Bitcoin's Identity Crisis: Is It a Store of Value or a Speculative Toy?

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This is Invest Talk from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host, Justin Klein.

**Justin Klein** (1:25)
Good afternoon, fellow investors, and welcome back to Invest Talk. This is our Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 edition of Invest Talk, and happy Fed Day to everybody out there, which means there's a lot to discuss, a little bit more than usual. One of the eight Fed meetings happened today on the year, and the first half are behind us. So, we have four in the books, four more to go. And it's not about what happened in the first four, but it's about what is likely to happen for the next four as we have a new Fed chair.
That is the big news. What was the market reaction? How that might impact your portfolio? And much, much more. That's what today will be about. It'll be about helping you become a better investor, answering your finance and investment questions, bringing you actionable data and perspective so that you can make better decisions with your money. That's what this hour is dedicated to. Now, to that end, heads up, our next Wealth webinar is coming up less than two weeks away now.
June 30th, 12 to 1 p.m. Pacific Time, Beyond the Yield, How to Invest for Your Income Needs. So make sure you head over to investtalk.com and register. Now, in just a bit, we'll talk about today's Mark Performance and always run down the topics for the hour. But let's tackle this first caller question now.

**Dave** (2:55)
Hi, Dave from Ohio.
You got a question on Woodside Energy. WDS is a symbol. See what your thoughts are and if it would be a good long-term hold. Thank you.

**Justin Klein** (3:10)
Looking at Woodside Energy, WDS is the symbol. It's in the oil patch. It's E&P company. They have wells in Australia, mainly, but around the world.
Market cap is, where are we, about $40 billion.
Obviously, down the last few days, as oil prices have come down. See, does it pay dividend? Yeah, high dividend, 5.37%.
My issue, though, is the free cash flow is negative. Their balance sheet has a bit of debt, and their profitability is pretty meager. Only, return equity is only 8%.
Real strength is 51%, so it's kind of a middling name. But earnings this year is supposed to be up to 209, then down to $1.93 next year. This goes back to something I said a few shows ago, which is, if this crisis didn't produce a major super spike in oil, what will? It's hard for me to envision. Something that really pushes prices up so high that your average E&P company's profit margins are going to explode. And the old saying in the commodity market is always, what's the cure for high prices? Well, it's high prices. So even if you do get a spike, it's going to be very short-lived. And since the beginning of the year, this has moved up from about $15 all the way to go high around 25 So big move up over 60%. But now we're back down to $20.10.
So it was a 60-plus-percent move. It's now only about a 30-percent move. I think you're chasing this dividend. And I don't like that. It's one of my favorite, what I say all the time, I don't like chasing dividends. I like chasing good businesses. And this is just an okay business. I don't want okay businesses. I don't care about a high dividend. I want good businesses, good companies with high profit margins, with economic moats, et cetera. This is not one of them. If I'm investing in the oil and gas patch, I want refining capacity. I want downstream assets like pipelines. Those are the best types of businesses within this space.
And even as an EMP company, this is very middling. So, I'm passing on Woodside Energy Group Ltd. There we go. WDS is the symbol. Now, yesterday we had a great show. We looked into this story. Silver is now a monetary metal. And we answered a list of the questions on two stocks, New Holdings and Remitly Global, that were submitted via our YouTube channel. If you happen to miss it, go check it out. The best way to get every show is to follow Invest Talk wherever you get your podcast. Now, let's, they have a lot of ground to cover over the next 45 minutes or so, and time permitting, we'll get to all of it. First one is, is Bitcoin having an identity crisis? Is it a store of value or simply a speculative toy?