Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - A 1700s Cobbler Is Going Public

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

We break down two IPOs on today’s show, one for your phone and one for your toes.  (00:38) Jason Moser and Bill Mann discuss: - How oil at $90 is and isn’t an inflationary pressure. - What to make of Apple’s latest iPhone release. - The scoop on two new IPOs – Arm Holdings and Birkenstock. (19:02) Ben Mezrich talks about the origin story of the meme stock and his book-turned-movie Dumb Money, in theaters this weekend.  (31:38) Jason and Bill break down two stocks on their radar: PayPal and Schwab. Stocks discussed: DAL, AAL, AAPL, ARM, BIRK, PYPL, SCHW Host: Dylan Lewis Guests: Jason Moser, Bill Mann, Ben Mezrich Producer: Mary Long Engineers: Rick Engdahl, Tim Sparks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've got to try breakfast at A&W. You've got to try breakfast at A&W. And what better way than with the delicious Pret Organic Coffee? Starting with just one dollar, all day, every day, now until December 31st. You've got to try breakfast at A&W. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. We're digging into two IPOs, one for your phone and one for your toes. Motley Fool Money starts now.

Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. But you can give them to the birds and bees. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio Show. I'm Dylan Lewis. Joining me in studio, Motley Fool Senior Analyst Jason Moser and Bill Mann. Great to have you both here.

Hey, how you doing, Dylan? We've got the inside story on the movie Dumb Money, the skinny on two new IPOs, and stocks on our radar. But we're going to kick off today talking about Texas tea. Bill, oil is up to $90 a barrel, up 50% since Lowe's this summer. What's going on here? Black gold is back. You thought that oil was yesterday's story.

Yeah, you know, oil is one of those things that I think because we use it all the time and we see every time we go out of the house, we see pricing, we're very sensitive to it. But yeah, and the price of oil is definitely looked through as the lens of future economic growth globally. It goes into absolutely everything. So, you know, obviously, OPEC and particularly the Saudis cutting production by a million barrels a day, they did two million earlier this year, has mattered because oil ultimately is a very narrow supply and demand story. So it does not take much of a dislocation for oil prices to go up quite a bit. So this is one of those stories that has a lot of different facets to it and a lot of different tack-on effects here.

Jason, we have spent so much time on this show talking about how tight the average household budget is. This seems to me like one of those things that's just going to add a little bit more cost to keep finding dollars in those budgets for consumers. It is absolutely something that households are concerned with, and rightly so. I mean, when you look at it from the bigger picture, household expenditures on gasoline, for example, I mean, obviously gasoline is a direct result of oil. um household expenditures and gasoline are consistently the most expensive category of household spending related directly to energy and they can actually quantify that in 2021 you have the u.s bureau of labor statistics consumer expenditure survey that's a mouthful i know uh good words there pal back to 2021 the average annual household spending on gasoline totaled

two thousand one hundred and forty eight dollars over the course of that year that's slightly more than electricity, natural gas, and fuel oil combined. So, I mean, think about that for a second. You realize how that plays in your day to day. It all of a sudden makes very, very clear sense as to why the fluctuations in oil prices can have such a drastic impact on consumers in such a short period of time. Bill, is this something we have to start factoring into the inflation story and things that we're monitoring there as well? All right. I tried to go this show without talking about it, but here we are. No, no, no. Here we are. Yeah. Look, if you really want to worry about oil, I just want to make a point. 15 years ago,

oil was above $100 a share, and now it's approaching $90. The rest of inflation in the United States in that period of time has been about 38%. So your dollar from 2008 now buys, let's do the math real quick, $0.62 worth of stuff. In that same period of time, oil hasn't moved. So if we're thinking about it as an inflationary story, it's only because it has fluctuated again very quickly, right? So oil prices as a component of GDP, oil as a component of GDP, is as small a percentage as it has been since the 1960s. So yes, it goes into everything And it has moved very quickly, and it feels bad. And because we are stretched from a credit standpoint, it may feel really bad.

But ultimately, we have to keep in mind that oil is not an inflationary instrument over the long term. Is this one of the few things that goes up in price and actually comes back down in price when we're looking at inflation? It is. It is. It's one of those things. And I always love slash hate when our government takes credit for these sorts of things, right? You know, like oil prices are absolutely built into the rate of inflation, right? Like CPI, and then you have core CPI. CPI contains oil in it. What in the world has the government done to either make oil prices go up or down?

This government, not that much. The Saudi government, maybe a little bit, but it's not something long-term that has tended to be permanent. And I think that that's a really important thing to remember. So keeping the focus short-term, we've also seen this show up in reports from companies and updates from companies, specifically airline businesses. We got warnings from Delta, American, and Spirit talking about how the profit picture for them might be looking a little bit different in the upcoming quarters, Bill. Come on. No, I mean, not come on, because obviously, you know, they're throwing metal into the sky and it takes oil to get them there, right? So they obviously consume oil and a lot of it, but they also hedge everything.

They hedge. So why is it that they are talking about oil prices as being the driver? The reason why they are is that it's the easiest thing for all of us to tell ourselves is true. Oh, yeah, oil prices are true. So it's good. Everybody else is doing it, too. Right. I mean, when you think about oil prices, they they they have a greater impact on like on producer prices because of the role of key input. Then I mean, thank you. Then it becomes a matter of what companies can pass along what prices. Right. I mean, airline tickets are different than burritos. I think we can all agree. And so it does vary. One is delicious and one gets you two burritos.

How much power, you know, a company has to be able to pass those prices along versus others is another key component. But so, I mean, to your point, yeah, they love to say it because everybody else is doing it. Yeah. It's a convenient excuse. Is that the right way to be looking at this? I mean, it's not that that is mildly unfair, but it's not 100 percent unfair. I mean, if you think that oil if you think that that the airlines are pulling their planes up to the tanks and just buying oil at spot, you know, whatever the prices are now and they're just, well, that's the price. They're not.

they have hedges to make sure that they have control over their oil prices. Now, maybe they got their hedges wrong, and that's a different thing, but they're not telling you that. They're just simply saying, well, our fuel is more expensive. I feel like we've got the sequel to an inconvenient truth, a convenient excuse. Bill, I appreciate you holding me and the airlines accountable for that one. It goes a long way. If we do see consumer spend tighten up,

And while it's become a little bit less quick to come out, that may be something, Jason, that starts to affect the interest and demand for Apple's latest iPhone line. We saw an update there in their annual update this fall. What did you see when you looked at the product line? Well, I think we're seeing the same thing over and over again with these presentations, right? Over the last several years, we've probably all asked ourselves, is this really necessary? I mean, they haven't really been able to give us that next big thing. I mean, I know some would probably argue that, well, they've got this Vision Pro and that's the next big thing. Well, you know, let's let some time go by here because I would push back on that for now.

I mean, they are ultimately, I think, really kind of stuck in this $6 million man loop, right? I mean, instead of better, stronger, faster, it's just thinner, lighter, faster, right? I mean, that's just every time one of these presentations comes out. So we're seeing basically the same thing in a slightly new iteration. And I don't fault them for that. I mean, I think it's worth remembering the iPhone was absolutely lightning in a bottle. I mean, we just can't underestimate or rather overestimate how special and how important, right, the smartphone and the iPhone really has become to us over time. It's a difficult act to follow up.

I think we all are kind of hoping for that next big thing. They just haven't really been able to come up with it yet. So it kind of leaves you wanting more for these presentations. To your point, Jason, it is the product that gave birth to the largest company on the market, right? I mean, it is the engine for this company. Bill, looking at some of the press and some of the details we've seen from Apple announcements, anything jump out to you? I mean, I love the way that Jason put it, but I would say at this point it's faster-er. Faster-er.

Thinner-er. But it still looks and smells like an iPhone. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's expensive-er-er as well. And, you know, so I don't, with any company and with any product, there is a, you know, there is a trajectory. At some point, you do not, as a consumer, have the same need to update to the next and to the next one. They have really suffered on the tablet side. I mean, I still have my same iPad from 2017.

So they're trying to get past that. So from a product standpoint, rolling out new features, but at some point, those features become, I don't know, marginal, I would say. So the only reason that I happen to know that there's a big Apple event coming up is because the press keeps telling me that there's a big Apple event to come up. I'm so glad that I could help remind you, Bill. Thank you. One thing I would say to keep in mind in regard to iPhones, one thing I think that Apple has done so well through the years, They've really benefited from this because the overwhelming majority of iPhones are sold through the carriers, right? I mean, Apple, I think, sells like one in five iPhones directly to consumers.

Most of us get that phone through our carrier. And the carrier is able ultimately to subsidize that through that contract agreement that you have with them. Now, for a long time, those agreements were essentially two years. You pay that phone off over two years, and then in two years, you would upgrade. I think it's worth noting, you look at the big carriers like your Verizons and AT&T in the world, And I noticed this myself last year when we upgraded in our household. It went to a new three-year arrangement. Now, of course, that makes my phone build a little bit better.

I don't mind that at all. But it also makes me think, well, I'm not going to be upgrading another phone, you know, for three years now. So it has extended that upgrade cycle. And I think, you know, we saw that upgrade cycle already extending just by virtue of the fact the quality of these phones has just gotten better and better through the years. But now the carriers, I think, play a little bit into this calculus as well, which is worth remembering. All right, coming up after the break, we dig into two upcoming IPOs, including one that could benefit from some iPhone buzz. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Dylan Lewis, joined in studio by Bill Mann and Jason Moser.

For the past year, we have been lamenting the lack of IPOs and new splashy names coming public. We've got a couple new ones to look at. We're going to start with the year's biggest. Bill, shares of Arm Holding listed on the NASDAQ this week to an incredibly warm reception. At listing, the company's worth $60 billion, shares up 25% on the first day. What is behind the buzz? Do you consider that to be a successful IPO? I think, I mean, for buzz, certainly.

For the people who own shares and sold them to the market, I don't know. See, that's exactly where I was going. So SoftBank, which has had, I guess we could describe it as a fairly bad decade so far. It's been a little rough, yeah. It's been a little rough. Their Vision Fund, $100 billion venture capital fund, is less than $100 billion by quite a bit now because of poor choices and poor outcomes. They desperately needed a win. And so I feel like they engineered a win by underpricing the ARM IPO to make absolutely sure that they got this pop.

And so when you think about the selling shareholder, and it is only one in this case, how much money did they leave on the table to make sure that they get a good marketing news? Right? So far, about a billion dollars. Quite a bit. Yeah, and it's a business that legitimately could have used that money. They legitimately could have used that money. Now, they did go out and so Apple got shares and was investing at the IPO and NVIDIA was. So, I mean, SoftBank has given a number of its customers a really good deal and some really good news with a quick hit off of an IPO that I think was somewhat underpriced.

For folks that maybe aren't familiar with this name and are just learning it for the first time, There's a little bit of a hint at what this company does with some of those businesses you just mentioned. Jason, this is a company that is squarely in the smartphone world. They are heavily involved in a lot of the tech that we have in our pockets. And I look at the involvement from some of the big tech names. Bill mentioned Apple, Google, NVIDIA in there, too. But pick any company that makes chips. And they were probably exposed to this in some way and probably an investor in some way.

It says a lot about where this company fits into the smartphone ecosystem. I mean, it's essential, right? I mean, I think this is really one of those companies. We talk about companies, if they shut their doors tomorrow, the world would feel that impact. This is one of those businesses for sure. Now, that being said, that doesn't mean you just go out and buy the stock because this must be a great company. I mean, I thought it was really funny. I mean, I hate to say this is funny, but it was funny.

I saw an interview with Aswath Demodur, and I think it was yesterday on TV. They were asking him about Arm, and he said, listen, you know, everything else being equal, you know, this is a soft bank story. And when you see it's a soft bank story, you run the other way. That's right. Well, what does a Columbia Business School professor know? That, to me, was very telling. Not yet, I think, in regard to the valuation. I mean, part of that, you know, we've got demand for this stock.

I think part of it is a function of, you know, this excitement for an IPO. But also the fact that there's a very limited supply of shares that were actually floated on the market for purchase in the first place. The valuation looks out of control. I mean, this is a company that generated $2.7 billion in revenue over the last year. we see that valuation hit upwards of 72 billion dollars i think at one point so you're talking at 25 to 30 times sales somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 times earnings i'm not saying this is a bad business i think it's a good business it's an important business but i think it's also one listen we learned a lot of lessons over the last few years here let's put those

lessons to work be patient let this thing come back then it might make more sense here's your tell this morning instacart which is going public this next week raised the price of its ipo up to $28 to $30 a share based on Arm's successful IPO. So I've said this before, but IPOs are sold and not bought. So to individual investors who get excited about IPOs, just know that you are being sold something at a period of time in which it is at the leisure of the seller. It's a good thing to remember there, Bill. From cutting-edge tech to the cobblers of the 1700s, There's a new old name coming to the market soon as well. Jason Birkenstock.

I almost wore my Arizonas to the studio today, but, you know, I wanted to make sure I was keeping things normal. I love this so much. You looked at the company. What did you see? I feel like you came up with a title for this specific show right there. The Cobblers of the 1700s. That was good.

I tell you, I was a bit surprised in going through this company's F1 as I really kind of thought I would be a little bit more dismissive. They really started to capture my attention. They tell a very good story. As the great Cosmo Kramer once said, right, you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle. And they are selling the sizzle. Look at this. It's 1774, and you hear the word footbed mentioned in the F-100 nine times.

Yes, that's proprietary technology for a shoe company. I just find it kind of amazing because, hey, listen, I had a pair of Birkenstocks in college, and my mind— You still have them, don't you? Come on. Possibly. Possibly. We'll get to that later. But when you look at the actual numbers here, it's really impressive.

In 2022, they generated $1.24 billion in revenue. They had a gross margin of 60%. I mean, they have been able to grow revenue 20% annualized from 2014 to 2022. I mean, this is, I mean, I get it. Everybody needs shoes, right? But I think when you start looking under the hood and you see how well-run this business is and how diverse it is, yeah, you could think maybe this is really a European story. Not so fast, 54% of revenue generated from the Americas versus Europe's 36%.

The only thing that maybe kind of makes you wonder a little bit, it tilts very, very far towards the female spectrum. I think 72% of their customers are women versus 28% men. But all things considered, while I'm not saying I'm excited for this thing to go public, I certainly am going to enjoy following the story and learning a little bit more. Jason, you had them in your dorm room, so did I. I have continued to buy them over the years and have them waiting for me when I get at home, those comfortable footbeds. Bill, one of the things I think about when I look at a retail brand and a consumer name like this, especially in fashion, is these can be highly cyclical businesses and businesses that kind of catch lightning in a bottle.

Is that something you worry about with a company like Birkenstock? Absolutely. And I would say that Birkenstock is a luxury brand. We might not think of it. We think of it as being the thing that you're going to see at a My Morning Jacket show in volume. But it's a luxury brand. It is owned 20% by LVMH, which is the largest luxury brand house in the world. So they are having their fashion-forward moment, right?

Like you find Birkenstocks now in Vogue magazine. They were in the Barbie movie. It is not for nothing that this company was bought by private equity a little more than two years ago for $4.3 billion, and it's being sold now at $8 billion. So just to go back to what I was saying before about IPOs, and I'm not making any commentary about Birkenstock. I am saying that it is being sold very well. So investors who might be interested in the name, probably good just to wait just a little bit and let them get seasoned as a public company.

I have a thread between these two, Arm Holdings and Birkenstock, and I'm going to run it by you guys. Bear with me here for a second. I see a similarity in that these are two businesses that nailed it with their design and architecture and are now enjoying the long-term benefits. Does that feel fair?

All right, Bill Mann, Jason Moser, we're going to see you guys a little bit later in the show. up next we've got a look at the origin of the meme stock story stay right here you're listening to mountain full money you just found out that your sales team is at risk of missing quota don't panic just ask rippling ai since it's built on your real-time people and business data rippling ai can pull metrics from rippling and salesforce into a meeting ready dashboard showing quota attainment headcount plan and monthly revenue to quota by region in seconds you'll see exactly what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed. Question answered,

action taken, crisis averted. When you have critical business questions that need answers, don't just file a ticket and wait weeks for an outdated report. Describe what you need and have Rippling AI build it instantly from your live people and business data. Whether it's a dashboard with detailed charts or automated workflows with the right triggers, conditions, and approvals. Ready to rule your business? Head to rippling.ai slash fool to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g dot a-i slash f-o-o-l. Sign up for exclusive access today, rippling.ai slash fool. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money.

I'm Dylan Lewis. Remember back in early 2021 when everyone was stuck at home and a small corner of Reddit became the epicenter of an investing movement? This weekend, a movie recounting the drama of GameStop and Wall Street Bets hits theaters. It's called Dumb Money, and it's based on a book called The Antisocial Network by Ben Mesrick. Ahead of the nationwide premiere of the movie,

we caught up with Ben about his latest book, Turn Movie, the pace of writing in today's entertainment age, and what buy and hold investors need to remember from the meme stock saga. Ben, this Friday, your book, The Anti-Social Network, will hit the big screen as dumb money. How does it feel to see another one of your books come to life like this? I mean, it feels like a miracle. It's so hard to make a movie, especially a movie aimed at adults that doesn't have superheroes running around in capes.

And it's just wild that it happened again. It happened fast. I mean, just incredibly fast. I mean, we were living through the GameStop drama just, you know, a year and a half ago, two years ago, and now here we are. But it's awesome. It's just as good as it gets for an author. It's been fun to see all these characters I know and follow start to become, you know, the Wall Street insiders and the characters that they are in the book. I think in some ways the material and the characters are somewhat fresh to us.

You know, it's relatively recent in its history that we lived through with the GameStop saga and the short squeeze of 2021. one. But I also kind of feel like the pandemic has made everything from the last couple of years feel like it was maybe a decade ago. So for folks that haven't been following the story over the last couple of years, can you just kind of walk folks through it? Yeah. So basically this happened in the worst part of the pandemic, pretty much when everyone was stuck at home during that, you know, stay home for two weeks and everyone was pretty much locked up and wearing masks everywhere. And in the midst of all that, this guy, this dude in his basement basically started live streaming about a stock that he loved, GameStop, which is, you know GameStop. It's that

place we all go to buy video games. It's in the mall. It's a store that is very odd when you walk through it because there's like a Mickey Mouse doll next to a chainsaw. It's the oddest store in the world, but we love it. And it's basically doing very poorly at the time because it's a pandemic. They've been run poorly. They're running out of money. And so big hedge funds are shorting it, which means they're betting that it's going to go down to zero and go bankrupt. And this dude in his basement who called himself Roaring Kitty starts making all of these videos saying this stock is going to go to the moon. I love this stock. And everyone's making fun of him. And then slowly but surely, he builds this following on Reddit. That's really where the main

place it was happening on something called Wall Street Bets, which was a very irreverent, full of you know, bad words and all this kind of stuff, Reddit board. And by the end of the story, there's 9 million people on Reddit, all buying this one stock to stick it to wall street. It becomes this battle between regular people and rich people. And it's just, it was epic at the time. It happened really fast. The stock went from like $3 and something to $500 in a period of a few days. Um, and, and all because regular people were throwing a few hundred dollars in here and there just to fight wall street. I remember distinctly remember the experience of all this happening, because there's an indicator for me as someone who kind of works in the media of this world,

where if I start hearing from friends and family members about something, it has officially broken into the mainstream and become something that everyone is paying attention to. That was certainly the case with this story back in 2021. What got it on your radar? And what made it something that you wanted to tell? Yeah, so I've always been kind of a gambler. And I've always been a penny stock person. And I've always been someone who's kind of attuned to all that. And I've written about this stuff a lot going all the way back to the MIT blackjack team. And it was Wednesday morning in the middle of that week when everything went crazy with GameStop. And I was watching the price action. I was like, this is completely insane. And I started getting emails

from lots of people and tweets from lots of people saying, this is something you should be writing about. You know, you got to be writing about this. And I thought about it and I was like, I wonder if I have enough sources. Can I get to Roaring Kitty? Can I get to these hedge fund guys? And I, at this point in my career, I know a lot of people and I know how to get to people. And I realized I think I could.

So that night I wrote a 12 page book proposal. I sent it to my Hollywood agent first. And by Friday of that week, we had a bidding war with like five studios bidding on it. It was literally two days later. I sold it that Friday night at midnight to MGM studios. Um, and then I sold the book on Monday morning and I hadn't written anything yet. I had a 12 page proposal already. Screenwriters were jumping in, studio was jumping in. It was, it was nuts. Um, and, uh, and then I just dove in. And so I was writing it while it was happening because we were just on, you know, it was, I was writing as they get to the congressional hearing, I was

writing through every beat of that story um which was kind of nuts you know uh melvin capital was still in existence when i was writing i mean it was really it was really deep in the story but i wrote the book very quickly i think it was 12 weeks from start to finish um and we had the movie in development and it was just it's wild when it happens like that but it was a race too um there were other studios trying to make it it was netflix was doing something hbo was doing something there were a dozen other projects. And I knew that the key was getting a book together before everybody else. For the aspiring writers out there that are listening to the show, would you recommend that writing process? The aspiring writers hate me. No, I'm kidding. I love aspiring writers.

So this has become my methodology. I've always been a quick writer, bringing down the house I wrote in 11 weeks, the social network book I wrote in about 11 or 12 weeks. I just write in three months that's it i'd write a book every three months i don't recommend it because it's it's torturous i mean it's a very difficult way to live um you have to have uh you know basically be delusional and insane and confident enough that you lock yourself up and just write the book um but uh on the other hand everything is so fast paced now i mean the story breaks and it's huge and then it's gone and it happens like in these arcs over and over and over again so if you want to make something that resonates, that makes it to a movie or a television show, you have to move

very quickly. I mean, you can't take three years to write a book if you want to see it on the screen and have people, you know, love it. I think you have to move fast if you want to be in this field. But, you know, every writer is different. I have a different process than a lot of other writers. And it's just the way I've always been. So here at The Fool, we're all about the average retail investor. That is our audience. That is our bread and butter. And that's what we do. And we approach it perhaps a little differently than the more trader-y world of Wall Street Bets. But we are long-term buy and hold. And we are very much about people being on the ground and understanding these businesses that they own, being invested in them, and really following them.

I'm curious. We have the retail investor and hedge fund story here with Dumb Money and with your book, but what about the class of investors in between that is maybe retail, but not necessarily the speculative retail more kind of in our lane of, of long-term buy and hold. Do you feel like there are maybe takeaways for that group? I mean, yeah, you know, that's a great question. I think that the, they're on the sidelines in this story to some extent, because the volatility is so insane that you can't really think rationally in that moment. You have to think emotionally because that's how both sides were thinking. And to be fair, it wasn't just retail that was being emotional. I mean, you saw Gabe Plotkin double down on his short, even as the stock is obviously

exploding. And that's essentially, you know, in one way led to his demise. So I think that there's emotions on both sides. I think if you're taking the stance that, you know, the fundamentals matter, let's find something to hold for the long term, you have to look at a much longer window and not be frightened by these little things that go on in between. But then again, I think you're going to lose out on a lot of things too, if you're not paying attention to the emotion of the moment. But I do think things are changing. I think that you need to work the irrationality into your models. You need to work social media into your models and the idea that something can catch and it's not really going to be relevant how much money the company makes if

you know they either piss off the retail trader or that they the retail trader falls in love with them yeah i think it has to be something that we process and are used to ingesting even if we're not something it's not something that we are participating in as part of the wave exactly i think so and listen participating in the wave can be very dangerous you need to you need to get in at the right time and get out at the right time so i myself was watching this whole thing happen you know and and uh writing about it as it happened but i was terrified to actually buy gamestop until i did end up dabble in and out but it was hard to pick you can never pick the top and you can never pick the bottom of something like this i mean it's just it's nearly impossible to

do right so you either find something that you fall in love with which is what roaring kitty did buy it and hold which is what he did i mean that's exactly he still holds supposedly i mean um and and that's a probably better way to face gamestop is buy it in the beginning and sit on it although it's all the way back down at 17 now. So, um, but the idea is at least, you know, you can be comfortable that you didn't, you know, jump in and out, um, just trying to make a buck that you found something you liked. So I don't know. I think falling in love with a stock is a good thing, not a bad thing. Uh, as long as you can live with it. The book published in 2021, the movie's now coming out in 2023. Is there anything in the years between that you would

have loved to have been able to talk about and bring into the book because this was a story that was moving so quickly and developing so quickly that's a great question i think that it some stuff came out afterwards about ken griffin and and robin hood um and the mystery that went on there when robin hood got rid of the buy button for a little while and destroyed and cratered the stock um it could have made a good sort of epilogue um although you have to you know i don't know how much you can say in a book um with with ken griffin rumbling around as the villain so you have to be a little careful but um but i think there's a little bit to go into there a lot of a lot of gamestop people are still very much believing in that the that the thing is still

to happen right that it was the sneeze and not the squeeze i think there's something very interesting about that part of the story you could go into in a chapter for sure and see whether there's reality to that or not. It's very heated. It's an incredibly heated discussion, but it would be fun to look at that and see where that leads. It's a rabbit hole that I don't know where it goes. So yeah, I think I could get into that stuff for sure in a chapter or two afterwards. But I like people to talk about, I think that to me, there's something about an origin story. Like the social network is a perfect example most of the facebook story happened after the social network right the social network is just that first year um just like if you watch the marvel movies most

of wolverine's story happens after the movie wolverine right you don't not tell that story because later on he joins the x-men um you want to you want to tell the origin of something and i think that uh dumb money is the origin of the mean stock movement and the social network is the origin of social media really um so so that's my goal is to tell the origin story all the games people play now every night every day now never meeting what they say now never saying what they mean dumb money is in theaters beginning september 15th and ben mesrick's next work breaking twitter is out this fall no need for speculation we'll be having him back when it hit shelves. Coming up after the break, Bill Mann and Jason Moser return with a couple stocks on

their radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. to keep your day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso with ginseng extract whatever lies ahead don't change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on espresso.com as always people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about And The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear. I'm Dylan Lewis, joined again by Bill Mann and Jason Moser.

We've got stocks on our radar coming up in a minute. But before that, we were talking airlines early in the show, gentlemen. And it's not all bad news in the friendly skies, at least if you are Delta Airlines. The company announced that seven-time Super Bowl winner and GOAT Tom Brady will be a strategic advisor to Delta. He will be working with Delta's employees on onboarding, cultural familiarity, and immersion. Bill, could you imagine a first-day orientation pep talk from TB? I know where their profit warning just came from.

Yeah, the talk would go something like this. Look, most of the money in this room is right here, but I need you to do your job better. I don't know what he's going to say. I mean, I've seen him on the sidelines. He does run a huddle. He gets hot. You know, the first thing that came to mind here, do you remember that episode of The Office?

They're getting under Mifflin, getting acquired by Sabre. They show that little video of touring the Sabre campus, and out of nowhere, there's Christian Slater, and he starts talking about the merits and the values and virtues of Sabre, and he has that line, have you ever tasted a rainbow? At Sabre, you will. That's pretty good.

And I think if you're looking for ties and maybe how this makes sense, Brady's mother worked as a flight attendant, So, he has a soft spot in his heart for the airlines, which I think, you know, is interesting. It's a good time. It's a little thin. To me, it's not as on the money as Amazon Prime Studios linking up with Coach Prime, Deion Sanders, for a docuseries about Colorado football. I'm curious, Jason, if you were to link up a celebrity with company, wave a magic wand

and make it happen, what are you doing? So, my mind immediately goes to golf just because I've played golf all my life. And Chipotle is a close second there. And my two worlds came together recently when Victor Hovland, a Norwegian professional golfer, recently won the tour championship at Eastlake in Atlanta. And after he won, you saw him wandering around the grounds. He's just sitting there munching on Chipotle chips and guacamole. So there are, like, videos all over Twitter and social media with him doing this. It's just like it's an ongoing ad for Chipotle.

And if you watch interviews with Victor, you see very quickly, like, he's got his wits about him. He's a long-term thinking kind of guy. I bet you he's a pretty good investor. I think tying up Victor with Chipotle would be a pretty good move. You're telling me they couldn't write something with on the green and avocados and guacamole? I mean, come on. You're writing it right now. You're welcome, Chipotle.

Give us a call. Bill, what about you? Man, I feel like Timbaland needs to be doing Timberland. How has that not happened? How is that not happening? I mean, he did it for them. That's right. You got to love that.

All right, let's get over to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, Rick Engdahl, is going to hit you with a question. Bill, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? My company is Charles Schwab. Talk to Chuck. So Charles Schwab, over this last week, has completed its merger. Well, it bought TD Ameritrade a couple years ago, but it has finished the merger of the customer experience. So if you had a TD Ameritrade account, you now have a Schwab account. And as always happens, a lot of times you have either individuals or businesses who move their accounts at that point.

And it's a normal attrition. But we're about to find out what that level of attrition is going to be. And Schwab is a company that I really, really admire. But, you know, whenever you have a change like this, it's hard to track. Rick, a question about Chuck. Yeah, I had a TD Ameritrade account and I had a Schwab account. Now I have more Schwab accounts. I don't really care.

Like, why would people leave? Okay, well, I appreciate that. But a lot of times advisors will leave because of margin rates or because of services they get with one broker or another. And there may be things that they got from TD Ameritrade that Schwab is not going to provide. To me, that is a little bit of a, you know, like who's holding the conch shell, you know? Well, it's an interesting point because we generally think of brokerages as being incredibly sticky, Bill. And I mean, the switching costs being pretty high. But are you saying it's more of a concern for people who maybe manage other people's money than the retail investor or the

average investor? Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you think about it, yes, they are very sticky until you're given an excuse to pay attention and maybe to change your mind. So Schwab has this built into their model. When they bought TD Ameritrade, they knew at some point there would be a migration. And they also knew at some point that there would be an attrition of some level of accounts. But it is very important, especially given the year that Schwab has had. If you remember, Schwab was one of the banks that was pointed to in the aftermath of Silicon Valley as being under stress. I thought that was overstated by a lot, but it was out there. And so Schwab has not had a great year. So it's a very interesting time for them to be doing this

transition. All right, Jason, what do you have in your radar this week? Yeah, taking a look at PayPal, ticker PYPL. You know, the disdain for this company right now is palpable. Everybody hates it. I would say that's partly deserved. I also don't think it's something that lasts forever. I mean, at the end of the day, it's still a business of 431 million active accounts that saw 6.1 billion payment transactions last quarter, representing 10% growth from the previous year. But we saw this week they're expanding. It's expanding its relationship with Uber. That's a great thing anytime you're getting in deeper with Uber, I think, because that's another tremendous network. And Uber will continue to leverage that PayPal Braintree platform to expand things like debit network, routing, value-added services, the HyperWallet solution and whatnot.

They're launching combined incentives with the Uber One, which I think is a smart move as well. So Uber is becoming more and more of a commerce app, and I think PayPal becoming more and more a part of that is not a bad thing at all. Rick, a question about PayPal. Yeah, so PayPal owns Venmo, right? Correct. And Venmo's a sleek little app that everybody uses. But PayPal itself still kind of looks Y2K. Why is that?

Well, I think that's one of those unforced errors. They had this mindset not too terribly long ago to go into that super app mode and try to become all things to all people. And I think that took a little bit away from the innovation of the PayPal platform. So it'll be interesting to see how this new CEO stepping in decides to approach that problem.

All right, Rick, you got two very different companies here. which one is going on your watch list this week? Neither one, really. They're foreign companies to me. You got to pick one. I'm going to put you on the spot. You got to pick one. All right. I'll pick Schwab. All right. He's talking to Chuck. Rick, I always appreciate you weighing in on our radar stocks. Bill, Jason, always appreciate you guys coming on the show and bringing it every single week. That's going to do it for this week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show. The show is mixed by Rick Engdahl. I'm Dylan Lewis. Thank you for listening. Catch you next time. We'll be right back.