Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Motley Fool Money: 08.10.2012

Episode Date: August 10, 2012

Disney delivers its biggest earnings ever. IBM considers buying part of Research in Motion.  And Starbucks bets big on mobile payment. Our analysts discuss those stories and share three stocks on their radar. Plus, Spousonomics author Jenny Anderson explains how using economics can help you improve your marriage.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll.

So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. everybody needs money that's why they call it money from fool global headquarters this is motley fool money welcome to motley fool money thanks for being here i'm your host chris ellen joining me in studio this week from motley fool income investor James Early, and for Million Dollar Portfolio, Charlie Travers and Ron Gross. Gentlemen, good to see you, as always. We have got the latest on retail stocks, energy stocks, and the future of mobile payment. If you like the Smurfs movie, then boy, do

we have some great news. As always, we will give you a look at the stocks on our radar, but we are going to begin this week with Disney. Disney reported the highest quarterly earnings in the company's history. Ron Gross, $1.8 billion in profit for the third quarter. That's a lot of zeros. Yeah, well, Chris, if I use my trademark, they're firing on all cylinders. Will I get away with it, James? Absolutely. Yes.

Yeah, well, Avengers, top-grossing film of 2012. Parks knocking it out of the park, if you will. The network business not as robust as in some quarters, but ESPN, Disney's channel still getting it done. The company's just doing a great job. In the past, when this company has struggled when it came to quarterly earnings, it was really mainly about the parks, particularly over the last few years. What is the Achilles heel for this company now? Is it the online? Is it the interactive gaming? Disney Interactive is still losing money. They say that they'll probably be profitable by the end of 2013. We'll have to wait and see. Can't take that at face value. We certainly

We need less John Carters and more Avengers. We can't take $100 million write-offs every quarter, so we need to produce good content. The parks, quite frankly, it's the economy. The better the economy is, the better the parks are, but they're doing things like revamping some of the parks. Shanghai is coming online. They're taking the necessary steps, but this is a consumer-based company, and it does ebb and flow with the economy to a large extent. And James, the stock, despite the earnings, the stock didn't really move all that much. It hit an all-time high this week, but it really didn't move all that much. Is it more like a dividend play now?

No. The dividend is very tiny, 1.2% yield. The payout is 19.5%, which is really wimpy. It's like the dad that could afford to pay you a better allowance but chooses not to. I mean, they really should be paying out more. This is not that fast-growing a company. But the stock has performed. It's up over 30% this year versus 13% for the market. Not too shabby.

And so, it's in this kind of blue-chip conundrum at $90 billion of market cap. Nine times EBITDA. Not incredibly expensive, not incredibly cheap. So, it's going to do what blue-chips do. As long as they put up the numbers, it'll plot along nicely. J.C. Penney's second quarter earnings came in much lower than expected. But, Charlie, despite that, shares were up on Friday. What's going on? Ron Johnson has a lot of street cred still at this point, Chris. Apparently, he does. So, his comments about what is coming for the company in the fall outweighed what was completely miserable Q2 results.

JCPenney reported same-store sales down 21%, and then they yanked their non-GAAP guidance for the year where they were going to earn $2.16 a share. And the company also turned cash flow negative. For a retailer, that's a very, very bad sign. But they're giving him a lot of credit that this is a turnaround that will turn. They're introducing a new pricing strategy in September, along with a new store prototype, where they're going to have a store-within-a-store concept. Essentially, it looks like they're going to turn JCPenney into a mall-within-the-mall. I'm not really that optimistic myself, but the market liked it, so we'll see what happens.

The market must have a ton of confidence in this guy, because to your point about the earnings, these were miserable earnings, and these were really low expectations. And even with the low expectations, James, came in under that. Yeah, it's the equivalent of we're all here standing over a piece of roadkill and wondering when it's going to come back to life. It's not. I mean, this concept is dead. And I've just got to quote Warren Buffett, as quoted by CNBC's Jeff Mackey, which is a great quote. He says, when a great manager takes over a bad business, it's the business that emerges with its reputation intact.

And that's what I think is going to happen here. And yet, Charlie, we have seen turnarounds in the retail industry before. We've seen it with Coach, Burberry. I know that's a company you follow. It's not impossible, but to James' point, it kind of seems like for all of the confidence that the market has in Ron Johnson, the clock is ticking. And the consumers so far are voting with their feet. And even their internet sales were down 33%, so they've got a lot to prove to me. And department stores in general are notorious for having trouble and being resurrected. It's not a good business model.

It's a very hard business model. Bloomingdale's struggled for a very, very long time. So, some of them survive, but they all can't. Well, let's stick with retail, because shares of Macy's were up this week after that retail company's latest earnings came in 27% higher for the quarter. The company also raised guidance, Ron. What do you think? Yeah, a lot of what they're doing is cost-cutting, and you can't cost-cut your way to profitability forever. But they're doing a decent job. They're focusing on local markets. Their buyers are focusing more on local markets than ever before. My wife actually

used to be a buyer for Macy's, so I have a little insight into that. But they're doing a fine job. The numbers don't lie. Net income up 16% is great, but you've got to grow that top line. You can't cost-cut forever. Don't sell yourself short, Ron. You have a lot of insight into Macy's. I may. What are you driving at? Once upon a time, before you were a world-famous stock analyst, you worked at Macy's. I did. It was actually Bambergers at the time. Some of them were called Bambergers. and I worked at the bath shop when I was in high school. Really? Did you like it?

Oh, I did not like it. So let me just, what should I look for when I'm buying a loofah? Like, is there? No, it was mostly towels and bath mats and bath, like, carp rugs. If we were to track down your manager at the time, what would he or she say about sort of your strengths and your weaknesses as an employee of Macy's? Well, I prided myself.

This was before the days of scanners, right? So everything was done manually into the register. It was a nightmare. But I prided myself on being quite fast, used both hands to type into the prices and everything. Great dexterity. Great. I knew nothing about the products. I didn't know anything about towels.

I didn't know the difference between towels. I don't even understand what cotton is. I was of no help to anyone. Let's move on. Kind of a mixed week for Chesapeake Energy. On Tuesday, shares were up more than 9% after second quarter profits nearly doubled. On Thursday, the company confirmed that it is indeed the subject of a Justice Department investigation into possible criminal antitrust violations. And, James, we were talking about this before the show.

This was a story that broke in late June. Reuters broke the story that top executives at Chesapeake were colluding with Encana, which is a rival energy company, to keep land prices in Michigan low. What do you make of this week for Chesapeake Energy? Well, obviously, this news comes as a big surprise to those of us familiar with such an ethical oasis of a company. Yeah, what happened is, allegedly, Chesapeake and Inc. said, okay, let's not bid together on the same properties. And that will have the effect of just keeping property prices in Michigan low. The benefit to Chesapeake, or the silver lining, is that this is fairly small. It's a $13 billion market cap company, and I think they spent about $400 million on land in Michigan.

again. So, whatever fine or fee will probably not be humongous. And they've got bigger problems, really. That's the other good news, so to speak. They've got much bigger things to worry about than this. I was going to say, the gas prices, natural gas prices are low. This is stock that's been beaten up, as you mentioned. This is a company with certainly a history of corporate governance issues. And yet, a lot of assets, and it seems like for some people, this would be exactly the time to buy Chesapeake Energy. Yeah, they're selling $13 billion of assets, which is prudent, because Aubrey McLennan, the CEO, was just on a crazy spree. They shook up the board. He's still CEO, but he's not chairman anymore. And he really had the old board in his

pocket, and that was the problem. The thing is, I don't know if you need to pile in right now. Gas prices are going to be low for some time. So you can probably wait a little bit. Charlie, you agree with that? I completely agree with James on this. I think there's better companies in the space. Give me a name. I would like Devon Energy. All right. We have talked in the past about research in motion and the challenges that that tech company faces. Bloomberg is now reporting that IBM is interested in RIM's

enterprise services unit. And Charlie, this story broke Thursday evening. And sure enough, Friday morning, shares of research in motion up 5%. What do you think of this? It's just blind hope. People have been looking for someone to throw RIM a life preserver for you know, a long time here. And so the rumors are that IBM is interested in their enterprise service business. And what that means is that's their network of secure servers that support BlackBerry devices. And that would give IBM control of a secure email offering for corporate users who prioritize security, which does make a lot of sense for IBM. But where that would leave research in motion in the aftermath of such a sale, if it happens, is a big question mark.

I'm not sure how they could continue to sell BlackBerry devices unless IBM was going to support the hardware side. Yeah, how does this feel if you're RIM? I mean, it's like you're a store and you're trying to stay afloat by having some sale, and someone comes in and offers to buy all your shelves and display cases, right? Right, and then you lease it back from them, I guess. Yeah, yeah. I read that BlackBerry is really hoping that their next iteration of BlackBerry is going to be big for them, so they might want to see how that works out before they get rid of the enterprise business.

So, that would be meaning this might happen next year, not imminently. I think that's, like you said, they're grasping at straws. If they're going to get it done, just rip off the Band-Aid and get it done. If you're Research In Motion and you believe that IBM is interested in possibly buying this unit, who else is on your speed dial? Are you calling John Chambers over at Cisco System and seeing if he wants to get in on the bidding? Well, there's been some rumors that Samsung might be interested in parts of Research in Motion's business, and the reason would be that Samsung is a major beneficiary of Google's Android system, but they're a little nervous about

the Motorola acquisition and Google vertically integrating and competing with that. So taking either a BlackBerry license or making an acquisition could let them have their own OS and stand alone. Coming up, the ripple effects of Facebook's IPO continue to be felt on Wall Street. Details shortly. This is Motley Fool Money. If you've got the money, honey, I got the time. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Charlie Travers, James Early, and Ron Gross.

Guys, before we get back to the news, have to welcome a new station to the Motley Fool Money affiliates. You should hear who it is first. WKBK AM 1290 and FM 104.1 in Keene, New Hampshire. It's our first station in New Hampshire. I've been to Keene. All right, back to the news. Guys, remember back in May, there was the deal where Yahoo was going to sell part of its stake in Alibaba, the Chinese internet company, for more than $4 billion? At the time, Yahoo said it was going to return the cash to shareholders. Now, new CEO Marissa Mayer is saying she may want to use that cash for other purposes. And Charlie, shares of Yahoo were down about 5% Friday morning when this story broke. What do you think?

Sure, Chris. And yeah, to your point you mentioned, there was a big proxy fight over Yahoo about this very issue where Dan Loeb, a very famous activist investor, got on the board with two of his appointees. And part of that plan was they were going to return this $4 billion to shareholders. It was not clear if it was going to be a share buyback or as a dividend, which would be about $3 or $4 a share. And that would happen sometime before the end of 2012. Well, as it turns out, Marissa Meyer was hired last month in July, and she apparently has some other plans, which is actually her job. And presumably, the board of directors knew this when they hired her, and so all they're going to do is just make sure that the original plan makes sense or not. And frankly, I think they probably do have better uses for the money than a share buyback. Yahoo's already bought back $1.5 billion over the last 12 months.

They don't have the cash flow to support that. And I think investing in the business is a better option for them. Ron, what do you think? Yeah, I agree. I think Marissa Meyer is doing what she thinks is necessary versus what's popular. I give her a lot of credit for that, and especially Yahoo being so public, it is a tough thing to do. Unfortunately, Yahoo just can't get out of its own way. I mean, this is just another communication disaster, another pullback, another shifting and going left when people think it's going right.

So that's unfortunate, and the stock is selling off. but I think we have to give her time to do what she's hired to do. She wants to focus on search, though. I mean, and Google obviously dominates that. Is Yahoo destined to be kind of the AMD to Google's Intel, so to speak, like dependent on scraps just to be token competition? I think perhaps, yes. I think Google is not going to be the only monopoly in search.

There is room for other search in this, and it can be profitable, too. But I think she'll probably take us places we might not even realize. That sounds like you have a lot of confidence. We'll see. Guys, two consumer-facing IPOs this week, Blumen Brands, which is the parent company of Outback Steakhouse, and Manchester United, the famous soccer club, both went public this week.

And, Ron, I think what's interesting here is that a week ago, we saw reports of where these companies were going to price their shares, and they actually ended up pricing them lower when they went public. You've been involved in this type of thing in the past. How does that process work? And if you're Blumen Brands, why are you lowering the price of your IPO? Yeah, the IPO market in general is really struggling, whether it's Facebook, Groupon, Zynga, Pandora, or companies that are postponing them completely, whether Kayak, I believe,

Formula One, a number have postponed. CKE. Yeah, CKE, the restaurant chain. So a number, it's just hurting, and it's a function of two things. One, investors' appetites for IPOs are not that strong right now. And B, starting with Facebook, the valuations just weren't making sense, and people got really burned on Facebook, and now they're being extra cautious. So, you come up with a range, if you're a banker, you test the markets, you test the waters, you see what you can actually sell it for, and if it's less than you originally set that range for, you have

a tough phone call with the company, where you say, hi, it's me, I don't think we can get it done, we've got to go lower, and so we can either cancel or go lower your call. Do you think that's the big lesson of the Facebook IPO, this whole notion of valuation having, essentially mattering more to people when they're looking to price IPOs? For a guy, a value guy, it's music to my ears. I'd love to see some rationality come back into the marketplace. So, all is well, I think. I think that's the lesson, yeah, with Facebook, with this, that the market is actually a little more sensible than we often give it credit for being.

This week, Starbucks announced it is investing in Square, the mobile payment startup company. and beginning this fall. As part of the deal, Square will begin processing all the credit and debit card transaction at Starbucks locations in the U.S. James, is this more about the customer experience for Starbucks, or is this more about Starbucks really looking to invest in the future of mobile payment? Long-term, it's the latter. I mean, for now, Square, and by the way, Square is kind of like a payment system. If you imagine two cell phones making love, it's kind of how works. Like one guy has a barcode, one guy receives the barcode and gets the money. If you're a

merchant, you just call up Square, they mail you this free adapter kit that reads the other guy's cell phone. And it also swipes. You can plug this little thing into the top of your iPhone and you can just swipe credit cards. And it works best for micro merchants who might otherwise find it burdensome to apply to take credit cards the normal way. So Starbucks is not a micro merchant. So I think that's why I think your latter point makes the most sense, Chris. This valuation of Square is $3.25 billion, and they just invested $25 million, which is not a lot of money. But since Square will be doing the processing of all of Starbucks' transactions now, that's probably the bigger benefit, and we'll see where this goes later on.

How much bigger is mobile payment going to get? And we see a lot of players in this space. We see, obviously, Visa and MasterCard. But Square is not the only startup out there that's doing this sort of thing. Is this increasingly an attractive space for investors? Yeah, Chris, and you see Google and Microsoft working with the carriers and the banks to get mobile payments up and running on their phones in a manner that works for everybody involved, because I think consumers would really like to do this instead of carrying around credit cards. We've already moved from a cash society to a plastic society, and now I think we're going mobile. And finally, guys, last year, Sony's production of the Smurfs grossed over $560 million worldwide, so that means we are—

How can that be? We're going to see some sequels, but that's not all. Sony is reportedly going to be producing a film version of the 1980s sitcom ALF, which for those who don't remember, ALF stood for Alien Life Form. Ron, clearly there is a market in Hollywood for movie ideas based on 80s television shows. What do you got? Make a recommendation. Does anyone here remember the name Ralph Hinkley?

No. He is the greatest American hero, and it would be an amazing movie. oh wow james what do you got 80s were really the cultural sort of the epitome of of human culture and in my view i was going to go with magnum pi i think that's already been made a movie i might go with knight rider airwolf charlie what do you got i'm going back into the cartoon realm with captain caveman oh i remember i was a big fan of captain caveman nice uh steve broido what do you got for us man i'm going with mr belvedere what do you mean by going with him i love mr Belvedere. I wish he lived at my home now and everything would be so much easier.

Feature-length movie, you're going Mr. Belvedere? Yeah, absolutely. Feature-length. All right, guys, we will see you a little later in the show. Coming up, why cheap sex is good for your marriage. We will dip into the audio archives for a conversation with Jenny Anderson, co-author of Spousonomics. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Forget love and romance. My guest this week says the key to a happy marriage is economics.

Jenny Anderson is an award-winning business reporter for The New York Times and the co-author of Spousonomics, Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes. Jenny, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So, I've been married for 15 years. And you've never learned as much as you've learned from my book, right? I've got to say, there is some amazing stuff in this book. and amazing in a number of ways, not the least of which is the amount of economic research

that is grounded in it. This is definitely not one of those squishy books about marriage and how to get in touch with your inner feelings. This is very grounded stuff here. In a nutshell, how can economics help someone like me who's in year 15 of his marriage? Well, the book takes a very simple premise that, you know, economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources and what is a marriage, but a daily waking up and deciding who's going to do what and how are your resources, your very limited resources, I might add, your time, your energy, your libido, your love, how are those going to be allocated every day? And as far as I can tell, the source of 99% of marriage tension is over that allocation, who's going to

do what and who's doing what well and who's not doing what well and who needs to be nagged and who needs to be encouraged and what incentives are going to work. So the book comes up with, we take 10 principles, both from classical economics, but mostly from behavioral economics, and say, here's some things that are influencing the way you approach things in marriage. So the way you approach the division of labor, are you doing a 50-50? Or do you, is there maybe a better system, like comparative advantage? How you fight? Do you fight like crazy because you're afraid of losing? That's loss aversion, kicking in, you know, how can you do that better? So you name the subject, I think we have a solution for it, including sex, which of course is a very common

topic among married couples. I was going to say, I mean, one of the basic economic principles that I think even someone who isn't schooled in economics knows about is the concept of supply and demand. And for those thinking about picking up a copy of Spousonomics, I will just spot you up with the title of chapter three, supply and demand or how to have more sex. Right. So we all know, the more something costs, the less demand there is for it, right? So we did a randomized survey of people across the country and asked them, do you want to be having more sex? Most of them said yes. And then we said, why aren't you having more sex? And most of them said, because we're too tired, followed not long afterwards by too busy. So you start from the

premise that you would like to be having more sex with your spouse, but you're too tired to do it. So what is the best way to sort of up demand? You need to make it cheaper for yourselves and not money, but in terms of expending your time and energy. And it's amazing how often couples can either talk about how much sex they're not having or complain about how their schedules won't permit it. There's a lot of ways we make it expensive for ourselves. And again, you pointed out this doesn't sound very romantic, and this will not sound like a romantic advice, but you've got to make it easy for yourselves, especially if you're in the rush hour of life. You're you're managing jobs, you're managing children, you're managing a lot of things, for that moment

in your life, you need to make it easy. Maybe you need to schedule it. Maybe you need to set a goal. Maybe it needs to be put in the BlackBerry. Maybe, you know, you need to stop hoping that he's going to sense the right moment and be really romantic, and you need to just sort of seize the seven minutes in the shower and go with what you've got. But make it cheaper and easier for yourselves, and more demand will materialize. The book, every concept we have, we have three case studies. So this is not sort of, you know, made up in the abstract. There are couples who do this stuff, and it actually works for them. And I think this is probably the first book about economics that deals with cheaper, easier sex. So, I mean, I think that alone is going to

help you sell a lot of books. I hope so. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. My guest is Jenny Anderson, the co-author of Spousonomics, Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty dishes. One of the things that you write about goes against one of the sort of classic pieces of advice for couples that are about to get married. And the classic advice is never go to bed angry. And you and your co-author are saying, actually, sometimes you should go to bed angry. Why? Yeah, I think that's pretty bad advice. It's like the most common sort of bridal party advice that you're going to get. The reason is because, and I alluded to this before, loss aversion. When we feel like we're losing, we act irrationally. For stock traders, that means

think Jerome Kevier at Societe Generale. He actually said, I knew I was down. I had to bet the house. I had to do everything in my power, including risking $7 billion of my bank's capital to win. You act. You can't see clearly. And that happens when you're fighting with your spouse. Right. You think we in the same survey, 37 percent of people admitted to us that they continue a fight when they know they're wrong. And another 34 percent admitted to us that they continue to fight when they can't even remember what it was they were fighting about. So sometimes you're just fighting because you feel like you're losing. Right. And so you sort of go into crazy mode at that moment. It really is much better to go to bed angry and catch your breath and stop hyperventilating for whichever party happens to be hyperventilating.

and maybe it's both of you, and see how you feel in the morning. And we're not suggesting sort of suppressing your feelings and never talking about it again, but you're not going to get resolution. If your goal is, you know, a happy, fruitful marriage for many, many years, and the goal of that fight is to resolve the issue, then you need to sort of wait until you can breathe to resolve the issue. And, again, that is our – recognizing that it's our loss aversion kicking in, and we can sort of force ourselves to take that time out

and then reassess when you're thinking a little clearer. And it's amazing. I can tell you from firsthand experience, I'm a very emotional person, a lot of times in the morning, the issue does not seem nearly as monumental as it did at sort of 2 a.m. And you're a little bit better at it. That's one of the things that keeps coming up in the book over and over is this whole notion of cost-benefit analysis and looking at things in your marriage through the lens of, well, what is the cost here? What is the benefit going to be? And it's like, well, you know, I don't necessarily want to take out the garbage right now, but, you know, the cost of it is pretty minimal compared to the benefit of my wife is going to be a whole lot happier. She's going to be exponentially happier than the cost will be for me.

Exactly. And, again, it sounds very unromantic, and yet there is some real logic to this if you think about it. Like, marriage can be romantic, but dishes are not romantic. Trash is not romantic. You know, deciding who does the carpool, these are not romantic issues and do not require romantic solutions. They require practical solutions. And I think we sometimes just hope that because we're married and because we're in love, all of these things should be easy. Like, you would never run a business that way, being like, well, I hope my business partner just knows what I need.

You know, you would assume that, like, you would sit down and say, all right, here's how we're going to divide up the tasks. Here's what you're going to do. Here's what I'm going to do. And when it doesn't get done, you would be upset about it. And so we're really trying to address the business of marriage, because there is a business of marriage. And that's very sad, probably, for those, you know, prospective to-be-marrieds. But it's true, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing. But the less bickering you do about that business, like, the more time there is for romance and sex and love

and hanging out with your kids and doing all the great things you want to do if you're not sort of, you know, at wit's end arguing about school lunches. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. My guest is Jenny Anderson, the co-author of Spousonomics, Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes. You and your co-author, Paula, you did a ton of research here on economics. You did interview surveys. You went to seminars. How did you get the idea in the first place?

So the idea was my co-author, Paula Schumann. She's a page one editor at The Wall Street Journal. and she and her husband were having, they had been married for, they were in their first year of marriage and they were having a horrible fight. They found the first year of marriage to be pretty tough. And her husband's a web designer, a very visual guy. And he sort of whipped out a piece of paper and did a graph of their mood over time. And it sort of opened the pathway for them to have a much more rational discussion than they had been having about like, wait, you were really happy then? Like, that's crazy. I was really unhappy then. What was going

on. And it diffused a little bit of the emotion and really kind of led to a conversation and it sort of made him laugh. Just gave him another framework and she started thinking like maybe there's a bigger idea here. And she wanted a co-author who had more of a grounding in economics and finance. And so we were set up on a blind date. You were set up on a blind date, but what, by your publisher? No, no, no, no, not at all. We have a mutual friend. So I was thinking about writing some books related to the financial crisis. And I was complaining to a colleague, actually, that none of them were sort of jazzing me enough to really want to take the plunge and spend the,

you know, the other 15 hours that I'm not working on these issues at home doing them. And he said, oh, I have a friend who had this crazy idea about, you know, sort of marriage and economics. And it really immediately made sense to me. Like, I could see the idea. And I had written about behavioral economics. And it seemed like a clever idea. And I could imagine spending all of my free time doing it, whereas I was having trouble imagining spending all of my free time on some of the other subjects I was contemplating. Now, as you mentioned, both you and Paula are married. How did your husbands feel through this entire process? Like guinea pigs. Unwitting at times. The irony here is that we, in the process of deciding to

write a book about marriage while producing three children and having full-time jobs. We definitely put a huge amount of stress on our marriages. But at the same time, we actually, I think, learned a lot of very useful things. It's very hard to sort of talk about the research and talk about all these great tools and then not take any of your own advice. My husband is actually an editor at the Wall Street Journal as well, and he read the whole book. I can promise you he would never in a million years read any relationship book. So it was very useful to both of us because he read the book and he actually, I think, found a lot of it very useful, could understand the more analytical framework, but he could also use the book on me. So when I use a horrible tone of

voice, I'll say, that's not very spousonomical, you know, and say, well, it seems to me that your loss aversion is kicking in or, you know, is this really comparative advantage at its best? And, you know, and he's right. There are moments where, I mean, I don't particularly like it being used against me, but there is, you know, there are sort of tools that we can both use now. And I sort of feel like as married people, we just, I'll take any tool I can get, like I think marriage, you know, for 40 or 50 years is hard. And so you should look for as many tools as can help you get through it. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. My guest is Jenny Anderson, the co-author of Spousonomics, Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes.

Jenny, before we move on to buy, sell, or hold, what is one thing right now that every listener can do to improve their marriage? Commitment devices. I'm going to say this, and I would probably not say this to a lot of audiences, but you have a smart one, a really smart one, so I'm going to go out there with this one. Better intertemporal decision-making. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I know. Decisions we make today that have consequences in the future. We are procrastinators as human beings.

We say we're going to save for our retirement. We don't. We say we're going to exercise. We don't. We say we're going to eat well. We don't. We say we're going to be a better husband or wife. We don't. We need to put in place commitment devices to be the husband or wife that we want to be. So, you know, if you've been talking for the past eight weeks, about, you know, eight years about how you want to do more new things together, or you want to go on more date nights together, or, you know, you really do want to find a babysitter that you love so that you can get out of the house every once in a while, do it. Find a way to commit to it. Force yourselves to do it. You know, prepay a babysitter. You know, find the best babysitter in the town,

book them every other Saturday night. So you have to go out. You are forced to plan. Do something to make yourself do some of the things you say you're going to do and you never do. So, you know, if you, as a couple, I've heard a lot of couples say, you know, there's scary research that says that married couples exercise much less than single people say, okay, let's say you as a couple have said you want to get into shape, commit to doing a race where you have to raise money for a good cause. Like, are you really going to screw over all those people who are giving you money to cure cancer? No. So go do that. If that's what a court requires to get your lazy butt out of bed every Saturday morning to go running, you know, I feel

like these commitment devices are a very powerful tool to get us to do things that we want to do, but we just never really get around to doing. I love the idea of prepaying a babysitter. That is brilliant. Especially if it's a babysitter your friends know, because you don't want her ratting you out to your friends as, like, the couple who come Saturday night and really just wants to sit on the couch at home. Exactly. All right, let's wrap up with a round of buy, sell, or hold. And we'll start with buy, sell, or hold, the idea that honesty is the best policy. Sell.

That was fast. But with a caveat, which is, obviously, honesty is the basis of a good marriage, but there is such a thing as too much information, right? You don't want to overload your partner. High information processing costs. You know, it's hard to process a lot of information. It can paralyze us. You need to be honest. You do not need to tell your partner everything you're thinking about them,

especially if those are very negative thoughts. Buy, sell, or hold separate bank accounts for spouses. I'm going to say hold on that one. And, again, there's a caveat. If you have separate bank accounts because you've chosen to have separate bank accounts, totally fine. If you have separate bank accounts because you've never gotten around to having the conversation about whether you should merge them, major sell because that is active versus passive decision-making.

Passive decision-making, it means you didn't make a decision and so you're just kind of going with that which you had because it's the easiest thing to do. Not a good idea for anything in your marriage, but certainly not with your money. You need to make an active decision as to what you're going to do with it and how you're going to manage it. And finally, buy, sell, or hold Spousonomics The Movie. Buy Spousonomics the TV series Really?

I'm just saying I'm not saying anything's happening I'm just saying If I were going to buy the film or the TV show I would buy the TV show TV's hotter than film right now Okay, because the Freakonomics guys They got a movie out of it

But Spousonomics the TV show All right Spousonomics the TV show All right, we are going to stay tuned for that And as I mentioned There's a whole lot more online at Spousonomics.com The book is Spousonomics Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes.

It is a fascinating read. It is a relationship book that guys will actually enjoy and find interesting. And, oh, yeah, it might actually help you with your marriage. Jenny Anderson, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. That man sitting on a little stool Takes money from my hand While his eyes take a walk all over you

Hands made of ticket smiles 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. 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. I'm Chris Hill, and joining me once again in studio, James Early, Charlie Travers, and Ron Gross. Gentlemen, it is that time once again, time to get to the stocks that are on our radar. And we will bring in our man, Steve Broido, from the other side of the glass,

our Mr. Belvedere fan, Steve Broido, with a question about your stock. But, Ron Gross, you're up first. All right, Steve, I think American Greetings is really interesting. Ticker symbol AM. It's an old-school greeting card company. As you may know, along with Hallmark, they dominate the industry. In the age of the Internet, nobody really cares about a paper greeting card stock. But that is exactly why it's cheap. It pays a 4.3% dividend.

It's at $14. I think it should be $22. Wow. Steve, what do you think? How difficult is it for American Greeting to get their cards into locations? I would imagine that must be where they spend their most time. Yeah. So the American Greeting card stores are not actually owned by American Greeting any longer,

but they have the kind of exclusive contract to get the product into there. The big transition in the industry now is moving to these value chains, whether it's the Walmarts or Target. And a lot of cards are sold into those chains. It's not a problem getting them in, but it does lower the price point and, therefore, the margins. James, what do you got? I got something boring for Steve. Steve, natural gas prices are very low, which is bad for producers but good for users of natural gas and shippers.

So I'm going with Questar. The ticker is STR. It's on my radar. This is a natural gas company based in Utah. Its profits are split roughly one-third between being a gas utility, just distributing the gas pipeline, and then also being an explorer for the gas. So it profits on all levels of the gas spectrum. Steve?

Does having an awesome name help kind of inspire you to look at these kind of companies? Questar just sounds fantastic. It does sound kind of like larger than life. It just raises dividend 5%, so it popped up on my screen, but the name helps. That really does sound like something like NASA would name a space shuttle, Questar, or something like that. I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there for the folks at NASA. Charlie Travers, what do you got for us?

I'm going wildly speculative here with Nokia, tickers N-O-K. And Nokia World is September 5th and 6th, and that is when they're going to unveil their lineup of Windows 8 phones. Microsoft Windows 8 comes out October 26th. This is make-or-break time for Nokia, so one way or another, it's worth watching. I am actually bullish on the stock myself, and I think they're going to surprise a lot of people. Steve? In a sentence or two, can you just tell me what went wrong with Nokia? I mean, in 1999, Nokia was one of the most successful companies in the world, and now it just seems like it's stumbling.

They still are one of the largest handset makers in the world, along with Samsung. And what went wrong was their Symbian operating system that they developed in-house could not keep pace with what Apple was making and what Google turned out with Android. It was just very outdated, and that's why they had to team up with Microsoft to get Windows on their hardware, which people love. Steve, you got a stock there you like of the three? I'm going Questar, just because the name is awesome, and the dividend sounds great, And natural gas sounds like something everyone will be continually to using, continually use, except greeting cards.

I don't know, Ron. Sorry, man. Chris, before we end, I want to sneak in a happy 82nd birthday to my wonderful father. Happy birthday, Dad. Yeah. Fantastic. How is he going to be celebrated? What's like, does he have like a go-to like cake or something like that?

There'll be a dinner, certainly, probably some beef-related dinner back in New Jersey. Did you send him an American Greetings card? I will send him an online card from the American Greetings site, yes. I was going to say, man, you've got to talk your own book. If you're going to come in here talking about American greetings, and it's like, oh, well, I'm going to play up this stock. I will not be doing one of the free cards. I will be paying.

Oh, okay. Well, there we go. All right. Ron Gross, James Early, Charlie Travers. Guys, thanks for being here. Thank you. That is it for this edition of Motley Fool Money. Our engineer is Steve Broido.

Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.