Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - How We Invest In a Falling Market

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

The stock market has entered correction territory as the AI trade falls apart and rising energy prices risk a global recession. We discuss how to handle market downturns, what we see in energy markets, and why long-term investing is still the answer for investors.Travis Hoium, Andy Cross, and Lou Whiteman discuss:- Nasdaq correction- Energy’s shocking rise- The AI trade- How well do you know your market history- Stocks on our radarCompanies discussed: Netflix (NFLX), Cintas (CTAS), Delta (DAL), Jetblu (JBLU), NVIDIA (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG).Host: Travis HoiumGuests: Andy Cross, Lou WhitemanEngineer: Dan BoydDisclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement.We’re committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nasdaq is officially in correction territory, so what are we doing now? Motley Fool Money starts now. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoyum, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Andy Cross. And guys, as of early Friday, the Nasdaq is down 12% from its all-time high. That actually happened in October, but the drop over the past couple of weeks has been pretty notable.

Now, that means we're in correction territory. 20% would be a bear market, I believe, if I'm getting my definitions correct. This is partly about Iran and oil prices, but it's also partly about questions about AI, lots of things going on. So Andy, when you look at this market overall, what do you think the market is seeing to have these big negative days? We're down 1.2% early in trading on Friday. Yesterday was a big down day. We're not getting earnings. So what's on the top of mind for investors? Well, Trav, I think the start of the year, there was a little bit more of kind of, hey, how is the market shaping up with so much of the tech spending? There's just trillions going into data centers. And that pivoted very quickly towards the Iran

war, the activities going on in the Middle East and the impact on not just oil prices, but now I think more and more, it's what are the ripple effects to those increases? Oil prices are going to percolate. If they stay elevated throughout the economy, how is that going to impact consumer spending? How is that going to impact investor appetite? And so I think the markets have started shifting as we're thinking, gosh, where is the value going to be? Not just on for individual investors, but also for institutional investors. And so much of that capital now has started to flow a little bit more towards things like energy and materials in the marketplace. Energy is up more than 30% so far this year, but the overall impact into the market,

whether it's a Nasdaq or just the S&P 500 for energy is relatively small. So you haven't really seen the impacts and that's been, even though the investing appetite has shifted, you haven't seen that show up in the general markets because energy is just such a smaller part of the investment landscape and of the indices and technology is so much of a huge, big part of that part of the market and that's money starting to flow out of there as investors get a little bit worried about, oh gosh, how much of this AI spending in data centers is going to be recouped because of the value for those dollars looking down the road, where is the investor return going to be? So you're starting to see this market shift and that is showing up

in the overall indices and just some nervousness with the investor appetite going into 2026 and they ran war, certainly not helping. So I want to put some numbers to that. the NASDAQ composite year to date is down 8.9% as we're recording. The S&P 500 is down 6.1%. Is that part of that energy allocation that you're talking about, right? The NASDAQ is not going to be allocated energy. Whereas if you look at one of the things I like to look at recently is the heat map of the S&P 500. If you do a year to date heat map of the S&P 500, there are huge segments of the market. A lot of the most popular stocks that we talk about all the time are down really big. And then you got these small little boxes like utilities, like

oil producers, ExxonMobil that are up huge. Is that what you're talking about? Is that just that allocation has not kind of balanced out because of the weights of the index? Yeah. Energy makes up three to 4% maybe of the index right around there compared to technology and financials. Financials also not having a good start to the year just because of the interest rate concern. So yes, those parts of the market just aren't represented in the index. So you're starting to see those fall off. And of course, many fools out there, including myself, own a lot of technology stocks. So as we see those technology stocks underperform, or there's the MAG7 or other parts of the tech stack underperform, that also weighs on some of that confidence and just wondering, hey,

where do I have to try to find some alpha in this market? Looking out over the next couple of years, do I need to raise some cash? How do I start to position myself knowing that technology or thinking about technology is starting to shift a little bit and other parts of the market are looking a little bit more attractive considering some of the macro factors that we're seeing. Now, I mentioned financials. Financials have not done well this year, mostly because the interest rate environment where we are expecting rate cuts throughout pretty much the year, if you look at a lot of the expectations and now the expectations are the rate cuts are not going to come, if at all, they come later in the year. Yeah, the six-month treasuries have been jumping,

which you know music to my ear but but not really what we see with the markets i think andy did a great job like breaking down kind of the market dynamics and why maybe things if anything i'm a little surprised the overall markets have held up as well as they have i mean you listen you read reports you listen to podcasts you know energy experts talk about like wow we are experiencing things that in the models we said well this is worst case scenario and we will never say you and that's our reality. I think part of this too is market psychology. I, I'm worried guys, because I do think that the damage done will take time to heal. And I think it's a question of quarters or if not years, how long it takes to ripple through the economy. And I think that

as an investor, you know, I might not change things on that because I'm trying to focus on the longterm. I'm trying to be in companies that can get through down cycles, but it feels like this is the straw that might break the camel's back and cause a recession. On the other hand, what's happened every time the stocks have gone down since COVID? There has been a pop. And I do think the markets are likely looking for a pop when we finally do have some resolution to what's going on in the Middle East. And I think that's kind of rational, especially if I'm a professional money manager and I'm graded quarter to quarter. If I think a pop is coming, I'm not positioning for five years. So I, so I do think there's these weird psychological dynamics that

if, if anything, I think, I think it's good to maybe understand or have a feel for, but for what I'm trying to do, I'm also trying to ignore. I'm trying to maybe use it to explain what I'm seeing and why, why things are moving. But I personally don't want to make decisions based on what could happen next week. But I do think the psychology of the market is, that we do see kind of the, whether it's FOMO or whether, you know, what's going on is influencing what's going on. You know, Lou and Travis, it's interesting, the individual investor Lou mentioned about the, you know, kind of the buy the dip mentality. Individual investors now represent a good chunk of the investing activity. That's a lot different than it was five years ago. We've

seen them be kind of a lot, in a lot of ways, the buyer of last resort and institutional investors, a little bit more on the short-term panic, hit the button, jump out of positions. So, individual investor trade. That has been a fascinating shift over the past 10 or 20 years. Yeah, and it's really elevated since COVID. If you look at really since COVID when so many institutional or so many individual investors, and hey, credit us, right? Hey, win for the individual investor.

That's awesome. Those individual investors have really, in many ways, supported the market, especially on the margin side. And I think you are starting to see, hey, it's been a great performance the last three years, really since 2022, after that bear market. The markets have done so well. So many positions have done so well, including technology, led by technology. And now I think individual investors are saying, hey, is that, hey, I may be overweight in that area. Now I'm starting to pivot and looking at other spots of the market.

I think that shift is going on. And that's not necessarily, that doesn't get reflected in the index, as we mentioned before. and that's one reason why the index has underperformed this year. One of the questions that I have about the market and the economy, one of the things you guys talked a lot about market dynamics. We have not talked a lot about the economy, and the reality is oil prices are soaring. That's a huge expense for a lot of consumers.

Year-to-date, Brent crude is up 76%. WTI, West Texas Intermediate, is up 70%. We're at $93 per barrel. that is going to ultimately hit people's pocketbooks so you know lou does that worry you that the yes i think andy's totally right the great thing that we've been trained as as investors and as individual investors to have a longer term view and to buy these dips but what's different now is it in the last 17 years we have not gone through a traditional recession where people are losing, you know, put COVID aside, there was a lot of weird things going

on with COVID, but where those buyers of last resort that Andy said, were, you know, losing jobs, were pulling money out of the market instead of putting money into the market. Are those two things, energy prices going up and the risk of a recession, could that be kind of bad news squared for the market overall, because those buyers are going to start going elsewhere, we're just going to cash. I'm definitely worried. I mean, look, we've talked about this a lot before. We like to talk about the consumer as if it's one person, but it really is just kind of all of the households out there on an individual level. Do you feel confident enough to keep spending at your average pace? Right. And it's always a mix between yes and no. If the no's

hit a critical point, then that is when the consumer is having trouble. You can see how not just, you know, I mean, oil is one thing, but just the, you know, the refined products, what we actually consume, hopefully not literally, but from whether it's oil, I mean, whether it's gas, whether it's jet fuel, whether it's, you know, what happens with plastics on all the chip making, the helium and some of the acids that we get out of it. If everything is getting more expensive, does that shift the K-shaped economy just slightly till we end up in a downturn? It wouldn't shock me. You know, Travis, you're right. We are now conditioned to kind of buy the dip. It wasn't too long ago that, I mean, look at after the dot-com boom, the Nasdaq took, what, a decade to recover? There was a whole, you know, kind of, I think, market mentality tied to that before. I'm guessing this time around won't be either extreme. I don't think, knock on wood, it won't take 10 years to bounce back, but I think we might end up with enough headwinds that we find this a lot easier to just bounce back and move on.

And yeah, I'm trying to think about that. I don't know if I can change my portfolio with that, but mentally I'm trying to prepare myself so I don't do anything panicked if and when that does happen. The one slight bright side is just the dependence, the impact of increasing energy prices and oil prices, gasoline prices is much less now than it was 30, 40 years ago. So that's some good sign, but Lou is absolutely right. It's just going to percolate through the economy. I think, again, investors are kind of sensitive to this. Travis, you did, I think, bring up a great point when you just think about there's just this uncertainty around jobs, I think, now that we're all feeling, whether it's AI or just macro conditions, and that might be a weighing impact on investor appetite to put more capital to work into stocks. Now, we might have some pretty big IPOs hitting the market this year, which would be very exciting. And I think individual investors especially would kind of gravitate towards that. In the K-shaped economy, the wealthy are as well off now as ever before. So we have a little bit of that. But I do worry about the job impact having some negative consequences on the appetite for individual investors to be investing.

Yeah, it does seem like there's multiple pieces of the market, too. We talked about that a little bit, like energy is doing very well. But if you just look at, you know, certain segments, we went through this in 2022 as well, there were certain segments down 70, 80, 90 percent. And then you look at the market overall and it was like, you know, it was a down year, but it wasn't the end of the world. We didn't actually end up in a recession. The other thing that I wanted to note, too, is even going back to the Great Depression,

these recessions market corrections any sort of downturn you want to talk about they seem to be shorter than every single time we go through them the great depression was it was a decade you know even dot com was two years covid was like five minutes and so maybe it may be the case again this time when we come back we're going to get an update on the ai trade you're listening to motley fool money new from Nespresso blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range infused with functional benefits choose the coffee you love with added b vitamins like coffee plus b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 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 Nespresso.com. Y'all not there? All right, let's get this thing moving. welcome back to money for money the question i have this week is has the ai trade lost its legs andy we've got some big moves in some of the ai players over the past few years and this is what's really driven a lot of the market even gdp growth has been driven by ai investment so microsoft down 24% this year. Tesla down 17%. NVIDIA is down 8%. Oracle down 27%. Some of these stocks are really taking it on the chin despite some phenomenal numbers. So what is going on with

this AI trade? Yeah, they continue to put up great on, for the most part, great on the earning side, the revenue side, even making impacts on a lot of their AI benefits. But certainly the market is just thinking about the return on all of these spending. It's going to be trillions of dollars, trillion dollars close, give or take, whatever year you're talking about. What's a few hundred billion dollars between friends? Yes. And we had just re-recommended Amazon recently. We had this conversation among the team.

Amazon's going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on CapEx this year. What happens if they came out and said, hey, we're not going to spend quite as much? How would the market react? Would they be positive because it's going to benefit their free cash flow? Or negative and say, gosh, they're not spending enough to be competitive in the AI race against the likes of OpenAI and Google and Microsoft and Meta who are spending equally hundreds of billions total. So there is this thinking of the market and the market doesn't quite know what to make of these numbers, Travis. And it gets to our earlier conversation. They're saying,

hey, great. Investors are, I think, thinking, hey, it was a great run, but now these dollars are getting so high. I made a lot of money in these stocks and I want to pivot and look at other parts of the market. So what is your answer? What do you think is going to happen? Let's say that Amazon this year or even next year says, hey, we are going to pull back. Do you think that boost the stock i think the market would react positively to that yeah it has changed 180 in six months it seems like yeah honestly i'm not sure again and just kind of to play devil's advocate but i think yeah the market long term may like it but i think in the short term the first company that says we're cutting back is sort of risking that it's gonna be rather it's like ours isn't

as good or we have failed and everybody else is still you know it's still going so that's fascinating to me. I mean, look, for long-term, if that's what they're seeing, they need to pull the band-aid, but I am not sure the market initially would cheer any one company alone saying, oh, I'm not so sure. So they need to have like a joint press release. We're all pulling back at the same time. Yeah, good luck with that. Good luck with that, right? You know, part of this too, I think is just, you know, the sheer excitement, the euphoria always degrades over time. So, you know, so many of these stocks are still up so big over say five years. The fact that they're down for a few months, you know, maybe that is just kind of us normalizing, but

there is, I mean, look, just look at OpenAI the last month. They've introduced things, they've dropped things. They've, I think that as we are seeing that, I mean, it's good that these companies are trying to focus on where can we make money, especially the ones like OpenAI that are going from zero to try to do it. But I also think it is more, we are introduced into the conversation, the idea of will this make money or how are you going to make money? Seeing things fail kind of makes that a big red underlined, it might not just work out. So maybe there is just a little more of like, like Andy said, the show me, or maybe it's, maybe we're just a little more grounded as we look at this instead of just anything and everything is good well and a lot of things are

cycles so if you think about something like the gardner hype cycle where you have this hype cycle with artificial intelligence started at the chat gpt moment in november of 2022 you eventually end up at a point where you get to a trough of disillusionment where people go ah man this this isn't real there is no payoff you know maybe maybe the technology is real but we went through this with the internet, where are these companies going to actually be able to make money? And that took years to get to that point. Is it possible, Andy, that we get to that point, you know, in the next year or two with AI? And actually, that's when you want to start buying some of these companies, because that's when you're going to be able to find the next Amazon,

the next Google, and they're going to already have kind of won the market. I think that's what, looking back historically, that would have been the time to buy. I think that's right, Travis. I mean, these are some of the greatest companies ever created in the world. So I think their chances of them making and doing well with these kinds of investments is spot on. It's just that right now the market is just not rewarding that. Yeah, almost inevitably. And I agree. And it's hard to imagine any of these as really the quote unquote losers. I mean, they are so good. And so many of these companies are in so many places. I don't think it's existential threat, but if everybody's a winner this time, it will be the

first time. Right. So I do think that like part of this is just kind of trying to think in those terms, like who is maybe again, I don't think Microsoft is going to go to zero because if they happen to be a loser, but there will be relative winners and losers here. I don't think any of us know the answer to that, but I think maybe what we're seeing is just that these discussions starting to happen instead of yes, just go. When we come back, we're going to see how well Lou and Andy remember their market history. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. new from nespresso blend wellness into your coffee routine with the coffee plus range infused with functional benefits choose the coffee you love with added b vitamins like coffee plus

b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 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 Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. In this segment, we like to have a little bit of fun. So I wanted to see how well Lou and Andy remember their market history. These are all kind of tied to things that are going on in the market today. So we may have our first trillionaire if Elon Musk is able to take SpaceX public in the next month or so.

So since 1983, nine men have held the title of richest person in the world. can you name all of them or even you know what i'm going to give you if you can even name seven of them i'm going to be pretty impressed so we're going to start with elon right we got one right let's start with start with elon yep there was somebody who held it for a number of years jeff bezos yeah only a couple of years for bezos surprising one there only only uh three years 2018 to 2022 bill gates for a while bill gates was yep held it for over a decade i think boffett for a while? Buffett for one year. Just one year. What year would that be?

That is... Is it 2001? 2008. 2008. Fascinating. So the down year, you know, the one company who was able to come to the rescue, Warren Buffett. Yeah. All right. Now you're getting to the harder territory. There was

Carlos Slim briefly. Carlos Slim. Yes. Right? Good one. I'm going to give you a hint. Early 1980s, who would have been the richest person in the world early Sam Walton Sam Walton oh okay and then there's three that you're missing one of them this was just in the last four years Bernard Arnault okay from LVMH yeah and then there is two people actually this is what I didn't even remember this in the early 90s early 90s yeah

two Japanese real estate investors I'm not even going to try to which which are their names but everything ended up kind of going belly up and he ended up not being a billionaire was richest person in the world in in 1991 and then was no longer a billionaire a little over 10 years later uh so just crazy how fast things can can go down i mean relatable right andy well you know i'm just yeah it's just like they're just thinking about those oil barons um yeah you know just like the wildcatters are just they they live and breathe and they go through these cycles and it's just um T. Boone Pickens, I had a fascinating chance to interview him or talk to him. And just even at the elevated age that he was when we spoke to him, he was just so sharp

when it comes to energy and his fields. But I think he had gone bankrupt something like three times before and just made it all back. Yeah. That is one of the wild things is some of these people who are well-known investors, you look back on their history and they have these periods of bust in them. You know, Benjamin Graham as well, I think. either went bankrupt or it was effectively broke. All right. We talked a little bit about oil

earlier in the show. Do you guys remember what year U.S. oil consumption peaked? I'll give you a hint. It was not last year, but what year did oil consumption peak in the U.S.? I'm guessing 2008, 2007, 2007. That's close. Yeah. I was going to say sometime that decade. I'll go under, I'll say 2004, just to be different. But yeah, I think Andy's probably right. The answer is 2005. I've got this- Right in between.

I've got this EIA table that I go back to every once in a while that has oil consumption. It's just always fascinating to see, because then you think about the impacts, right? Like we're not driving less, but vehicles are much more efficient and there's just a lot of efficiency that's gone through the market overall. Electric vehicles is a small piece of it, but it's not most of it when you look at oil. And also just the impact changing diesel engines. How does that all play into the refinery capacity and all that kind of stuff, too? Exactly.

Speaking of refineries, what percentage of oil in 2005 did the U.S. import on a net basis? So the U.S. imports some oil and then exports refined products or oil. But on a net basis, what percentage of oil did the U.S. import in 2005 at that peak consumption? More than half. Yeah, fracking was just taking off. Fracking had just started taking off at that point, so. Yeah. Yeah, more than half.

I don't know. Pick a number, Andy. I'll go a little bit higher. I'll say 65%. Okay. 60%. Wow, that is a good memory. What percentage of oil over the last, I think we're on the, what, the first four months of the year or the last eight months that they reported, what percentage of oil does the U.S. import on a net basis today?

Close to 20 or so, maybe. I would say even lower. negative 10% exporter of oil. Yeah, okay, gotcha. So the fascinating thing there is, you know, we talked about oil prices and the rise in oil prices. In the U.S., that is not going to be

just a complete sink of money that's just going to, you know, a lot of that oil came from the Persian Gulf in 2005. That will just kind of be recirculating through the U.S. economy in one way, shape, or form. And maybe we have another boom, you know, in Texas and in North Dakota, again, if we get oil, it'll go into $150 a barrel. Well, yeah, but just the other big thing, too, is where it's coming from. I would bet that the

vast majority of the imports, you know, it's just kind of we need the heavy crew from Canada. So it's, you know, it's a North American story. I think Fortress North America looks even more impressive. It's still a global price, unfortunately, but, you know, the world has changed. Well, it's interesting, the pricing differential, too, between WTI and Brent and the global price, especially traded over in the physical asset, right? Like traded overseas after the Iran conflict and how that has really changed. And a lot of that is, at least part of it,

is because of the fact that we are a net exporter of our own crude. Yeah, let's put some numbers to that because we've got this in front of me. So as we're recording WTI, West Texas Intermediate, which technically needs to be delivered in, is it Cushing, Oklahoma? Yeah.

I believe, $97 per barrel. Brent crude, which is the more international crude price, is $110, almost $111 per barrel. So that's that differential. Usually they're pretty similar, but that's that differential you're talking about where the internal dynamics in the U.S. not quite as impacted as you see internationally. All right. The next question, what is the biggest... We're going to potentially have the biggest IPO ever next month, maybe in the next couple of months.

What is the biggest IPO so far? How much was raised and what was the value of the company? It was Saudi Aramco, right? Correct. How much they raised? I don't know. I think they only issued like 4% or 5% of the company or something like that, right? Like $20 billion?

I don't know. But yeah, I mean. Ultimately $29 billion. Okay. But that was a $1.7 trillion valuation at the time. So, yeah, these IPOs have gotten just bigger and bigger. If you back out that, if you go ex-Saudi Aramco, which is its kind of own unique beast, I wonder what the next one would be.

Like a $50 billion valuation, I think, right? Most of them are international. I mean, I don't know what the list would be, but SoftBank, Alibaba. um alibaba a lot of the biggest ones have been these massive you know headline grabbing international companies kind of you have to be bigger arguably to if you're an international company listing in the u.s uh but yeah i can't think of what the biggest u.s ipo would have been well does alibaba count so alibaba raised 22 billion dollars had a valuation of approximately $230 billion at IPO.

Okay. Does that count? I mean, those structures of those companies is very strange. Yeah, I don't know if that counts or not. Will we get three big IPOs this year? There seems to be a little bit of a race to see who can kind of come. It sounds like SpaceX is the first one kind of out of the gate, but OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks has always been in there.

Yeah. Well, what do you think? So of those four, Andy, do you think we're going to get two, three, four of those hitting the markets this year? If Anthropic goes or OpenAI goes, I think the other one has to go. So that's like a warning sign. If Anthropic kill public, OpenAI can't, then that's real trouble? Well, OpenAI, I think, is going to be a little bit more difficult.

They just need so much capital, more capital than Anthropic does right now. And as we've seen over the past couple weeks, they're really trying to find what kind of company they are going to be and where they're going to focus on and how do they drive their enterprise subscription, which, you know, a year or two years ago was all talk about open AI and Anthropic was this little kind of like interesting bubbling upstart that's kind of mixing things up. And now the narrative has completely changed and the world has really started to focus much more on the enterprise licensing and business model of Anthropic and how open AI can compete with that. Yeah. This is going to be fascinating. I mean, they're obviously going to get a lot of attention

no matter when they do go public. All right. Let's turn to some historical market numbers. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ, we've talked a little bit about kind of the history of recessions, potential, oil's impact. The last major recession before the financial crisis was the tech bubble, maybe some parallels to where we are today with AI. The market peaked in March of 2000. So both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. How long did it take for both of those to regain their all-time highs. I mentioned this earlier. I think the NASDAQ was about a decade. The S&P was quicker. I mean, I don't know. 10 years for the NASDAQ and two and a half years for the S&P. I don't know. I think March 9th, 2000 was the date because I just have that in my head, at least.

That's what I remember. That was the bottom of the Great Recession, but the market actually peaked? Or was it March 2008 was the peak? No, I'm saying March 9th. I think it was like March. Oh, you know what? Yes. Maybe you're right. Yes. March 9th, 2009 was the bottom of the great financial crisis. But what it was, March 2000 was also the high of the NASDAQ peak. Yeah. So March is a big year. Yeah. I'll say seven years for the S&P and I'll say 12 years for the NASDAQ. That's probably better. Oh, Andy is good at this. Seven years is the correct answer for the S&P. Short-lived though, it really took 13 years to get a sustainable gain over that 2000 high, because then you had the great financial crisis.

That was 2007, right? Yeah. Yeah, 2007, 2008. And then 15 years for the NASDAQ to get back to the all-time high. All right. One quick one to end us on. This gets to everything that we talk about with The Motley Fool, being long-term investors, having that long-term mindset, even if you bought at the peak in March of 2000 and you bought four stocks, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, those are the four I'm going to give you, if you put $10,000 in each of those stocks, how much would they have been worth? Let's start with Microsoft.

I'll give you the hint. That's the laggard of the four. But if you put $10,000 in Microsoft, how much would you have today? Yeah, as a person who owned Microsoft through those dark days and then eventually sold it about a year before Asacha Nadella took over and then the stock took off. And then I finally bought back into it a few years later. Gosh, $10,000 in Microsoft in 2000 would be worth today?

Man, I'm so bad at this. It took 14 years. I think it took 14 years for Microsoft to recover is my guess. Yeah, it's more than 10X since then. So you'd have $130,000. Okay, next up, Amazon. If you bought Amazon basically at its peak, so you had the worst market timing ever

because I think it dropped 90% after this. If you put $10,000 in, how much would you have today? $500,000. I don't know. It's got to be a 50-bagger. Pretty cool. 60, more than a 60-bagger, $618,000. Apple is next up.

and that's all of that was it's probably flat over the last apple chase uh 1.5 no that's too much right one definitely over a million andy i don't know maybe over two million yeah 2.6 million dollars incredible netflix this is the fun one the big one if you had bought ten thousand dollars worth of netflix stock i mean it was a penny a share because i know in stock advisor our cost basis is david's cost basis is like pennies so what was apple travis apple was 2.6 million netflix you would have 5 million 7.85 million dollars by just doing nothing but holding netflix stock so and and wait and the real lesson there and i know it doesn't work this way but say you bought you know 10 companies and nine of them went bust and one of them was netflix you know

it's a weird game. Your batting average is terrible and you don't care. It's these huge winners that really define your returns in the market. Yeah. I mean, long-term, it's a slugging percentage game, really. Across diversified portfolio lists, those mega winners drive the bulk of the returns. Studies show this time and time again. But most investors, I think, are trying to much more focus, at least in the short term, on batting average. They don't want to lose money they want singles and doubles i hadn't even looked this up nvidia by the way would be 14.2 million dollars so that's that's even better i i wouldn't have guessed that much i'll admit when we come back we are going to get to the stock center radar you're listening to motley full money

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We like to end the show with stocks on our radar. So Andy, you are the newcomer this week. What's on your radar? Well, team, let's talk about a company that most people use and may know if you wear a uniform at your place of work, and that is Cintas, symbol C-T-A-S. Company has been around for years and years and years.

It was family founded and family and a father-son run combination. The stock's been absolutely outstanding. We put it into the Stock Advisor team, Hidden Gems. Tom put it on the Stock Advisor scorecard in 2008. It's up almost 40 times in value, absolutely crushing the market. The last 10 years, last five years, and last three years, it has beaten the market as well. They reported quarterly earnings.

The numbers will continue to be impressive. Revenue up 9%, but what's really impressive is their margin profile. They've just done a fantastic job managing that distribution network for office services, uniform rentals, first aid kits, all those kinds of things that offices need. Over the years, their growth rates have been somewhere in the high single digits on average of the last five years, but they've been able to continue to get margin improvements. So their margin profile grows faster. They pay a nice little dividend. They buy back some stock to make smart acquisitions. The big news is they now are looking to acquire Unifirst,

which is another huge provider of uniform rentals. So I'm watching how that acquisition all works through because it will add a lot of goodwill to the balance sheet. But hey, if a company can get the value out of those assets, it is Cintas because they've done it time and time again. So CTAS is one I'm continuing to be impressed with and continue to watch, especially with the stock, more than 20% off its all-time highs.

So I believe, I don't know if it was Cintas, but back in my 3M days, I used to wear these lab smocks that were serviced by one of these companies. Andy, have you ever worn a Cintas uniform in any way, shape, or form? I never have. I've only worn a lab smock back in my high school days.

So, and I don't think it was a Cintas one. Maybe we need to make you a user. Yes. All right. You cut it back at the spectrum, Andy. You could have gotten a job at the spectrum back in the day and done it there, right? All right, Lou, what are you looking at?

So I'm focused on airlines and in particular JetBlue, ticker J-B-L-U. And guys, there's a lot of drama in this sector right now, right? Sky-high fuel prices, chaos at the airports. This week, just to add to the drama, JetBlue has come in and said, we are looking for an exit. They've reportedly hired bankers to explore a sale. On paper, a deal makes sense.

JetBlue is getting squeezed by the industry's big four. There's no clear path for growth, in part because they weren't allowed to buy someone. All the rumored buyers, United, Southwest, and Alaska, they all have reasons where this would make sense, but also they all have their kind of own internal drama or internal priorities other than this to deal with. And airline mergers are historically really difficult to integrate. It all just makes for a big mess. For now, I'm mostly just making popcorn and watching because I think it'd be fun to play out. But I will say the most interesting company out of all of this is one I haven't mentioned, Delta Airlines, best mix of balance sheet and product. And if one of

their competitors decides to do this, it could really, really benefit them in terms of just grabbing assets at airports and also just letting the chaos play out. Real interesting sector to watch right now, but JetBlue with a little shout out to Delta. That's what I'm watching. Is this actually an investable space or is this just popcorn like you said? I think it's more investable now than it used to be. The big four are a lot healthier, but it is still highly cyclical. So, you know, keep your seatbelt fast and don't expect turbulence all of those funds. All right.

Well, I'm feeling a little bit sentimental, so I'm going to add Cintas to the watch list. Not a stock that I've looked at, but man, you look at this stock chart. This is obviously a very impressive company.

For Lou, Andy and Bart behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoyum. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money. We'll see you here tomorrow. We'll be right back.