbled again in response to Wednesday’s second-quarter results. While it was only a wild guess as to how much the company should have reported in profits for the three-month stretch, what was essentially a breakeven clearly wasn’t good enough for most investors.

Or maybe that wasn’t the reason for the setback at all.

Nothing’s ever unusual in the wake of an IPO

It’s a frustrating truth — but it takes a while for newly minted stocks to shake off all of their post-public-offering volatility. It’s also worth detailing that even the stocks that do end up soaring in the long run often suffer major — and sometimes prolonged — sell-offs first.

Case in point: Meta, when it was still called Facebook. It was all the rage before and shortly after its May 2012 IPO. Three months later, however, it had nearly been halved from the price of its first trade as a publicly traded issue. It wouldn’t reclaim that price again until more than a year later.

Rival social networking outfit Snap (parent to Snapchat) ran its shareholders through a similar wringer that still hasn’t run its complete course yet. Although this stock was red-hot following its late-2020 public offering all the way through October of 2021, shares then began what would turn into a sell-off of more than 80% in less than a year, leaving the stock well below its first trade’s price. It’s still roughly at that depressed price today, in fact.

It’s not all bad news, though. Artificial intelligence data center support provider Coreweave got a bit of a wobbly start following its March public offering, but finally found its footing in April and is still much higher than it was then, despite a more recent lull.

But what’s this got to do with Figma? It’s a reminder that the market doesn’t really know how to price — or even what to do with — newly created stocks. Investors innately understand that stocks are usually volatile after their initial public offering. Investors also know, however, that in many cases things end up paying off anyway, even if that ticker’s fundamental argument doesn’t hold much water yet.

In other words, there’s really no way of telling when, where, or even if Figma shares will recover. It’s got more to do with feelings and investors’ perceptions, which are fickle and impossible to predict. It could be months, if not years, before this ticker actually reflects the underlying company’s prospects.

Data source: SimplyWallSt.com. Chart by author.

Or the company may run into a headwind before the stock even gets a chance to do so.

One gaping vulnerability too big to ignore

But the question remains: Could investing $10,000 in Figma today make you a millionaire at any reasonable point in your lifetime? After all, clearly, there’s a growing demand for the interface design collaboration software it provides.

Never say never. But, probably not — just not for the reason you might think, like the stock’s outrageous valuation of nearly 30 times its sales. Not just earnings, but sales, versus the software’s industrywide average price to sales ratio of about 10.

Putting the sheer difficulty of trading stocks with recent IPOs aside for a moment, Figma’s got a much bigger problem. That is, there’s no real moat to speak of here. That just means there’s little to nothing to prevent a bigger and deeper-pocketed rival from seeing the success that Figma is enjoying with its platform and replicating the idea for itself. There’s certainly nothing legally preventing it from happening, anyway. While processes, machinery designs, or new creations can all be patented, a mere premise or a business idea isn’t protected in this way.

Image source: Getty Images.

And don’t think for a minute that would-be competitors aren’t already at least thinking about it, either, particularly now that Figma has proven this business is profitable, as well as highly marketable. Marketing and graphics software outfit Adobe already made an acquisition offer to Figma, in fact. While it ultimately ran into too many regulatory hurdles to be feasible, the fact that Adobe was willing to pay such a premium for Figma all the way back in 2023 underscores its confidence in the marketability of Figma’s technology.

If not Adobe, perhaps Microsoft might find a way of adding this sort of interface-design platform to its lineup of cloud-based productivity and team-collaboration tools. Odds are good that at least most of Figma’s paying customers are already familiar with and using one or two Microsoft-made products anyway.

You get the idea. It wouldn’t take much to launch a viable alternative to Figma. If another player wasn’t interested before, they’re certainly more likely to be interested now in the wake of well-publicized growth for its simple business.

Bottom line? Buy it if you must. Just know what it is you’re buying. You’re not investing in a growth business with proven staying power — at least not yet. You’re betting that the market is going to change its mind about this stock in the very foreseeable future. And that’s a pretty risky proposition.

Damon Dash, the hip-hop mogul and record executive who co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records with Jay-Z and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, detailed dire financial straits as he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last week.

The 54-year-old New York native claimed in his voluntary petition, reviewed by The Times, that he is in debt to the tune of $25.3 million. The petition, filed Thursday in Florida, says Dash makes no monthly income and has $4,350 to his name — including $100 in cash, a $500 cellphone and two guns worth $750.

A legal representative for Dash did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment on Monday.

Dash’s petition says he owes a total of $25,303,049.47 to as many as 49 creditors, with a majority of that (about $19.1 million) owed to the government in the form of taxes and other debts. He also owes nearly $648,000 in domestic support obligations to ex-wife Rachel Roy and ex-girlfriend Cindy Morales, the petition said. Dash and Roy were married from 2005 to 2009 and share two daughters. Dash shares a son with Morales, and has additional children from other relationships.

The petition confirms reports that Dash’s one-third share of Roc-A-Fella Records was auctioned to the New York Department of Taxation and Finance in August 2024 to help pay off his tax debt. Dash claims he is also owed a “possible” but unspecified amount of money from Burke, and also “unknown” amounts of money from his “possible” claims against actor Claudia Jordan, filmmaker Josh Webber and others he has battled in court.

“Dear Frank” filmmaker Webber and production company Muddy Water Pictures — also mentioned in Dash’s petition — sued the music entrepreneur for copyright infringement and defamation in 2019. A jury sided with the filmmakers in the spring of 2022 and ordered Dash to pay more than $800,000 in damages, but tensions from that decision have dragged into 2025. Webber last month accused Dash and the businessman’s girlfriend of hiding assets that would help pay off the hefty judgment, Complex reported.

Webber also sued Dash for libel and slander in April 2024. Dash was ordered earlier this year to pay the filmmaker $4 million.

As reports of his decision to file for bankruptcy spread, Dash seemingly took ownership of the financial revelations. On Instagram, he reshared a post from hip-hop-centric website WorldStar about his legal woes to his own page.

“Now let’s get to work #staytuned,” Dash captioned his post.

Alibaba Group (BABA 4.08%) has tested investors’ patience over the past few years. From regulatory crackdowns to slowing consumer spending and intensifying competition from Pinduoduo and Meituan, the company went from China’s undisputed tech champion to a stock many investors gave up on.

But the latest results suggest there are reasons to turn more optimistic. While risks remain, Alibaba is showing early signs of strategic progress in areas that matter for the long run. Here are three reasons investors should take another look.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Cloud and AI are driving real growth

For years, Alibaba Cloud was a disappointment to investors. Despite being China’s market leader, growth slowed and profits remained elusive. That narrative is beginning to change.

In its June 2025 quarter (fiscal Q1 2026), Alibaba reported cloud revenue up 26% year over year to RMB 33.4 billion ($4.7 billion), significantly outpacing the company’s overall revenue growth of 10%. Even more telling, management disclosed that artificial intelligence (AI)-related revenue grew at triple-digit rates for the eighth consecutive quarter, and now accounts for more than 20% of Alibaba Cloud’s external revenue.

That’s not just a rebound — it’s a structural shift. AI workloads are far more compute-intensive than traditional hosting, which means higher revenue per customer, better margins, and stickier client relationships. With its large language model, Tongyi Qianwen, along with AI-powered enterprise tools, Alibaba is no longer just a cloud infrastructure provider. It’s becoming an AI platform, which could prove to be a durable growth engine.

2. Building strategic resilience with domestic AI chips

Another reason for optimism is Alibaba’s investment in semiconductor design. Reports indicate the company is testing its own AI inference chip, a critical step in reducing dependence on U.S. technology amid export restrictions.

To be clear, Alibaba isn’t about to replace Nvidia for training large-scale models. But inference — running AI models in real-world applications — is where much of the usage (and monetization) occurs. By developing its own inference chips, Alibaba is hedging against supply chain risks and ensuring it can scale AI services without being entirely at the mercy of geopolitical tensions.

This strategy matters because it protects Alibaba’s ability to commercialize AI across its businesses — from cloud computing to e-commerce and logistics. And while there is no plan to offer these chips to external customers, there is no reason to think that this cannot change in the future, opening up a new potential revenue source.

In other words, Alibaba’s investment in domestic chips is both a defensive and potentially offensive move that investors should not overlook.

3. Encouraging signs of a sentiment shift

Finally, sentiment may be slowly turning in Alibaba’s favor. Following the latest results, Mizuho, Bernstein, and Citi all raised their price targets or reiterated buy/outperform ratings, pointing to cloud growth and AI adoption as key catalysts.

Analysts’ upgrades don’t guarantee a smooth recovery. In fact, Alibaba has plenty more to do to regain long-term investors’ confidence, such as returning to sustainable growth in its e-commerce business, reducing the losses of its other companies, and growing its other ventures, such as Ding Talk and entertainment.

But when Wall Street begins to rerate a stock after years of negativity, it often signals a shift in how investors view the company’s future potential. If Alibaba can execute in the coming quarters, there’s a good chance that the stock price may start to reflect these positive developments.

For perspective, Alibaba’s stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of just 2.4 times, which is just a fraction of its peak valuation of 15.5 times. So, owning the stock now offers downside protection, as well as upside opportunity.

What it means for investors

Alibaba is far from risk-free. Competition in e-commerce remains fierce, and China’s macroeconomic backdrop is still uncertain.

But beneath the noise, Alibaba is showing encouraging signs: Its cloud business is gaining momentum thanks to AI, it’s building strategic resilience with domestic chip development, and sentiment is finally beginning to thaw.

For long-term investors, that combination may be the clearest reason in years to be cautiously optimistic about holding Alibaba stock.

Beaten-down chemical industry stock Dow (DOW -2.27%) absorbed another body blow on Monday. Investors traded out of the company’s shares, on the back of an analyst’s bearish adjustment, to the point where they closed the day more than 2% lower in value. In contrast, the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.21%) ended up rising by 0.2%.

A cut to the chemical giant

The pundit behind the move was Jefferies‘ Laurence Alexander. Well before market open that day, he reduced his Dow price target to $23 per share from his preceding $28. He maintained his hold recommendation on the shares in the process.

Image source: Getty Images.

Alexander’s new take on Dow was due to several factors, including the company’s lingering supply chain woes, according to reports. The analyst also wrote that there was a risk that a potential interest rate cut would take some time to result in increased demand for the company’s wares.

On the spending side, Alexander opined that with such ongoing pressures, Dow management will be compelled to continue reining in capital expenditures. This, plus anticipated restructuring measures in 2026 and the following year, are likely to affect the company’s fundamentals negatively.

Not a good time for the industry

Dow, a long-standing incumbent in the chemical sector, is a highly unfavored stock these days. Over the summer, the company cut its quarterly dividend in half; as this payout was a major draw pulling people into the stock, many investors sold on the news.

Globally, the industry is in a significant down cycle, in many ways still adjusting from oversupply at the start of this decade. The tariff policy of the current presidential administration isn’t helping sentiment, either.

Given all that, Alexander’s cautious move feels entirely justified.

Artificial intelligence (AI) investing remains a primary driver in the market, fueled by massive capital expenditures in data centers by AI hyperscalers. There are numerous AI stocks that investors can consider right now, and this list can serve as a starting point for further research on which AI stocks appear to be great buys.

I’ve got 10 on my short list for top AI stocks to buy now, but there are likely many more beyond this.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Nvidia

Nvidia (NVDA 0.77%) has been a leader in AI investing since its inception, primarily due to its industry-leading graphics processing units (GPUs), which have been widely utilized to train and run AI models. The company projects monster growth for its GPUs over the next five years, as it expects data center capital expenditures to rise from $600 billion this year to $3 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030.

We’ll see if this projection pans out, but there’s still massive computing demand for AI, and Nvidia is the top provider in this segment.

2. Broadcom

Another company heavily involved in this sector is Broadcom (AVGO 3.05%). Broadcom has two major products being used in AI data centers: its connectivity switches and its custom AI accelerators. The biggest growth story for Broadcom is these custom AI accelerators, which are alternatives to Nvidia’s GPUs that are designed in conjunction with the end user.

This could be a huge market for Broadcom, and makes me bullish on the stock.

3. Taiwan Semiconductor

Neither Nvidia nor Broadcom can produce chips themselves, so they outsource the fabrication work of their designs to Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM 1.44%). TSMC is the world’s largest chip foundry and has established a reputation for continuous innovation and delivering best-in-class product yields.

It’s slated to capitalize on the massive AI arms race spending, regardless of which companies are using computing devices, making it an excellent AI investment on the chip side of AI.

4. ASML

ASML (ASML 1.88%) is a key equipment supplier to chip foundries, such as Taiwan Semiconductor, as it holds a technological monopoly with its primary product: the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine. This allows chip manufacturers to lay down microscopic electrical traces. Without ASML, none of the cutting-edge chip technology we know today would be possible.

With the stock down about 30% from its all-time high (at the time of this writing), it appears to be a tremendous opportunity to scoop up while it’s on sale.

5. Alphabet

Moving to the AI hyperscaler side, Alphabet (GOOG -0.35%) (GOOGL -0.32%) looks like a strong investment. Although many assumed that Alphabet had fallen too far behind in the AI arms race to be a worthy competitor, it has emerged as one of the top players. Its generative AI model, Gemini, is one of the best available, and with Alphabet integrating it into its Google Search engine, it’s easily one of the most used.

Alphabet still trades at a discount to its big tech peers despite its recent success, and that could be a prime opportunity to make a profit over the next five years.

6. Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms (META -0.02%), the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is also heavily investing in AI. It’s spent a ton of money hiring the best AI talent possible, and now it has reached a point where it’s focusing that all-star lineup on various AI goals.

Time will tell whether this is a winning strategy, but Meta is giving itself the best chance to succeed by equipping itself with the brightest minds to lead its various AI initiatives.

7. Amazon

Amazon (AMZN 1.44%) may not be the first company you think of when you hear AI, but its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is a huge part of the AI build-out trend. Most companies can’t afford to build out a massive data center specifically for AI, so they rent it from a cloud computing provider like AWS.

AWS is a significant contributor to Amazon’s profitability, generating 53% of Amazon’s operating profits in Q2, despite accounting for only 18% of revenue. Cloud computing has a massive tailwind blowing in its favor, and investing in companies with this business is a genius idea.

8. Microsoft

AWS is the largest cloud computing provider, but Microsoft‘s (MSFT 0.61%) Azure is quickly gaining ground. Azure has grown rapidly over the past few years, with its Q4 FY 2025 growth rate (ending June 30) coming in at 39%. That’s far quicker than AWS’s 17% growth rate, making Microsoft an interesting stock to watch in this space.

9. SoundHound AI

SoundHound AI (SOUN 6.87%) is quite a bit smaller than nearly every company on this list, but it’s growing at a rapid pace. SoundHound AI’s technology combines AI with audio recognition, which can be used to automate millions of jobs. In Q2, its revenue grew at a jaw-dropping 217% year-over-year pace, providing an incredibly bullish outlook for the future.

Management believes they can deliver 50% organic growth for the foreseeable future, which would lead to an incredible stock performance.

10. The Trade Desk

Last on this list is The Trade Desk (TTD -0.11%), which has struggled lately. The stock is down over 60% from its all-time high because it’s experiencing issues transitioning users from its old platform to its new AI-first platform, Kokai.

However, The Trade Desk is well-positioned to capitalize on the digital ad market. Once it gets the transition on track, it will become a leading competitor in a rapidly growing space.

Shares of Shopify (SHOP -0.38%) were climbing the charts last month after the e-commerce software superstar turned in strong results in its second-quarter earnings report. It also benefited from an improving outlook for interest rate cuts, which should help Shopify as a growth stock and one that relies on small businesses that benefit from cheap capital.

Additionally, several Wall Street analysts weighed in on the stock with price target hikes. By the end of the month, Shopify had gained 16%, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

As you can see from the chart below, Shopify stock actually pulled back following the post-earnings surge, due in part to its concerns about its valuation.

Image source: Getty Images.

Shopify shines again

Shopify struggled in the aftermath of the pandemic and with a botched expansion into logistics through the Deliverr acquisition. But it delivered another quarter of strong growth on the top and bottom lines, showing those days are long behind it.

Revenue in the quarter jumped 31% to $2.68 billion, ahead of the consensus at $2.55 billion, while gross merchandise volume was up by the same percentage to $87.8 billion.

Margins were also solid, with a free-cash-flow margin of 16% and adjusted earnings per share of $0.35, which topped estimates at $0.29.

Shopify jumped 22% on the day of the report, showing investors were clearly impressed with the results, but shares pulled back over much of the rest of the month on valuation concerns. Shopify now trades for a price-to-sales ratio of 19 and a price-to-earnings ratio of 81, valuations that typically apply to smaller companies, though Shopify is still growing rapidly.

One analyst, Phillip Securities, downgraded the stock to neutral but raised its price target to $150 in regards to a valuation that appears “stretched.”

What’s next for Shopify

Shopify’s guidance was strong as well, calling for a revenue growth in the mid- to high-20% range for the third quarter, and a similar free-cash-flow margin to Q2, showing it expects its momentum to continue.

Overall, the business is in great shape. Its merchant base continues to grow. It’s finding new ways to monetize it, and it’s delivering solid profit growth.

Still, the valuation concerns are valid. At this point, investors shouldn’t expect much multiple expansion from the stock. For the stock to move higher, it will have to do so by growing its revenue and earnings, though it’s plenty capable of doing that.

Opendoor Technologies (OPEN -6.69%) stock popped by as much as 10% Monday morning. The stock remains highly volatile, and its next move showed investors why it’s a risky bet. Shares lost all of those gains and more in heavy midday trading.

As of 1:22 p.m. ET, Opendoor stock was lower by 3.8% on the day.

Image source: Getty Images.

Meme stocks aren’t for investors

Traders who frequent the forums on social media platforms like Reddit have turned Opendoor into a meme stock. That has led to retail traders and some investors following it closely. Shares popped early Monday after reports were published highlighting a 30,000-share purchase by Opendoor’s interim CEO.

Those reports triggered some heavy trading in the name; it surpassed its 65-day average trading volume only halfway through the session. The problem is that Shrisha Radhakrishna’s 30,000-share purchase occurred on Aug. 28 — after he was named as temporary CEO when Carrie Wheeler stepped down from the top job.

Another catalyst driving Monday’s early move higher was a push on social media over the weekend to bring back co-founder Keith Rabois. There has been no indication from Rabois that he would be returning to Opendoor.

Another factor that may be contributing to jumps by Opendoor is the stock’s high short interest. As of mid-August, more than 24% of Opendoor’s stock was held by short-sellers. That means any move higher may get enhanced by a short squeeze.

All of those things are really just short-term noise for long-term investors, though. Opendoor’s business has been struggling amid a sluggish housing market. With the Federal Reserve expected to begin lowering its benchmark interest rates soon, the housing market could get some relief. However, with retail traders driving the action for Opendoor stock, investing in it remains a risky proposition.

WASHINGTON — Former President Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.

The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.

Biden’s library team has the daunting task of raising money for the 46th president’s legacy project at a moment when his party has become fragmented about the way ahead and many big Democratic donors have stopped writing checks.

It also remains to be seen whether corporations and institutional donors that have historically donated to presidential library projects — regardless of the party of the former president — will be more hesitant to contribute, with President Trump maligning Biden on a daily basis and savaging groups he deems left-leaning.

The political climate has changed

“There’s certainly folks — folks who may have been not thinking about those kinds of issues who are starting to think about them,” Gifford, who was named chairman of the library board, told The Associated Press. “That being said … we’re not going to create a budget, we’re not going to set a goal for ourselves that we don’t believe we can hit.”

The cost of presidential libraries has soared over the decades.

The George H.W. Bush library’s construction cost came in at about $43 million when it opened in 1997. Bill Clinton’s cost about $165 million. George W. Bush’s team met its $500 million fundraising goal before the library was dedicated.

The Obama Foundation has set a whopping $1.6 billion fundraising goal for construction, sustaining global programming and seeding an endowment for the Chicago presidential center that is slated to open next year.

Biden’s library team is still in the early stages of planning, but Gifford predicted that the cost of the project would probably “end up somewhere in the middle” of the Obama Presidential Center and the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Biden advisers have met with officials operating 12 of the 13 presidential libraries with a bricks and mortar presence that the National Archives and Records Administration manages. (They skipped the Herbert Hoover library in Iowa, which is closed for renovations.) They’ve also met Obama library officials to discuss programming and location considerations and have begun talks with Delaware leaders to assess potential partnerships.

Private money builds them

Construction and support for programming for the libraries are paid for with private funds donated to the nonprofit organizations established by the former president.

The initial vision is for the Biden library to include an immersive museum detailing Biden’s four years in office.

The Bidens also want it to be a hub for leadership, service and civic engagement that will include educational and event space to host policy gatherings.

Biden, who ended his bid for a second White House term 107 days before last year’s election, has been relatively slow to move on presidential library planning compared with most of his recent predecessors.

Clinton announced Little Rock, Arkansas, would host his library weeks into his second term. Barack Obama selected Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side as the site for his presidential center before he left office, and George W. Bush selected Southern Methodist University in Dallas before finishing his second term.

One-termer George H.W. Bush announced in 1991, more than a year before he would lose his reelection bid, that he would establish his presidential library at Texas A&M University after he left office.

Trump taps legal settlements for his

Trump was mostly quiet about plans for a presidential library after losing to Biden in 2020 and has remained so since his return to the White House this year. But the Republican has won millions of dollars in lawsuits against Paramount Global, ABC News, Meta and X in which parts of those settlements are directed for a future Trump library.

Trump has also accepted a free Air Force One replacement from the Qatar government. He says the $400 million plane would be donated to his future presidential library, similar to how the Boeing 707 used by President Ronald Reagan was decommissioned and put on display as a museum piece, once he leaves office.

Others named to Biden’s library board are former senior White House aides Elizabeth Alexander, Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón and Cedric Richmond; David Cohen, a former ambassador to Canada and telecom executive; Tatiana Brandt Copeland, a Delaware philanthropist; Jeff Peck, Biden Foundation treasurer and former Senate aide; Fred C. Sears II, Biden’s longtime friend; former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh; former Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young; and former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell.

Biden has deep ties to Pennsylvania but ultimately settled on Delaware, the state that was the launching pad for his political career. He was first elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and spent 36 years representing Delaware in the Senate before serving as Obama’s vice president.

The president was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he lived until age 10. He left when his father, struggling to make ends meet, moved the family to Delaware after landing a job there selling cars.

Working-class Scranton became a touchstone in Biden’s political narrative during his long political career. He also served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania after his vice presidency, leading a center on diplomacy and global engagement at the school named after him.

Gifford said ultimately the Bidens felt that Delaware was where the library should be because the state has “propelled his entire political career.”

Elected officials in Delaware are cheering Biden’s move.

“To Delaware, he will always be our favorite son,” Gov. Matt Meyer said. “The new presidential library here in Delaware will give future generations the chance to see his story of resilience, family, and never forgetting your roots.”

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

Large-cap tech offers no shortage of options, but a few names clearly stand apart. Their businesses are durable, their cash flow is steady, and their growth prospects look especially bright over the next decade.

After fresh midyear updates, Microsoft (MSFT 0.75%), Alphabet (GOOGL 0.14%), and Amazon (AMZN 1.83%) remain no-brainer additions for a growth-focused portfolio. Each has just posted healthy results and is spending aggressively where it matters most: cloud and artificial intelligence (AI). Best of all, all three companies benefit from diversified business models and have enduring characteristics thanks to their market-leading competitive advantages, making them great long-term investments.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strong quarters across the board

Microsoft‘s summer update was exceptionally robust. Azure’s (the tech giant’s cloud computing business) growth paced the quarter, and the company continued returning cash to shareholders even as it scales AI across its products. For its fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 (a period ending on June 30), Microsoft’s total revenue rose 18% while Azure and other cloud services grew 39%. And highlighting its appreciation for shareholders, the company returned $9.4 billion via dividends and buybacks.

Alphabet — the owner of Google Cloud and Google properties like Gmail, Google search, and YouTube — similarly posted broad-based strength. Search and YouTube saw double-digit gains, and the company’s cloud computing arm, Google Cloud, was the star again. In Q2, Alphabet’s total revenue rose 14% to $96.4 billion, while Google Cloud revenue jumped 32% to $13.6 billion as demand for AI infrastructure and new generative tools widened the customer base. Management also highlighted a larger capital expenditure plan to meet that demand.

Meanwhile, Amazon‘s update echoed the same theme: Exceptional growth in cloud computing accompanied by robust growth elsewhere. The e-commerce and cloud-computing giant’s second-quarter net sales increased 13% year over year to $167.7 billion, and Amazon Web Services (Amazon’s cloud-computing operation) saw sales grow 17.5% to $30.9 billion. This well-rounded growth boosted operating income 31% year over year to $19.2 billion.

Catalysts and risks

For all three companies, the common thread behind some of their biggest opportunities is AI. However, this is also one of their biggest risks, as building out AI capabilities is expensive.

For Microsoft, its near-term catalysts are Copilot monetization, AI consumption on Azure, and a steady cadence of continued enterprise seat expansion. But the company is also clear about the trade-off that comes with moving fast in AI — cloud gross margin has dipped as it builds out infrastructure, a reasonable price to pay for durable share gains. Of course, it’s worth noting that Azure’s gross margin is greater than the company’s overall gross margin, so if there’s a trade-off of improving this high-margin business in exchange for the segment’s margin coming down a bit, it’s still a net win for the overall company.

Alphabet’s second quarter demonstrated broad momentum. The tech company’s “Search and other” revenue rose 12%, and YouTube ad sales climbed 13%. But the big catalyst right now is in Google Cloud, with 32% revenue growth and a 20.7% operating margin (up from 11.3% in the year-ago quarter), showing that it’s now pulling in meaningful profits. But its capital expenditures, as the company pursues AI integrations across its products, are steep. Alphabet expects to spend about $85 billion this year on capital expenditures, driven largely by its efforts to expand AI capacity. For long-term investors, that spend should extend the company’s advantages in Search, YouTube, subscriptions, and cloud computing. But it also raises the bar for execution.

At Amazon, two engines matter most over the next few years. First, AWS is broadening from core compute and storage to a richer AI stack — foundation models, managed services, and agentic tools — which should deepen customer spend. Second, North America retail continues to optimize fulfillment and last-mile density, supporting higher operating margins even without upbeat macro assumptions. But Amazon is similarly spending a fortune on capital expenditures to support its AI ambitions, so much so that its trailing-12-month free cash flow (operating cash less capital expenditures) is $18.2 billion — far below the $53 billion it earned in the year-ago trailing-12-month period.

These stocks aren’t cheap. Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon’s price-to-earnings ratios are about 36, 25, and 35, respectively, at the time of this writing. Adding to the risk, all three are investing heavily right now. But that’s precisely the point. The spending is tied to products customers are already using more of every quarter. Therefore, for investors seeking quality assets with strong long-term growth potential, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon are good choices and look poised to live up to their valuations as they invest heavily in their future growth, increasing the odds of more years of robust growth ahead.

Shares of satellite communications company EchoStar (SATS 15.84%), owner of the Sling and Boost Mobile brands, soared by 18.2% through 10 a.m. ET Monday — for reasons that have nothing to do with either Sling or Boost Mobile.

On Monday morning, EchoStar announced it will sell its AWS-4 and H-block satellite spectrum licenses to SpaceX for the latter’s use with Starlink. The total sales price: $19 billion.

Image source: Getty Images.

EchoStar’s big spectrum sale

EchoStar is inking a cash and stock deal to sell off some of its spectrum, which the Federal Communications Commission has criticized the company for failing to make full use of. SpaceX will pay $8.5 billion cash, cover about $2 billion worth of interest payments on EchoStar’s debt to its lenders between now and November 2027, and give the company $8.5 billion worth of SpaceX stock.

Additionally, the companies have agreed that SpaceX will sell back to EchoStar access to the spectrum, for use by Boost Mobile subscribers desiring Starlink Direct to Cell service on their phones.

What this means for EchoStar

EchoStar says it expects that this spectrum sale, in conjunction with another one that it announced previously, “will resolve the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) inquiries,” and put its legal troubles to bed. That alone partly explains investors’ positive reaction to the news.

And then there’s the cash.

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, EchoStar — which only has a market cap of about $22 billion — is carrying more than $30 billion in debt, and paid out more than $480 million in interest last year. SpaceX’s cash payments and interest coverage will significantly bolster EchoStar’s balance sheet. Additionally, the stock portion of the sale gives EchoStar a chance to participate in the success of SpaceX. So this seems like a good deal for all involved.

For decades, UnitedHealth Group (UNH -0.40%) could do no wrong. The company raised its dividend by an exceptional 7,266% from 2010 to 2025, while shares rose as much as 1,700% during this run.

But shares have fallen roughly 40% year to date as the company faces a host of problems, from the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of major business segment UnitedHealthcare, to federal investigations into allegedly fraudulent Medicare billing practices.

Nonetheless, shares surged 12% on Aug. 14 after filings revealed Berkshire Hathaway had bought over 5 million shares.

Berkshire’s move was seen as a major vote of confidence in the stock — and investors joined a stampede to follow Warren Buffett into the trade. Should you?

Image source: Getty Images.

Big growth potential for all segments

UnitedHealth operates through four segments. Its UnitedHealthcare segment provides consumer-oriented health benefit plans and services for employers. Optum Health provides healthcare management and financial services, while Optum Insight offers data analysis tools, consulting, and tech solutions to healthcare providers. Optum Rx is a direct-to-consumer platform offering pharmacy services and 190 million prescriptions per year to U.S. homes.

In its second-quarter report on July 29, the company reported quarterly revenue of $111.6 billion, up roughly 13% from the year-ago period. The trouble is with margins. For UnitedHealthcare, the biggest segment, operating margin fell from 6.2% in Q1 2025 to 2.4% last quarter. Combined, margin for the three Optum segments fell from 6.1% in Q1 2025 to 4.6% in Q2.

These declines are steep enough that, even with revenue on the upswing, earnings fell from $9.1 billion in Q1 2025 to $5.2 billion last quarter.

Rising medical costs are the chief headwind. In the July earnings report, new CEO Stephen Hensley acknowledged that UNH “significantly underestimated the accelerating medical trend,” and medical costs totaled $6.5 billion more than anticipated.

But management is under no such illusions now. They’re taking actions to boost efficiency and cut waste, from stepping up audits of clinical policy and payment integrity tools, to scaling artificial intelligence (AI) efforts to improve provider and patient experiences while driving down costs. Implementation of AI technologies is part of initiatives the company hopes can deliver almost $1 billion in cost reductions. Perhaps most significantly, the company is raising premiums after saying it underpriced Medicare Advantage plans in 2025.

In the meantime, each of these segments could grow significantly in the years ahead. UnitedHealthcare Employer & Individual just rolled out services in its 30th state, while Optum Rx’s growth outlook is 5%-8% annually. Optum Insight is targeting operating margin of 18%-22%, while the 4.7 million patients receiving value-based care from OptumHealth represent only a fraction of the nearly 340 million Americans who could fall under its 100-plus health plans.

It’s not just Berkshire buying

Berkshire Hathaway’s move in UnitedHealth is getting headlines. But billionaire David Tepper also scooped up 2.3 million shares, while Michael Burry of The Big Short fame bought 350,000 call options on the stock in a bet that shares would rise.

In addition, BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, bought over 1 million shares last quarter. Goldman Sachs bought over 1.1 million shares, while Renaissance Technologies (the fabled fund that achieved an average annual return of 66% for decades) bought over 1.35 million.

As for management, Stephen Hensley invested $25 million just days after becoming CEO, while the company’s CFO bought another $5 million worth in shares. All told, the insider buying of UNH stock outweighed insider selling by a nearly 4:1 margin last quarter.

As the investing legend Peter Lynch observed, insiders can sell for many reasons unrelated to a stock. But they buy for only one: They think shares will go up.

Why UnitedHealth is a buy for retail investors, too

Berkshire officials haven’t commented publicly on their rationale for buying UnitedHealthcare, but it’s possible to speculate on their reasons.

Warren Buffett has called cash flow the most important metric in assessing a business’s potential. In a 2000 letter to shareholders, he wrote that dividend yield, the price-to-earnings ratio, book value, and even growth rates “have nothing to do with valuation except to the extent they provide clues to the amount and timing of cash flows into and from the business.”

Positive cash flow shows the company can cover its obligations, return money to shareholders, and potentially pursue growth and expansion. After floundering in 2024, UnitedHealth’s trailing-12-month operating cash flow has rebounded to $29 billion compared to $24.2 billion at the end of last year.

And if price-to-earnings, dividend yield, and growth rates are only background clues to cash flow, these metrics seem to bode well for UnitedHealth, too.

The company’s price-to-earnings ratio of 13.7 is cheap compared to the S&P 500,
with its average P/E ratio of around 26, while revenue growth of 13% year over year further fuels the bull case. Meanwhile, the company’s recent 5.2% dividend increase — its 15th consecutive annual payout hike — brings its yield to 2.8% as I write this, nearly triple the S&P 500 average.

For investors willing to take a long-term approach and be rewarded with rising income in the meantime, UnitedHealth is a buy.