Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Blizzard 2016: Winners and Losers

Episode Date: January 22, 2016

Which companies will be the big winners and losers from the East Coast blizzard? Our analysts discuss that story and delve into earnings news from American Express, Netflix, and Southwest Airlines. Pl...us, Motley Fool columnist Morgan Housel talks market volatility. For a free preview of our Supernova service, go to www.SupernovaRadio.Fool.com .     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:42 From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio Show. I'm Chris Hill, and joining me in studio this week from Million Dollar Portfolio, Jason Moser and Matt Argersinger, and from Motley Fool Pro and options. Jeff Fischer, good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Jeff Fischer. Hey, hey. We have got the latest earnings from healthcare, airlines, restaurants, and more. We will dip into the Fool mailbag, and as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin this week with Blizzard 2016.
Starting point is 00:01:12 Oh! Yes, with the storm poised to cause problems from Washington, D.C. to New York City, and all points in between. Let's look at this storm through the lens of investing. And, Matty, I'll just start with you. As a Massachusetts native, you've got no problem dealing with the snow. But let's face it, there are businesses out there that are going to have problems. And I'm curious, when you look at this and you think, OK, who's going to benefit? Who's going to be hurt by this? Well, my Sunday's set, because I'm watching the game, of course. No, there is.
Starting point is 00:01:42 If you're a restaurant business and you have a substantial amount of restaurant real estate on the East Coast, you're hurting this weekend, because those are big revenue days that you're going to lose. So, any kind of establishment where it's a service establishment or a retail establishment where you're used to having customer traffic, particularly on the weekends, you're especially hurt. O'Reilly. Some that benefited included, of course, grocery retailers, hardware stores. My wife was at one this morning and said they were sold out of sleds. People were lined up at 6 in the morning to get the sled delivery, believe it or not.
Starting point is 00:02:16 One company I know will benefit is O'Reilly Automotive. They benefit whenever there's extreme weather one way or another. A snowstorm, more parts on your car will break, and then you end up at the auto parts store. Yeah, we saw this last year with companies like AutoZone and Advanced Auto Parts, that sort of thing. What do you think, Jason? Yeah, I think what Matty said there in regard to restaurants, that makes a lot of sense. Those are sales that are not going to recoup. I'm not going to go to Starbucks and buy five more coffees on Monday, because I missed my chance on Saturday and Sunday.
Starting point is 00:02:45 No, why not? I guess it's probably a bad example, because I've got five bags of Starbucks beans in the house already. But, I mean, Jeff mentioned hardware stores. I like the Home Depots and the Lowe's when it comes to these types of events, because these are stores that really benefit in warm and cold weather, right? I mean, hey, if you need salt for your driveway or a shovel, you can get it there. And, man, you know what? If spring's here and you need flowers to plant in the flowerbed, well, you can get them there, too. So, those are stores that I think really benefit regardless of the weather. And I think the stores that
Starting point is 00:03:15 have been having a lot of trouble going into this season here, it's not going to be as viable an excuse, because they've already been having trouble. And let's face it, some companies, I mean, we're going to talk about this earnings season in a second, but next earnings season, you know, Matty, there are companies that are going to use this as an excuse, and it won't be legit. It always is. I mean, you'll have semiconductor companies come out and say, oh, well, the weather was really bad, we missed revenue. It just drives us crazy, but it happens all the time. Of course, we'd be remiss, we're going to talk about this company later, but
Starting point is 00:03:46 I have to say, there's going to be a lot of binge TV watching this weekend. So, of course, Netflix is going to be a big beneficiary. And I'd say, another one, Activision Blizzard, a lot of video gaming online as well this weekend. Even Google, maybe, on some small scale. You're bored, you Google something. You too. Alright, let's get to this earnings season. Fourth quarter profits for American Express fell 38%, and that, plus some dismal guidance for 2016, sent shares of Amex down more than 10% on Friday. Jason, that is a big move for a company like this.
Starting point is 00:04:17 It's a very big move for a company like this. I'd like to say there's some silver lining to all of this, but maybe there really isn't. But you're not going to. I'm not going that far, Chris. I think it was just maybe a few MarketFoolery episodes ago where I came out a little bit down on American Express and what they've got to look forward to. As a cardholder, I love American Express, but as an investor, I don't think I really would. It's a fundamentally different story now going forward, because the business was founded on the idea that wealthier cardholders are going to spend more money
Starting point is 00:04:47 and they can therefore charge merchants more for those transactions. That's just not the case now. There are more cards out there than ever before, offering more deals, better rates, better incentives there. American Express certainly has to compete with them. Further, this has become a political issue there in the interchange fees and what these card companies can charge. I think as time goes on and we see more and more people using these cards, become more and more like a utility. I think that really caps the profitability side of card processors like American Express, like Visa, like MasterCard. At least Visa and MasterCard were already founded on the notion of catering to the masses. But I think it definitely raises
Starting point is 00:05:29 questions to the card companies in general, what their future may look like. Yeah, I will say, there used to be some cachet to pulling out your American Express card, and with mobile payments or digital payments occurring, that no longer matters at all. So, the only avenue they can really win at right now, since brand is not as important, are services, cash rebates, those such things. But, as Jason said, all the others are offering that as well. So, competition has really heated up. Yeah, and I'd say, you can tell from the release, they are in full-blown cost-cutting mode now. So, identifying growth on the horizon is really difficult to do. And for investors
Starting point is 00:06:10 out there who are thinking, hey, maybe this is a value right now for a really quality business ... It's at a three-year low. It is. And I would just encourage you to try to identify the catalyst that actually turns this story around. Because management couldn't seem to identify it, and I can't really seem to identify it either. And I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but before you invest in this thing thinking it's a great value, just be careful you're not getting into a value trap. That's a good point, Jason. Management doesn't seem to have a view into how they grow again. But that said, I still own shares.
Starting point is 00:06:36 I'm keeping them for now. The company still generates a huge amount of free cash flow and income and revenue, even. And it wasn't all darkness. Some areas of the business are still growing. That said, will Warren Buffett trim his stake? Will he sell his shares? Yeah, this is one of Buffett's favorite stocks. This is one of Buffett's favorite stocks. Well, you know who else just sold shares? I mean, we were talking about this before taping. Our man behind the glass. Steve Broido selling out of Amex? We'll ask him about that later in the show.
Starting point is 00:07:04 He can't say anything about that. Starbucks' first quarter profits came in higher than expected, but sales in China were a little light, and that was enough to spook at least a few investors to have shares of Starbucks falling on Friday, Jeff. A little bit, Chris. And yet, Howard Schultz is still very bullish on China. It was actually really encouraging to read his statements. He claims he may be the CEO who has traveled to China more than any other American CEO over the last 10 years. That was just conjecture on his part.
Starting point is 00:07:35 What does he get, like a championship belt for that? He got a pin, he got a lapel. So he says he has a unique perspective to share, and he really believes that China can increase double per capita income by 2020 from 2010's level. so in about 11 years, double per capita income, and have 600 million Chinese people that are middle-income consumers. So, he is a strong believer in China, and overall, Starbucks did really well. 8%, 9% same-store sales growth, record traffic internationally and in the U.S., digital payments, food sales taking off. As we've talked about here, Chris, the last couple of years. If they can get food right, that's really going to drive increased
Starting point is 00:08:23 ticket sales, and it's happening. So, they're doing very well overall. That said, the stock is priced that way, too, at 30 times earnings. You know, I poke a little fun at Howard Schultz. It was eight years ago this month that he returned as CEO to Starbucks, and shares up nearly 500% since he came back as CEO. You know what? He earned that championship belt. Did you see the pictures of the Starbucks they just opened in Kazakhstan? It was in Almaty, I believe. Just pictures in the opening day, the place was a madhouse. I mean, that is a brand that I think really is just translating globally far better than so many people anticipated.
Starting point is 00:08:58 Yeah, really. They really understand brand and product, both in their stores and outside their stores. They're consumer packaged goods as well. And one more thing he said about China, which I thought was encouraging, if he's right, he's a smart guy. He's gotten some things right. Well, he's traveled there more than any other CEO, so I'm sure he's right on this. He might be more Chinese at this point, then. So, he said the buffeting of the Chinese economy, as it is happening right now, is a necessary part for it to move on to its next stage of growth. He really believes that there's another
Starting point is 00:09:28 stage after this, and this is a natural kind of cycle. General Electric's core business did well in the fourth quarter, but they've also got some divisions that cater to the oil and gas industry, Matty, and that's not going as well. No, not at all. It's really hard to gauge GE's performance right now, because the company's going through so many changes. They're shedding all their financial units. They're in the process of selling their appliance unit. They're moving to Boston, which, I support that move. But it's hard. I wouldn't say it's not really the economic bellwether it used to be. It's much more about energy and aviation today. In fact, they've made a huge investment in
Starting point is 00:10:02 the energy space in recent years. And of course, we know that didn't turn out so well starting this year. So, their oil and gas revenue there fell 16%. It really offset everything good that was happening in the rest of the business. And the guidance for 2016 looks, you know, they got a slight pickup in overall revenue, but pretty much flat earnings. It's hard to get excited about GE, especially with the heavy oil and gas bets, which I just don't see having any kind of resurgence in 2016. O' So, Matt, you're not a buyer of GE? I'm not. I can't be. I would never probably be a buyer of GE, but I certainly can't be right now. O' Shares of Netflix falling this week,
Starting point is 00:10:36 despite fourth quarter profits coming in higher than expected. And, Jason, to pivot off what what Jeff was saying with regards to Starbucks and how its stock price is valued. I'm wondering if part of this is, Netflix is a pretty richly valued stock. Yeah, it's richly valued. I think that one of the concerns maybe is that domestic growth here is starting to slow down a little bit, which is understandable. You saturate a market at some point. Certainly, global growth is still there, but I think a lot of those assumptions probably have been brought forward to the stock price today, which is why it's valued the way it is. But let's be very clear, this is a wonderful business that's
Starting point is 00:11:13 doing a lot of great things, and Reed Hastings has really, to my mind, done a phenomenal job pivoting from essentially saying, we're going to take this one country at a time, to basically just rolling it out in the entire world. That was a 180-degree turn there, and they've done it quite well, I think. Revenue is up 28%, and in the face of that, streaming content obligations are only up 15%. So, as long as they keep growing sales more than they grow those streaming content obligations, I mean, everything's hunky-dory, right? Domestic subs are slowing down, but international net ads are up 66%. And I think, really, at the end of the day, we always talk about the original content for Netflix. I mean, essentially trying
Starting point is 00:11:48 to become more like an HBO, and they're doing that. They're going to focus on 600 hours of that original content this year versus 450 hours last year. Now, it's going to cost them a lot of money. They're going to probably have to take out some more debt here at some point. And I don't think that really changes for them any time in the near future. It just costs a lot of money to feed this beast. But it's working as people sign up. It's a pretty easy expense to cover every month. And I anticipate that it will continue to roll out across the world and do well. As people hunker down for the storm, not just this storm, because let's face it, there'll be other storms this winter, what's one
Starting point is 00:12:23 TV show or movie you would recommend? You know, I just recently started watching Showtime's Billions, and it's only two episodes in, and it's a little bit over the top, but it's sort of that Wall Street vibe there. It's an interesting show, two shows in. I'm going to give it a chance. It's probably worth a look if you have Showtime. O'Reilly. Jeff? Jeff Fischer. You know, a kind of slow-moving, creepy, but well-acted series was Bloodline on Netflix, set in Key West. So, if you're in the middle of a blizzard, head to the Keys. O'Reilly. What about you, Matt?
Starting point is 00:12:53 O'Reilly. Another Netflix show, my wife and I just finished watching Jessica Jones, which I wasn't excited about it. I mean, the whole superhero stuff, I'm getting a little tired of it right now, but that was a really well-done first season for Jessica Jones. I highly recommend it. Coming up, sure, we're paying less at the pump these days, but which companies are also benefiting from the low price of gas? Details next. This is Motley Fool Money. Let's kick it! Ice, ice, baby.
Starting point is 00:13:22 Ice, ice, baby. Oh, my God! Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger and Jeff Fischer. Southwest Airlines putting up record fourth quarter profits. And Jeff, they're doing well on the operations side, but the low price of gas sure doesn't hurt. Low fuel costs certainly helped, even though Southwest hedges out some of the risk of fuel. But it's interesting, their hedge strategy going forward is, they called it more conservative, and I take that to mean
Starting point is 00:13:58 they're not going to hedge out much, they're not too worried about energy the next couple of years. But they had a capacity growth last year of about 7%, and traffic grew even more, it grew nearly 9%. You have a decent economy, you have more people looking to fly, and you have Southwest, you have fares holding up well. So, the industry as a whole is expected to have record profits last year, and possibly this year, too. Big blue shareholders seeing red these days. IBM's revenue fell for the 15th quarter in a row. I'm not an expert, Matty, but that seems like a trend. It is very much a trend, and I don't see it turning anytime soon, Chris. Like GE, IBM's
Starting point is 00:14:39 in this big transition. They're going from low-margin hardware products to these higher-margin services. CEO Jeannie Romani, she calls it IBM's transition to a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company. That's like perfect IBM speak. But my thing is, with companies like this, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, even GE to a certain extent, they're in this transition. In a way, it tells me that they either missed some markets trying to play catch-up, or they made some bad investments in the past. And I think that's the case with IBM. I would just avoid companies like this that are in these restructurings and undergoing big changes. I would throw Intel in there, too. We've talked about Intel recently. In some ways,
Starting point is 00:15:21 it's almost like these companies are in a race. It's essentially, how quickly can we innovate on this smaller thing that isn't making us as much money right now? It's like a corporate game of beat the clock. We just got to get this ramped up as quickly as possible because we're losing on the other side. Right. It's hard to see who comes out of this ahead in any way. I think there's so much value for focusing as investors on companies that do one thing really, really well. Netflix streams movies really well. Chipotle makes mostly healthy burritos. It's just doing one thing very, very well, and IBM is kind of all over the place right now. Yeah, Hewlett-Packard, same thing, and then you have IBM. We considered shorting
Starting point is 00:16:00 IBM in Motley Fool Pro around $200 per share, and didn't, largely because Buffett was buying. So Buffett has cost me some money. You don't hear that very often. Damn you, Warren! Shares of UnitedHealth Group up this week after fourth quarter revenue came in north of $43.5 billion, Jason. Profit's also higher than expected. Yeah, these guys throw around numbers that just make you wonder, did numbers really go that high? Health insurance is one of those political hot potatoes. Everybody seems to have an opinion, and nobody seems to quite
Starting point is 00:16:31 be able to get it right. But it seems like UnitedHealthcare is one of those in the health space that is worth owning. I think that stronger growth in the Optum side of the business is what is really encouraging. Focus on health services side versus the insurance side. That's really the faster growing of the two segments of the business. They're serving 129 million people now versus 88.5 million a year ago. The fact that they're able to grow so quickly on the Optum side gives them more ability to control costs on that side, to contain any, forgive the pun, hemorrhaging on the insurance side. Shareholders certainly have won with this one over the past five years. It's handily outperformed the market. When
Starting point is 00:17:13 we look at the health space, we tend to really look at these big dogs first, and they're not many bigger than UnitedHealthcare. Next week, consumers in Japan will be able to sample the latest creative food offering from McDonald's, the McChoco Potato. Yes, the company says its famous French fries are getting the ultimate chocolate makeover. The The Michaco potato comes with two types of chocolate sauce, regular and white, drizzled over the fries for a salty-sweet combo that you will not find anywhere else. I'm not sure you would want to. Who's in on this? What took them so long? I mean, come on. This has the 1980s written all over it.
Starting point is 00:17:51 Jeff's a fan. I've got a tremendous salt tooth. I mean, the sweet tooth I can do with or without, but I feel like they've just ruined a really good thing. Yeah, I don't know. Do potatoes and chocolate even go together? There's only one way to find out. They're like chocolate-covered potato chips, I think, so I've never tried them. Those can be pretty good. I've tried those before. Like caramel goes well with salt.
Starting point is 00:18:13 You need the crisp, though. If it's crispy, then it's good, the chocolate and the chip, but with kind of soggy fries. Well, to me, it's not just a salt and sugar combination, which can be very good. I mean, think of caramel popcorn, but it's like salt, sugar, and grease combination. It doesn't sound like a good mix to me. Let's bring in our man behind the glass, Steve Broido. Steve, are you interested in this? Are you going to give it a shot, you think? Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:18:36 Chocolate and salt do make a very good partnership. But what about, I think Matty's on to something with the grease factor there. I don't know what to tell you about that. He may be right. You're saying if your beloved Olive Garden offered something along these lines, you're going to take a shot at it. Give it the old college try. Chocolate-covered breadsticks.
Starting point is 00:18:56 We'll find out next week Here's the thing with McDonald's We'll know if this works If they bring it to the United States They're going to test it in Japan If it works they're going to bring it here Alright Jeff Fisher, Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger Guys we will see you a little bit later in the show
Starting point is 00:19:12 Up next A conversation with columnist Morgan Housel Stay right here You're listening to Motley Fool Money Welcome back to Motley Fool Money I'm Chris Hill Joining me in studio now the one and only Morgan Housel. Thanks for being here.
Starting point is 00:19:29 Morgan Housel. It's the least I could do. I appreciate that, because I feel like your particular brand of insight and expertise is needed more than it usually is when you consider that in the past month, we've seen the S&P 500 drop more than 7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 8%. And the Nasdaq dropped nearly 10%. Yeah. Small-cap stocks are down 25% since July. Full-on bear market in small caps. You're a cool customer. Please tell me you're at least mildly freaked out by this. Freaked out is probably too fun. No. Well, look, as much as I try to study the history of the market and market declines and
Starting point is 00:20:12 preach about how common they are and you should take the long view, which is absolutely the right device. As much as I say that, do I appreciate logging into my brokerage account and seeing it down 10%? No, nobody does. And I think that's important to admit to yourself that even if you are a long-term investor and there's no way you're going to sell, if anything, you're looking at this as a buying opportunity, it's okay to admit to yourself that you don't enjoy this. That's okay. I think there's too much in the media sometime of, oh, we love downturns because it's a great opportunity and we love this. Why is everyone upset? This is great. Sometimes I think that goes a little too far. It's fine to admit that you're a human being with emotions and
Starting point is 00:20:53 you don't like seeing 10% of your net worth disappear. That's fine. That being said, for investors who are looking at this downturn and thinking, you know what? Some of these stocks, the business hasn't really changed all that much in the past month. I think I'm going to do a little shopping. You know, there are two right ways to respond to a bear market, only two ways. One is ambivalence and just, this is what's going on, but I'm not going to pay attention to it. I'm going to go to the beach with my kids. The second is to look at it and say, this is an opportunity.
Starting point is 00:21:25 I'm going to buy a little bit more than I otherwise would. Those are the two responses that you should have. And either one is fine. It's fine to do nothing. Most people will and should do nothing. But if you're going to do something, it's looking for opportunity. I feel like, for all the talking we do about Warren Buffett, when you just mentioned one response is ambivalence, that seems like it's right up the alley of his right-hand
Starting point is 00:21:50 man Charlie Munger. He seems like a guy who's just like, whatever, this is what it is. Yeah, I think he said before, he made most of his fortune sitting on his ass. Yeah, buy great companies, just sit back. You had written something recently that gave me a little bit of pause, which was, you wrote in relation to investors, some of you must fail. And you were very quick to point out, not that some of you might fail. Must. Must. Why? Well, the reason that the stock market provides good long-term returns is because it is volatile
Starting point is 00:22:26 in the short run. That's the cost you have to pay. That's why it provides higher returns than a bank account or bonds, is because it's wild in the short run, up and down and up and down. Well, what makes the market go down? What is causing that volatility that creates good long-term returns? It's people freaking out and selling. And if nobody ever panicked, the market would never fall. And if the market never fell, it would just get really expensive. And if it got really expensive, it wouldn't offer good returns. And if it didn't offer good returns, people would panic. And it's this thing where the market has to be volatile. That's what a market is. And volatility is just a reflection in real time of people panicking. So it is not only
Starting point is 00:23:09 inevitable, but a necessary feature of markets that some people will fail. And by fail, I mean selling at the bottom. Because the reason the market is going down is because people are selling. And hopefully that's not you or me or any of our listeners, but someone in the market, who knows who it is, someone is going to have to have a bad time. You know what's far less expensive than it used to be is the price of oil, which continues to fall to the point where it is at its lowest level since 2003. You know, oil is 25% cheaper today than it was in 1990. Do you remember 1990?
Starting point is 00:23:47 I bet we have people who work at this company who were not born in 1990. That's almost certainly true. Austin, the guy behind the glass, not born in 1990. How are we supposed to look at declining oil prices? because it seems like one of those things that, for some investors who maybe don't have any exposure directly to oil stocks, they think, well, that doesn't really affect me. And yet, it is one of the most frequent headlines, and certainly one of the biggest business stories of the last, I'm going to say, 18 months. Yeah. If oil is your business, this is one
Starting point is 00:24:21 of the worst things that might ever happen in your career. This is bigger than 2008, if oil is your business. But oil is not most people's business. And what most people's business is, or one of their biggest expenses, I should say, is buying gas and buying heating oil in the winter. And something like this clearly benefits them. I think when you look at the price of oil plunging, you have to keep one thing in mind. There are two reasons that oil or any commodity or stock or whatever will fall in price, either because you have too much supply or not enough demand. In 2008, when oil was plunging, it fell from $140 a barrel to $30 a barrel in 2008, 2009. That was clearly because of a lack of demand, because the global
Starting point is 00:25:03 economy ground to a halt. So, oil's decline was indicative of mass economic doom. So, back then, you could look at the decline in oil and say, this is not a good thing we're looking at. Today, overwhelmingly, not entirely, but overwhelmingly, the reason oil is plunging is because we have too much supply, because U.S. oil producers in Texas and North Dakota have just exploded their supply over the last five years, because sanctions in Iran have come off, because OPEC and mostly Saudi Arabia just keeps pumping and pumping full bore. You add all that up, and we just have too much oil sloshing around in the world. But it's not necessarily indicative of global demand, like the entire global economy is
Starting point is 00:25:46 slowing down as it was in 2008. China's economy is definitely slowing down, but most of the world is kind of chugging along right now. So if people look at the price of oil and say, what's going on? Is this indicative of a coming recession? I doubt it. Most of the world is doing pretty okay right now. You're listening to Motley Fool Money, talking with columnist Morgan Housel. Let's get to some of the headlines that we've been seeing recently. You just sort of touched on this. We talked on last week's show about the hysteria in the media. I don't think hysteria is too far off the mark when I use that word. I know they're trying to get someone to buy a magazine or a newspaper or click on a link, but some of the headlines over the past few weeks,
Starting point is 00:26:32 when you see things like, sell everything, and even one of our listeners had written in a headline that he saw that he wanted me to flag for you, which is, the stock market hates the eighth year of an American presidency. It seems like it's a bull market for people who want to prognosticate that everything's going to hell. It's a bull market for something else that starts with B and ends with S. As someone who consumes a lot of financial news, I guess I'm kind of immune to it. Because if you follow enough headlines and pay attention to the subsequent outcomes connected to those, you really realize that headline writing and a lot of financial media in general is not connected to
Starting point is 00:27:21 reality and is definitely not something that you should read a headline and then log into your brokerage account and act on it. That's really dangerous. Most financial journalism is a form of entertainment. And it's important for readers to know that. A lot of times the journalist thinks you understand that, but a lot of readers don't understand that. That is really a form of intellectual entertainment. So who are a couple of the people that you like to read, thoughtful, engaging, and help to give you perspective and balance, particularly, as I said at the top, when the market is having the kind of volatility that we've seen over the last few weeks? Some of the people that I follow on Twitter and are friends of mine,
Starting point is 00:28:04 but mainly Twitter, is where you can see their content in action. There's an investor named Ben Carlson, often confused with Ben Carson. I was going to say. Different person. Okay, not running for president right now. He is entirely sick of that comparison. But I just did it again. Ben Carlson with an L. He's one of the smartest investors I think I've ever come across. And he's just a really nice guy too. He's on Twitter. He runs a blog called A Wealth of Common Sense. He also wrote a book by the same title. And he's just, I would just describe him as hyper-rational, but also very bright. He's a great guy to follow. Another guy I follow on Twitter named Michael Batnick.
Starting point is 00:28:45 He writes a blog called The Irrelevant Investor. He too is just a great guy. He provides a lot of market history and psychology in just really quick, short investment takes that you can read in one minute, but provide a lot of insight about what's going on. And he, too, is just a very rational person. These are not people that are going to get excited with big headlines or freak out. They're really people that put the market into proper perspective and help you get a proper mental mind frame. One of the things that you do in your writing is frame, or in some cases reframe, a way of thinking, because again, a lot of the headlines are framed a certain way, and I find that
Starting point is 00:29:28 one of the reasons I enjoy following you on Twitter is because you will reframe things. And you had written something recently about what the market decline means in terms of your 401k plan. I never really thought about it in that sense, that like, oh, my contribution that I make every month is actually doing a little bit more heavy lifting. Right. Because the market fell over the last week, your next 401k contribution, you will acquire more shares in that contribution because shares are cheaper now. So I think if rather than you said the stock market fell 3% today, if you reframe that and say your next 401k contribution, you will acquire 2% or 3% more shares than you would have yesterday.
Starting point is 00:30:14 Both of those statements are true, but I think the second one is a better context for what most investors are after, which is not current returns, but future wealth accumulation. Those more shares that you acquire today because the market fell over the last two or three weeks is going to pay off, likely will pay off down the road between now and whenever your goal is, if your goal is retirement or whatnot down the road. It's hard for people to think of that because when they see a lot of red lights flashing and blaring headlines and watching their net worth declined by 10%, it's easy to just take the automatic pessimistic view of stocks fell 3%. But if you think of it as, you can now acquire more shares. Most people do dollar
Starting point is 00:30:55 cost average in their 401 . They're just making purchases automatically every two weeks, each paycheck. Those people absolutely benefit from things like this. It's just hard to wrap your mind around that. You can follow him on Twitter. You can read his stuff. See, this is why I love having you on the show. I always feel better when have conversations like this. So, Morgan Housel, thanks for being here. Morgan Housel. Good to be here. Coming up, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Starting point is 00:31:38 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. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill, and joining me in studio once again, Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, and Jeff Fischer. Guys, a couple of housekeeping notes before we get to the stocks on our radar this week. Happy to say that for the third week in a row, I think this is a record, third week in a row on Motley Fool Money, we get to welcome a new station. It's KITC AM 1400 serving the Puget Sound region in Washington state. Any of our folks in the Seattle area, check it out.
Starting point is 00:32:14 Pressure's on now. I want four weeks in a row. I'll see what I can do. Manny Argersinger, we talked about this recently. One of the services you work on, our Supernova service, it's one of our services here at The Motley Fool that's open just for a limited time for folks unfamiliar. This is a service, by the way, we talked recently about the market volatility. You go back to when Supernova launched four years ago, the market was launching at a time kind of like what we're seeing right now. I remember those days very well. We came out of the gate in March 2012 with the Odyssey One mission, which is the portfolio I'm in charge of. Same thing, the market was
Starting point is 00:32:50 very volatile. A lot of our early recommendations were just all over the map. I remember specifically buying Netflix, for example, really early on. It was down 20% within a month. That's always a good feeling. Oh, yes. It hurt. But I see the same thing happening right now. We're launching Supernova, and we're also launching a new mission, Odyssey 2, which really follows in the footsteps of the portfolio I'm running. It has kind of the same charter, the same goals, really investing in some of the best stocks from Rule Breakers and Stock Advisor and building real money portfolios. And that team, it's David Kretzmann. He has a great team. Brendan Matthews is also
Starting point is 00:33:26 on the team, a great analyst we have here. And they're picking stocks in an environment and I'd love to be picking stocks in, because I think there are so many bargains all over the stock market, but especially in the Supernova universe. And if you join now, you kind of see their first three picks right off the bat this coming week. So, for more details, go to supernovaradio.fool.com. That's supernovaradio.fool.com. It's a free microsite with a lot more information on the service, including videos with Matt Argersinger, David Gardner, David Kretzmann, and others. Radioatfool.com is our email address. Question from Jay Wozniak, who writes, as a stakeholder in UPS, I'm a driver and a shareholder. How concerned
Starting point is 00:34:05 should I be for my career and long-term value of my shares regarding Amazon's new approach to jumping into the delivery space? I recently finished reading the book, The Everything Store, and it seems like nothing is out of Amazon's reach. Thank you, and keep up the good work. Great question. And yes, for anyone who's read The Everything Store, the profile of Jeff Bezos and how he has grown Amazon, Matty, no surprise that it's one more industry that they're looking into the delivery space. Well, and Jay's right on. Before I read The Everything Store, I really thought there were some markets, some industries that Amazon really just probably wouldn't get into,
Starting point is 00:34:44 and one of those is shipping. It's very capital-intensive, as Jay probably knows, very labor-intensive. But I tend to agree, I don't think there's anything out of Jeff Bezos' reach. They've made significant investments getting into that zone. Jeff's probably got some stats behind that. I don't think Jay has to worry about his job anytime soon, although, maybe at some point he might be working for Amazon. Not totally out of the question. Yeah, and no single customer accounts for more than 10% of UPS's revenue, for one. And two, only about 40% of their revenue as a whole is from the U.S. And to what you you said, Matty, too, if Amazon's really going to seriously get into this, it's going to
Starting point is 00:35:27 take them years to build it out and to do it. And Amazon already uses all kinds of different delivery services. O' Jay, you're in good shape. Yeah, you should be fine. O' Alright, let's get to the stocks on our radar, and we'll bring in our man Steve Broido from the other side of the glass to hit you with a question. Jeff Fischer, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? Well, I don't know. I like to say this is being flexible, but it could be just plane being stupid. So, I usually buy, as you know, Chris, things like Visa or Gilead or things that are really compounding cash flow for many, many years. But American Airlines
Starting point is 00:35:59 is what I'm looking at again. Ticker is AAL. I looked at the airline industry about a year ago and just found that I think it has really changed. I think the profits may be here to stay. And so, these shares look really cheap. They're at about five times earnings and they should have, just like Southwest, record results this year once again. They don't hedge their fuel costs at all, so they're really enjoying these low prices. That said, the market has only sent it lower in the year that I've been following it, and the market needs to believe that American Airlines can stay profitable for the long-term. Steve, question about American Airlines?
Starting point is 00:36:33 Steve Broidoff- Jeff, you travel quite a bit. Do you actually enjoy flying? I hate it. It's becoming worse. Every year, it seems like it's getting worse, and I look at the airlines and I just don't feel the love. You know, I had an experience on American recently that made me not want to fly. Whenever I fly Southwest, I'm happy to. I get a lot done on an airplane. I kind of love the isolation of, well, you have Wi-Fi, but you're on a plane, you can't get up and move around. So, I get a lot done on planes. I like flying. I actually thought about flying just to get some work done.
Starting point is 00:37:05 Jason Moser, what are you looking at? Yeah, there's been an on-again, off-again relationship with this one. I think it's turning to on-again. It is Panera. The stock has been stuck kind of in neutral here the past couple of years, but I think that's for good reason. We've been a bit critical of their in-store experience and throughput and how that's shaken through the numbers. But, you know, Matty and I were talking about this the other day, and we have that one across the street from us now here at Fool HQ that is very convenient. You can order on the computers there and you don't really have to do a whole heck of a lot. It seems like they get the
Starting point is 00:37:39 orders right. You don't have to talk to anyone, just get your food. Yeah. It's a very convenient service, I think. It just has impressed me that maybe that Panera 2.0 initiative is starting to take hold here. This is one I think that I'm going to start looking at for MDP a little bit more closely. And the ticker? P-N-R-A. Steve? How do you categorize Panera? It just seems like a place that sells a bunch of
Starting point is 00:38:00 different kinds of food, sort of. There's nothing unique, it's some bread, they've got coffee. It's kind of like Starbucks' third place, but not quite. I think that's a good question you asked there, Steve. It's sort of an identity thing, and maybe they've still got to work on that. Mattie? What I mentioned earlier, Activision Blizzard, you've got a nice, the ticker's ATVI, biggest video game publisher on the planet. You've got a nice little 10% pullback here. I just
Starting point is 00:38:23 think video games are getting ever more popular. There's more platforms. No one does it better than Activision. Esports is also going to be huge. There's some studies suggesting it's more popular than the NBA right now, which is hard to fathom, and Activision's a big play on that as well. Steve? Are you ever too old to play video games? No, because I am 36 and I still play many hours of video games and intend to for many, many decades. Steve, three interesting companies. You got one you want to put on your watch list?
Starting point is 00:38:46 I would have to go with Activision because I just can't do American Airlines and Panera. All right, Jeff Fisher, Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger. Guys, thanks for being here. Thank you. Check out supernovaradio.fool.com for more details on our Supernova service. That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Fool Money. Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. We'll see you next week. We'll be right back.

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