Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Stocks for Thanksgiving and the Power of Habit

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

It's our Thanksgiving Special! Host Chris Hill and Motley Fool analysts Ron Gross and Jason Moser explain why they're thankful for The Trade Desk, Costco, Home Depot, and Lowe's. We discuss why investors might want to avoid Peloton, Zillow, and Avis Budget Group. And since no Thanksgiving is complete without dessert, we dig into a few slices of humble pie and talk Under Armour, Verizon, and Macy's. Ron and Jason share why the Energy Select Sector SPDR and Roblox are on their radar, as well as investing resources for anyone hoping to learn more about finance. Plus, we talk Procter & Gamble, Target, and toothpaste when we revisit our conversation with Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Hill, joining me this week, senior analyst Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey, how are you doing, Chris? It is our Thanksgiving special. We're going to give thanks for some stocks. We will call out a few turkeys. We'll revisit a conversation with bestselling author Charles Duhigg. And we've even got a couple of stocks on our radar. But it is our Thanksgiving special, guys, and that means one thing only. That's right. Gets me every year. The one show per year where we blow all our money on a single special effect. I love it. I don't know why, but I just love it.

we're going to start with dessert because we're adults. That's one of the good things about being an adult. You can eat dessert first. Let's start with a serving of humble pie. What is a stock or a business story over the past year that you were wrong about? Well, maybe not just this past year, but the past couple of years easily. I remember when Patrick Frist took over as CEO of Under Armor back in January of 2020. I said to myself, I wouldn't be shocked at all to see Under Armour double from that price at the time. It really felt like they had appropriately addressed the leadership issue and refocused on their business as opposed to just wanting to beat Nike, as Kevin Plank was always so fond of saying. And fast forward to today, the stock's up about 15%

since then, Chris. A shares, I think, up around 20%. Nike, up close to 75% over that same stretch. So, for me, Under Armour, I mean, they need to probably look at maybe changing their ticker to UW, because most investors are still underwater on this thing. I don't know if it's going to pick back up anytime soon. Revenue, they're calling for maybe 25% growth for the full year, which is good, but that's coming off some pretty weak performances as of late. Obviously, the connected fitness investments were a total bomb. Is this a value trap? I don't know, maybe. It does feel like there's a business there. They do make good stuff. There is some brand equity there, but I don't think it's as strong as it once was. So, perhaps there still is a

future for Under Armour. I keep a small position and I'll hang on to those shares just to follow the company. But yeah, this really does feel like one that I got wrong. Ron, what about you? Unfortunately, I have to go with Verizon, which I personally bought in March of 2020 when the stock market was obviously in turmoil, down big. I bought the stock in the low 50s, and a year and a half later, the stock is in the low 50s. Meanwhile, the stock market has almost doubled up about 98%. Verizon is one of Dow's worst performing stocks of 2021. My main motivation was to play the 5G theme through owning Verizon. If I had just listened to my friend Jason, I probably could have saved myself some of that

pain. So far, playing 5G through a carrier like Verizon or AT&T appears not to be the right way to go. 5G rollout has been delayed. Sales growth is sluggish. They're aggressively spending. Competition is fierce, which eats into margins. All a recipe for not a great winner. One bright spot is that they got rid of AOL and Yahoo, their oath division. They got rid of 90% of that. And they do have a 5% dividend yield, which is some consolation, but I'm not loving the balance sheet, $179 billion of debt. So far, this is kind of a dud for me. One year ago on this show, I said that Macy's was a turkey.

I said this business was lost. I told our dozens of listeners, avoid this stock. This business is lost. And in fact, we lost out on Macy's shares rising 230% from the time that I said, avoid this stock. So I could not have been more wrong about Macy's. So just something for listeners to keep in mind later in the show when we go around the horn and talk about stocks to avoid. But on the flip side, Ron, it's Thanksgiving. What's a stock you're thankful for? I have got to go with Costco. I've owned it for more than a decade. I'm thankful that I'm up

almost 1,200%. But even putting aside the return for a moment, I'm literally just happy to be a small part owner of a wonderful business, one that Jim Senegal created in 1983. He created a fantastic corporate culture. CEO Craig Jelinek continues that today. They've got a wonderful recurring revenue subscription model that stresses giving customers a great value proposition. The company was relatively strong during COVID. Shares were under pressure earlier this year, though, as COVID-related growth slowed. The stock looked expensive at the time, bottomed out at $307 per share. Since then, though, has come roaring back, up 74% year-to-date. It's in the low 530s now. Shares are up 20% since mid-October of this year. 43 times earnings,

though. Not cheap, but a great, great long-term holding. Jason Moser, what about you? Well, I haven't owned this company for a decade like Ron, but I do have an affinity towards the Trade Desk. I'm very thankful for the Trade Desk. I have owned those shares for close to three years now. It's had a good year. Stock was up about 28% this year, but up 770% over the last three years. So I could buy a couple of turkeys with that, Chris. But if you remember, the Trade Desk, it provides a demand-side platform that its customers use to purchase advertising space. And it really is playing into that connected TV tailwind. This is something that when you think about these subscription services and these video and demand services that are supported by

advertising, those are growing by leaps and bounds all over the world. And the Trade Desk is really playing into that market. In fact, recently at an event, Chief Revenue Officer there, Tim Sims, He was on a stage with brand leaders from companies like Anheuser-Busch, Volkswagen, and Colgate-Palmolive, among others. And he said, there's an unprompted exchange where those advertisers said they believe that the majority of TV advertising will be executed programmatically on connected TV within three years, and that's right in the Trade Desk sweet spot. So, I certainly understand why the market is so excited about the company, I certainly am too.

And if you remember the last earnings call, this most recent earnings report, they noted on the call as well, they said that the recent iOS changes that Apple had implemented had no material impact on their business whatsoever, and they expect that to remain the case. So, this pursuit of this universal ID 2.0 is something that I think will continue to play in their favor as they focus on protecting data, yet also being as productive with that data as possible. And yeah, the connected TV opportunity there just continues to grow, and it feels like it's something that has some time to go still. So, very thankful for the trade desk. I'll just add two stocks we talked about on last week's show, and that's Home Depot and Lowe's.

I haven't owned these stocks for very long, but the peace of mind that these businesses bring, in part because of the leadership at both companies, but also because when we talk about trends. A lot of the time we're talking about things that are recent or nascent. And I think of home improvement as a trend that's just never going to stop. I think these are businesses that are poised for decades to come. And I'm just so thankful they're in my portfolio. We've got more of our Thanksgiving special after this. So put down the leftovers and stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. It is our Thanksgiving special. We are thankful for

listeners like you who join us every week. Thank you for listening. Thank you for spreading the word, telling your friends, posting on social media, rating and reviewing Motley Fool Money on whichever platform you're listening on. That's the sort of thing that helps other people find the show and we appreciate it. So thank you for doing that. And we're also thankful for the radio stations across America that broadcast this show every week. All right, Jason, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without turkey. What is one turkey stock you'd like to call out as something people should avoid? Well, listeners to this show may recall that I just called this out as a radar stock and not in a good way, so I'm sticking with it. Peloton, to me, is a company that is in a

really tough situation, I think. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad business, so don't at me, all of you Peloton lovers, I get it. But it really does feel like it's a business with a ceiling. Chris, we've talked about that before. We feel like it's not something that's going to go to zero, but it does feel like there's a cap, that it really is not going to be able to get past. It feels to me like Peloton is a business with a ceiling, with a limited opportunity. And let's face it, the last 18 months have been a massive tailwind for this business. And if they haven't been able to truly capitalize at this point, I think you have to start asking a lot of questions.

So, I don't own the shares. I've never recommended it. I feel like their $1 billion share offering they just announced with shares 65% off of levels from July looks pretty bad, particularly when they just said a couple of weeks prior that they did not need to raise capital. And then when you look at the fundamentals of the business, it's just challenged. Growth is hitting a wall. They have a current net debt position before this offering. Financials just are not very

flattering, and there's a lot of competition in the space now. So, this is a space that's changed, I think, materially just in the past 18 months alone. Peloton probably gets a piece of it, but I don't want to invest in it. Ron, before we get to your turkey stock, I mean, you mentioned on the show a few weeks ago, you're taking a long, hard look at your Peloton subscription. And any closer to a decision on that? Well, Chris, it's interesting. I said my usage had waned, and a buddy who listens to this show texted me and said, waned? When did it begin? Because I was not what you would call a heavy user at any point in time. But $40 a month, that's kind of pricey. So maybe they'll have to revisit that price point,

actually, if they find that the demand is slowing. What's a turkey stock? So while it might be tempting for you value folks out there to nibble at Zillow, which is 74% off its early February 52-week high, I would stay away here. Either one of these two things, a broken business model or mismanagement, would be enough to be wary about. But with Zillow, I think we actually have both. In early November, announced it would wind down its eye-buying Zillow offers business, where it bought homes in the hope of later selling them for a profit. In the hope of is the key phrase there. Management highlighted the unpredictability in forecasting homes, basically blamed a faulty algorithmic model that caused it to overpay for homes.

That wind down is expected to take several quarters. It will include a reduction of about 25% of the workforce. They'll probably take a $500 million-plus loss on the homes. But some believe management misled investors, originally saying the business was suffering as a result of problems with material and labor capacity. Now we find out the business was actually fundamentally flawed. So lots of class action lawsuits pending. It'll be interesting to watch those. iBuying was supposed to be the future of Zillow. They'll now move forward with their legacy ad business. That just does not excite me, that business, and it never has. I'm still hung up on the use of the word hope. I just feel like if you've got a business plan

and the word hope appears a bunch of times, that's not a business I want to be a shareholder of. Yeah. I will preface this by reminding everyone that a few minutes ago, I talked about how I was so wrong a year ago when I said Macy's was a turkey stock that should be avoided because it's now more than tripled from when I made those comments. Having said that, I look at Avis Budget Group, shares up 700% year-to-date. Keep in mind, this is a stock that is nearly $300 a share, and in the five years before this one, it never got above 50. Ron, what's the opposite of a value play? A speculative one. Avis Budget Group looks like nuclear waste to me. I don't want to be anywhere near it. It's so terrifying. There's nothing about that business at that stock price

that gets me interested. I think that's fair. That business is going through a lot of changes, whether it's the electric vehicles, Hertz, Avis, Tesla, everybody getting in, everybody getting out. It's tough to make a call there. It is going to be interesting. I mean, in all seriousness, it is going to be interesting to see what happens, not just with that stock price, but also just with the business of rental cars, which one of the big stories of the year, Certainly, maybe the biggest story in the travel industry is the spike in rates and how people who are actually traveling and looking to rent cars are running into situations where they can get a wheelbarrow for $300 a day and that's it. Something we added a few years ago to this show,

a little thing I like to call not at the table, please. Because you get together with your family, your extended family, and there are some topics you just don't really want to come up at the table. This is a business and investing show. Jason, what is a business or investing topic you're really hoping doesn't come up this holiday season? Well, Chris, we've talked a lot about this over the last several months, and it's something I'm sure we'll continue to talk about over the coming months as well. but inflation to me is something that ultimately just devolves into political argument. And I feel like with the family around the table, you know, I don't want to talk about inflation. Listen,

I just stroked the check, figuratively speaking, for $75 for a turkey the other day. I mean, it wasn't that expensive last year, I can tell you that. So, yes, there's inflation. I get it. I mean, according to recent data from the U.S. News & World Report, over the past 12 months, furniture costs are up 11.2%. That's the most since 1951. The cost of shoes rose half a percent in September, but have jumped six and a half percent over the last year. Children's shoes are up almost 12%. The cost of a meal at a full-service restaurant has jumped 5.2% in the last year, and gas prices up more than 42% compared with a year ago. So, there's your inflation data, folks. Enjoy it. Just don't talk about it at the table, please. Let's keep it

civil. Ron, I was saying to Jason the other day, I feel like I dodged a bullet with this one, because the topic that I didn't want to talk about was, who's going to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve? And so, earlier in the week, it comes to the news, President Biden nominates Jay Powell for another term. And I could only see that news in selfish terms. I just thought, oh, good, this isn't going to come up this holiday season. Because I know as an investor, I've never bought or sold a stock based on who's in charge of the Federal Reserve. I know it's an important job. I know it's important to have someone smart and experienced and qualified and thoughtful and all those things.

But never once as a stock investor have I actually made a decision based on who's running the Federal Reserve. So I think I got lucky this year. But that's fair. What's a topic for you that you just don't want to hear about? I have to go with meme stocks. And, you know, I'm just fatigued. We got to move on. If you want, you can throw in Reddit and Robinhood in there. You can club them all together if you want. It doesn't matter to me. It's not that these aren't important issues and they're actually kind of interesting. It's just that I've had enough for a while and I just don't want to mix my turkey and stuffing with speculation and manipulation and things that are arguably bad for

the smooth functioning of the stock market. So while Chris, you're here with me, I fully admit to having benefited from the craze when my Bed Bath stock shot up. I'd like to pause it just for a while, at least for the holidays. So AMC, GameStop, even Bed Bath, I will see you in January. I almost picked this as my humble pie, because when I think back to the beginning of the year and this story first broke. I don't know if I said it on this show. I know I said it to you guys in conversation. I remember saying something along the lines of, this is only going to last a couple of weeks. This is going to blow over quickly. I don't see this phenomenon repeating itself. And so I was going to pick that for my humble pie until I asked myself, hey, how did I

do on that Macy's prediction last year? And then I thought, okay, I got to lead with that. Two things. I think we find consumer-facing, specifically retail, sometimes just tough to call. Things look bad, and the companies look like they're not going to survive, and somehow they revise themselves through merchandising or change in strategy. It's all very interesting. As far as the meme stock thing, it's actually allowed some companies to survive, to raise capital at prices where the stock should have never been in the first place. So, AMC lives to literally fight another day because of the craze. Really, really interesting to watch. All right, Ron Gross, Jason Moser, guys, we will see you later in the show. Up next,

conversation with bestselling author Charles Duhigg on the power of habits. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill. Welcome back to Monthly Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. The first time I talked with Charles Duhigg was back in 2012. He was an award-winning investigative reporter for the New York Times, and he'd just written his first book, The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. In addition to being a great read, The Power of Habit pulls back the curtain on how habits play a role, not just in our daily routines, but also how they inform businesses like Target and Procter & Gamble. Needless to say, I was curious about a bunch

of things when I talked with Charles, starting with why he chose this topic for his first book. Well, I got interested in this about eight years ago when I was a reporter in Iraq, and I met this army major down in a city named Kufa. His assignment had been to stop riots in the city. And so, what he did is he took out all the kebab sellers from the plazas, and the riots ceased immediately because people would get hungry and go home. And I asked him, how did you know to do this? And he said, oh, the military is like this giant habit machine. And this just got me fascinated. And once I came back, I realized how much habits have to do with businesses and companies and organizations. And it just totally captivated me. So, obviously, as a show that

focuses on business and investing. I'm particularly interested in the habits that you'll point to in your book as they relate to business. Let's touch on a couple of the examples in your book. The one that is getting all the headlines is this story that Target knew that an 18-year-old girl was pregnant before her own father did. How does something like that even happen? Target has this very, very sophisticated a vision that looks at shopping habits. And it's not just Target, it's almost every major company at this point, although Target's among the best at this. And they can actually figure out from your shopping habits if you're pregnant, if you're going through a divorce, if you're

buying a new house. They are looking for these moments in your life when all of a sudden everything is kind of changing, because they know at those moments, your habits are particularly flexible, and they can get you to buy new stuff. And one of the comments you make is that pregnant women are the holy grail. I'm assuming that's for any business, not just Target, but why is that? Any business at all. It's because when you have a new baby or you're pregnant, you're exhausted, right? Most people go to five or six different stores to buy all the stuff they need, but Target sells everything. And so they know that if they can get a pregnant woman in

there to buy her diapers and formula, they can get her to start buying her cleaning supplies and her clothes and her lawn furniture, everything. Because if you have a new infant, you are exhausted. All that you want is to go home and fall asleep. So, Target wants to get at you before everyone else when they know that a baby is on the way. Well, I think the average consumer is used to the basic proposition of going to a store, that stores are collecting information on you, and that certainly in the case of grocery stores, you're getting discounts, you're getting coupons of the things that you buy. But how does a company like Target walk the fine line between offering discounts, sending coupons out to entice pregnant

women into the store without, for lack of a better word, creeping them out? This is the biggest problem Target has. When they sent out these ads at first to women that they knew were pregnant. They would send them all the baby stuff and the women would just get completely freaked out. They wouldn't come into the store because it was obvious Target knew they were pregnant and they had never told them. So one of the executives said, let's try an experiment. And he sent out some, a small number of ads flyers that had like, you know, coupons for diapers right next to a lawnmower and then coupons for formula right next to wine glasses. So that to the average a viewer, it looked like the baby ads were all random. And it worked. The women who got

those ads in the mail looked at them and said, oh, everyone else on the same block must have gotten the same ad. And I need these coupons for diapers and formula. And they came in and used them. So, Target had to camouflage what it knew. And if your kid, let's be honest, if your kid is drinking baby formula out of a wine glass, then there are other issues going on. Then that's an interesting household. One of the other companies you profile, Procter & Gamble, which is a company that we talk about frequently on our show, and Febreze, which is now a billion-dollar product for Procter & Gamble.

But early on, that was really a product that P&G was struggling with. In fact, it was such a failure that P&G was thinking of canceling it altogether. But some of the marketers figured out that they could create a Febreze habit. And we go into exactly how this happens in the book. They piggybacked on existing cleaning habits. And by doing so, they suddenly got mainly housewives who buy Febreze to start using this stuff by adding more perfume into the formula. So that at the end of a cleaning ritual, someone would look at a clean carpet or a freshly made bed and spray Febreze to make things smell as good as they looked. And all of a sudden, Febreze went from a huge flop into selling $200 million worth of

product in its first year, and it's now $1 billion a year. It's one of the biggest products in Procter & Gamble's arsenal. One of the other products, which frankly, I wasn't even aware was still being made, is Pepsodent. The reason I thought that is because it's no longer sold here in the United States. How did Pepsodent revolutionize the world of toothpaste? 100 years ago, almost no one in the United States brushed their teeth. It was basically something that rich people did once a week. And it was such a big deal. It was kind of a status thing, right? And it was such a big deal that in World War I, when they were recruiting troops, the military actually said that dental

hygiene was a national security risk because so many soldiers had rotting teeth. And nobody could solve this problem until this marketer named Claude C. Hopkins, who's totally forgotten today, but was kind of famous 100 years ago, until he decided that he was going to take on Pepsodent in exchange for a bunch of stock in the company. And what he did was he created a habit around it. Every habit has three parts. There's a cue, a routine, and a reward. He found this cue, the film on people's teeth, right?

If you run your tongue over your teeth, you feel that film. Nobody had ever minded it before, but Hopkins taught people, that's bad. If you feel that, you've got to brush your teeth. But most importantly, he delivered a reward. In Pepsodent were these chemicals that made people's gums tingle. And it's probably still true today, right? When you brush your teeth, I'm sure your gums and tongue tingle afterwards. Oh, sure.

Once a week when I brush my teeth. Right. Exactly. Whether your teeth need it or not, once a week. That reward revolutionized toothpaste. And it revolutionized toothbrushing. Because suddenly people started feeling like their mouth wasn't clean if they didn't have tingling gums when they walked out the door or went to bed.

And that made it a habit. That was enough of a reward to spur this daily pattern of behavior. And in fact, right even today, toothpaste companies add a chemical to make your gums tingle that have nothing to do with cleaning your teeth. It's just to create a daily habit. You're listening to Motley Fool Money, talking with Charles Duhigg, author of the new book, The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. There are other companies that are trying to sort of tap into that tingly feeling that Pepsodent did. And one of the things you write about is sunscreen. A pale Irish guy like me is certainly not using enough

sunscreen on a daily basis, as I should be. Am I just missing the tingle? That's exactly it. There's no reward for sunscreen. When you think about it, it's crazy that everyone brushes their teeth. No one dies from having unclean teeth, but lots of people die from skin cancer every year. So, why does everyone brush their teeth every day, but people will put on sunscreen every day. Because we know doctors tell us we could eradicate skin cancer if we all put on sunscreen. The reason why is because they haven't figured out some reward that sunscreen delivers, so that when you put it on, it feels like you've done something good. And if you forget to put it on, there's something that reminds you. They've tried to

make it tingle, but some people's skin is too sensitive, so they keep on looking for some reward that will trigger a daily sunscreen habit. They say they're close. What are some of the other products that companies are tweaking in the hope that we're going to change our habits? One of the most interesting is actually cigarettes. Most people think about cigarettes as being addictive, something you don't even have to sell as a habit. But it turns out that a lot of people who start smoking can put down cigarettes on their own by diagnosing their own habits and trying to cure themselves. So some cigarette companies actually vary the level of

nicotine in cigarettes so that it delivers more of a reward and less of a reward because we know that intermittent rewards are the most powerful kind. We actually know this primarily because of slot machines and video games. The video game industry has been overhauled by the science of habit formation. Now when you play a video game, every reward you get is specifically designed to make that game habit forming. And it works. That's why you have this urge. As soon as you get one badge, you want to get the next one. Everywhere you look, you can actually see rewards that are trying to create habits in our lives. What surprised you the most when you were working on this book?

What surprised me the most is how malleable habits are. I think most people are programmed to think about habits as something that we're kind of powerless over, right? When you pass that box of donuts, it feels so compelling. And you say to yourself, I'm a successful person. Why can't I just ignore the donuts? It turns out in the last decade, what we've learned in neurology laboratories has completely transformed our understanding of habits. And we now know how to change them. We know how to create new habits. We know how to break old habits. In labs, they can actually do this almost like flicking a switch. There's people who give up cigarettes and lose 30 pounds and companies that completely transform themselves. And it's because they target their

habits. We're not prisoner to them. We know how to change them now. So what's the key to changing your habits? The key to changing your habits is understanding this habit loop, that every habit has a cue, a routine, and a reward. And most people, when they think about habits, they focus on the behavior, the routine. But that cue and that reward is really, really important because that's how you influence the behavior. I kind of have a personal example, if it's interesting to you. That was going to be my next question. What if any habits of your own changed during the process? There's a lot of habits. I've actually lost 21 pounds in writing this book, which is great for it. I had 21 to lose. Nice. It's nice to do. I had this bad habit when I started working

on the book that every afternoon, I would go up and I would get a cookie from the cafeteria and I would chat with my colleagues. And this would drive me crazy. So every time I was talking to a psychologist, I would ask them at the end of the interview, so how can I change my habit? And what they said was, you have to diagnose the cue and the reward, and then shoehorn in a new behavior. So I started paying attention, and I realized that every time I had a cookie urge, it was usually between 3.15 and 3.45 in the afternoon. And then I did some experiments. Rather than getting a cookie one day, I got a candy bar. And then the next day, I just got some hot tea. And one day, instead of going to the cafeteria, I took a walk around the block. And what I figured out is that

the reason why I craved that cookie was because it gave me an opportunity to socialize with my colleagues. The cookie was just a convenient excuse. Once I had diagnosed the cue and the reward, I could change the habit. And now at about 3.30 every day, I look around the newsroom because I work at the New York Times. I find someone to go gossip with. I gossip with them for 10 minutes, and then I go back to my desk, and the cookie urge is gone. But I would have only known how to change that habit by figuring out the cue and the reward. And that's kind of the, it gets a little bit more complicated. In my book, I go into all the details of how to diagnose the cue and reward and how to change them. But that's kind of the lesson here is that

you can change any of them once you figure out how the habit works. Nearly a decade after it was first published, The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, continues to be one of the best-selling books in its category. You can find it wherever you find books. Up next, Ron Gross and Jason Moser return. They've got a couple of stocks on their radar. We've got a couple of suggestions for a grateful listener. Don't touch that button. 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. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here with Jason Moser and Ron Gross once again, as we wrap up our Thanksgiving special. Got an email from Laura Coe. Laura writes, hello, Chris. I've listened to Market Foolery, Motley Fool Money, and the Industry Focus podcast for two years. You and many others have changed my financial life. Listening to all of the fools and my husband has sparked an interest in finance and living life in a way to be able to become financially independent and give back to others. Thank you for your knowledge, and teaching me how to look at companies. My goal is to start positioning myself to be able to transfer into a more financial job in about five years so I can

do online classes and reading while keeping my full-time job as a pharmacist. If you have any recommendations of books, authors, classes, et cetera, I would love to hear them. Thank you, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thank you, Laura, for that heartfelt and delightful email. well. So happy that we were able to help you along your financial journey. Ron Gross, a couple of suggestions for Laura in terms of where she can turn for more information. Ron Gross Absolutely. I love that. Obviously, start with fool.com. Great articles and resources there for free, and you can learn a lot. If you're really serious about moving into this as a career, an accounting class or an intro

to finance class at a community college I think would be really, really helpful to help you speak the language of investing in business. A company called Udemy has a 13-hour online investing course. I admittedly have not taken it. I don't know that much about it, so buyer beware, but you might want to check that out. And then as far as books, we always recommend Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street as a great place to start. There's a series of books called The Little Books. You can start with The Little Book That Beats the Market, Little Book of Common Sense Investing, and the little book of valuation of three great resources to get you on your way. Jason Moser, you got anything to add? Yeah, I think those are all really

great resources Ron mentioned. Fully agree, fool.com, that's a place where I frequented back in the day when I was really making my transition professionally. I feel like Beyond that, Google is your buddy. I think Investopedia is a great resource for learning more of the terminology, and it has very easy-to-understand definitions and examples. So, check out Investopedia when you can. And then, I think just from a business perspective, it's always really helpful to read through what these companies are publishing. So, their actual SEC filings, the 10-Ks, or if you find Investor Day presentations where you can get a hold of either transcripts or slide presentations. Typically, you could just Google the name of a

company and then followed by investor relations. That'll give you a wealth of knowledge on any of these given companies that we cover here on the show. I think you couple all of that with what Ron said there and you put yourself in a pretty good spot. All right, let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the turkey sound effect, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. Ron Gross, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? I'm afraid I'm not going to invited to Jason's Thanksgiving table because I'm looking at something a little different today, born out of some thinking I've been doing for my own portfolio. I'm a little light on investments that would do well in an inflationary environment. Stocks in general should do pretty well,

but some sectors will do better than others. I have almost no allocation to energy in my portfolio, which may be a mistake here, certainly has been a miss so far in 2021, very hot sector. I could go with some individual companies. We've got a great energy insider service at The Motley Fool. But I'm going to look for some diversification through an ETF. And I'm looking at the Energy Select Sector Spider Fund, XLE. With XLE, you get the big boys. You get Exxon and Chevron. You get Kinder Morgan, Phillips 66, Williams Companies, a total of 21 companies in all. Truth be told, I wish the allocation to Exxon was a little less here. So I'll probably still dig in a bit to see if any alternatives look better to me. But energy is where I'm looking. Dan, question about the

Energy Select Sector Spider Fund? Oh, I'm sorry, Chris. I was Ron talking. I was watching some paint dry. It was a lot more interesting than what was going on on this show in the last 30 seconds. I get no respect, none. Jason Moser, what are you looking at this week? Ron, I was listening. I got your back. Hopefully, this will wake you up, Dan. I'm taking a look at Roblox, ticker RBLX. If you remember, where they provide the tools and platform for creators to build 3D and immersive experiences. Most recent quarter just shows a business doing a lot of things right. Bookings up 28%, average daily active users 47.3 million now,

up 31%, hours engaged up 28% from a year ago. I think one of the big concerns I had early on with this business was that it was just a game for kids. Clearly, it is more than just a game. I mean, you're seeing relationships with companies like Vans, Nike, the recent Chipotle burrito maze. I mean, companies are utilizing Roblox's platform to establish new identities within, yes, Chris, the metaverse, right? So, the metaverse is going to be something that Roblox can capitalize on. And I think while some of those types of experiences, they might be temporary in nature, others like Vans World, Mikeland, those are going to be permanent.

Those are ways for these companies to build new ways to reach an increasingly connected customer base. So, really, really impressed with what I've seen with Roblox. Dan, question about Roblox? Absolutely, Chris. Is there some metaverse situation where Ron can explain energy ETFs to me maybe one day? Maybe I put on a VR headset and, I don't know, he helps me sleep. I feel like that is just an outstanding use case. We need to write that one down, Dan. Do I need to even ask, Dan, what you want to add to your watch list?

Well, Chris, it seems like the metaverse is here to stay, whether we want it to or not. So I'm going to go with Roblox. All right, guys, we're out of time. That's our Thanksgiving special. We'll see you next week. Thanks for watching!