Friday Fast Five - 2/27/2026
by Hodges Investment Team, on February 27, 2026
Five interesting things that Hodges Capital research analysts discovered this week...
#1 Way More Than a Taxi: Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s autonomous driving unit, is on track to surpass one million paid weekly robotaxi rides in the U.S. by year-end, according to co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. The service is already operating in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. In Dallas, Waymo vehicles are currently running in a pre-commercial testing phase concentrated in the Uptown neighborhood. To accelerate safety and scalability, Waymo recently introduced the Waymo World Model, a DeepMind Genie 3–based driving simulator that generates hyper-realistic scenarios the fleet has never encountered in the real world. The system helps the company train its autonomous vehicles on extreme, low-probability edge cases.
#2 Distressed Debt: Investor anxiety is deepening across the software sector as AI-driven disruption threatens traditional legacy business models. The concern is spilling into credit markets: more than 15% of U.S. technology leveraged loans now trade at distressed levels within the Bloomberg U.S. Leveraged Loan Index—up sharply from 9.6% at the start of the year. This reflects growing skepticism about the resilience of software companies that have been slow to integrate or adapt to AI.
#3 One Big Beautiful Tax Refund: The One Big Beautiful Act, signed July 4, 2025, includes a suite of new deductions and credits expected to lift aggregate U.S. tax refunds by 30% or more versus 2025 levels. This equates to a one-time incremental cash stimulus estimated between $90–$150 billion, with consensus centering near $100 billion. It’s too early to gauge how taxpayers will deploy the extra liquidity, but historical patterns suggest a tilt toward consumer discretionary spending, durable goods, and possibly an amplified seasonal boost in equity fund inflows into U.S. markets.
#4 Now AI Has Wallets: Last week, we highlighted that AI agents are beginning to develop social behaviors. Now they’re getting wallets. During Coinbase’s 4Q25 earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong predicted that stablecoins will become the default currency for AI agents. His comments accelerated a growing narrative within developer communities: if autonomous software agents become meaningful economic actors, they will require a native, programmable payment rail—and stablecoins offer the most frictionless solution. Armstrong described stablecoins as the on-ramp and settlement layer for a world where AI agents transact continuously on behalf of humans (for example, booking travel automatically). Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire has gone further, suggesting that “literally billions” of AI agents could be using stablecoins within five years, positioning them as the primary medium of exchange in an agent-driven economy.
#5 Peak Wine: According to The Economist, global wine sales are declining—and it’s not just due to GLP-1 use or health-conscious younger generations. The publication cites a broader social and demographic shift toward a “lonelier and more atomized world.” Wine consumption has traditionally been rooted in shared, communal experiences. However, long-term cultural trends—fewer social gatherings and more individualized consumption patterns—are increasingly misaligned with that tradition. The result: a slow but persistent structural decline in wine demand.
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