What Happened?
Shares of financial marketplace platform LendingTree (NASDAQ: TREE) fell 7.4% in the afternoon session after the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta’s Muse can buy goods online, respond to emails, and complete other tasks a user authorizes. Barron’s Anita Hamilton wrote Tuesday that this is already hitting travel sites, because Muse can book flights and places to stay. Expedia, Booking Holdings, Tripadvisor, and Airbnb were falling, she reported. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and William Tong wrote that if agents take 5% to 10% of travel, ride-hailing, and delivery business, the combined revenue loss could exceed $5 billion, Barron’s reported.
LendingTree is paid when a consumer comes to its site to request a loan. Muse completing that request without opening the site is the same problem Barron’s described for travel, applied to a lead instead of a booking. The 5% to 10% figure is a scenario for travel and delivery, not a measured loss at either company. Requests that start and finish inside Muse, rather than on LendingTree, would be the evidence.
The shares closed the day at $24.02, down 7.8% from the previous close.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks. Is now the time to buy LendingTree? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
What Is The Market Telling Us
LendingTree’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 36 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 1 day ago when the stock dropped 4.1% on the news that the rapid adoption of Meta’s new autonomous AI assistant, Muse, sparked concerns over structural disruption to digital marketplaces and digital advertising revenues. Meta’s Muse rose to the top free-app position in U.S. app stores, Business Insider reported, driven by growing consumer interest in personal AI agents capable of researching products, booking travel, and completing forms across external websites. The Wall Street Journal reported that Muse can buy goods online, send emails, and complete other tasks users authorize. The widespread use of autonomous shopping agents presents substantial risks to traditional e-commerce platforms. By managing product discovery before shoppers directly visit digital storefronts, these tools can bypass standard search listings and undermine lucrative sponsored ads and intermediary commission fees.
In reaction to that shift, Amazon blocked Muse from shopping on Amazon.com and asked Meta to remove the marketplace from the experience, a spokesperson told Business Insider.
Amazon has also sued Perplexity over automated shopping through its Comet browser and moved to restrict agents from Google and OpenAI, according to Business Insider. That is why lead-generation and marketplace names such as EverQuote, LendingTree, CarGurus, Cars.com, and Instacart, and travel intermediaries such as Expedia and Booking Holdings, traded lower together: their models depend on shoppers still arriving on a site where ads and commissions are charged.
LendingTree is down 53.2% since the beginning of the year, and at $24.11 per share, it is trading 65.8% below its 52-week high of $70.56 from September 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of LendingTree’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $152.97.
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