Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - What Now for Investors?
Episode Date: January 15, 2016The stock market enters correction territory. Is it time for investors to buy? Our analysts tackle that question, delve into GoPro's dramatic fall, and share some stocks on their radar. Plus, Thomson ...Reuters transportation editor Joe White shares some highlights from the North American International Auto Show and weighs in on the future of autonomous vehicles. For a free preview of our Supernova service, go to www.SupernovaRadio.Fool.com . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Chris Hill. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.
From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money.
It's the Motley Fool Money radio show. I'm Chris Hill, and joining me in studio this
week from Million Dollar Portfolio, Jason Moser and Matt Argersinger, and from Motley
Fool Deep Value, Ron Gross. Good to see you as always, gentlemen.
Hey! We've got the latest from big banks, big retail, and more. We will head to Detroit
for a report from the North American International Auto Show. And as always, we'll give you an
inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin this week with the market writ large
because the U.S. stock market has officially entered correction territory, Ron. All three
major indices have now fallen more than 10% off their recent highs. And I know it's not
a great start to 2016, but if you're just looking at the headlines, there is a lot of
fear-mongering going on out there. It can create a lot of anxiety.
The last time I checked the numbers, the S&P was back to mid-2014 levels, the Russell 2000,
mid-2013 levels. So, we have a real pullback here. This is not one of those, a couple points
here, a couple points there. This is real, and it's perfectly reasonable for investors
to feel anxiety and to feel worried about this. What do we do? That's the real question.
We could analyze the details here ad nauseum like some of those other business shows do.
You can start with economic growth and move to unemployment and interest rates and the
strength of the dollar and inflation and move to China and move to North Korea and move
to the Middle East. What about oil? What about the geopolitical? What about the politics
here at home? I don't think that's the right thing to do.
O' Ron, you just took everything from us there.
I think the right thing to do, because it's actually not even possible to do all
that, the right thing to do is what we always say, is to put capital into solid companies
that you believe in over a lifetime of investing. And if you do that, data has proven that you're
going to be okay. I personally was gun-shy earlier this week. I started to think about
buying, and I put the brakes on it. I said, let me just think a little bit. But that's
where I've come out now. Perfect time to start to put money back into the markets. You don't
have to do it all at once, but you can start to bleed money in.
Well, and to pivot off the emotional part of that, Matty, literally, a headline
this week I saw was, sell everything. Again, that kind of thing, not really helping.
Well, then there's another headline this morning that says, this isn't 2008, it's
actually worse. I mean, we have to really pump the brakes here on a lot of things. I
mean, a 10% correction, we're probably a little below that now, but that almost happens pretty
much on average every year. So, we've had two 10% corrections in the last six months,
but we went about three years without really having any kind of correction. The market
was just straight up for three years or so since 2011. So, it's not surprising. I agree
with Ron completely. As Fools, as investors, we're tempted to rush in here, look at a lot
of our favorite ideas down 15%, 20%, and say, oh, it's time to buy, the bargains are out
there. Well, there are some issues out there in the economy, in the markets, and I would
say we're going to get a lot of information come earnings season, which is starting right
now and over the next few weeks. I think a lot of companies are going to throw in the
kitchen sink with their results and probably set the bar pretty low for 2016. So, yeah,
if you have some companies on your radar that you're watching that you believe in, show
a little patience, maybe buy a little now, wait for more information.
Jason, as Matty said, some of these stocks are starting to look like bargains,
but some of them are down for a really good reason.
Sure, plenty of them are down for very good reasons. I think it's easy to go into
a market like this and say, everything is just getting peppered, it's a great buying
opportunity. I like that Ron referred back to his, put his foot on the brakes there for
a second, take a look back and think for a minute, well, maybe things could get a little
bit worse. Let's exhibit some patience here and understand a little bit better what's
going on. You feel like we've been talking for the past year about, well, we want to
see unemployment get better. We want to see the consumer become more confident. Well,
in theory, we should be there. Unemployment is better. The consumer should be more confident
now that unemployment is better and energy prices are low. The consumer should be stronger
right now, but the consumer is not. I think we have a tentative consumer out there that
you even see it in homeowners' equity today. Homeowners' equity today, it's $4.2 trillion
dollars available, up $600 billion over the last year, but consumers aren't out there
tapping that equity, spending it on things like vacations and new cars. They're spending
it maybe on property, upgrades to their homes. They're being a bit more cautious in this
environment. And it's worth noting that the stock market had gotten a little bit ahead
of itself. Historically speaking, the multiple was a bit higher. So, this is, I think, a
reasonable pullback, but I think it's also reasonable to exercise a little patience and
just hang in there. And we always say you should not have money in the stock market that you need
over the next, let's say, one to three years. And this is exactly the reason. If you need the money
six months from now for whatever, a wedding or a home purchase, you could be in dire straits at
the moment if the market doesn't rebound quickly. So if you've heeded that advice, my recommendation
is don't look at the value of your portfolio on a daily basis, a weekly basis, maybe not even at
at all. Take a look at your cash balance, or the money that you can put into as cash,
and think about building for the future, and ignore the value of your portfolio.
Yeah, I think Ron's spot on there. You could even go out as far as five years and
say, put money in the market that you know you're not going to need for the next five
years, depending on your age. If you're 40, 45 years old, maybe look at that five-year
benchmark there. If you're a little bit older, you're a little bit more in that stage of
protecting your wealth, then that timeline, it decreases, right? Then it gets to be a little bit
smaller, three, one year maybe. But definitely, you go in with sort of those expectations set
already, and then it becomes a little bit easier to control your emotions in times like these.
Let's get to some of the company earnings this week. Intel's fourth quarter profits and revenue
both came in higher than expected. Wall Street not impressed, though. Shares of the chipmaker
falling more than 9% on Friday. What gives, Matty?
It really comes down to their data center business. This is the growth engine
for the company for Intel nowadays. We know what's happening to the PC market. It's in
a secular decline. They really have invested a lot in this data center business. It had
a decent year in 2015, up 11%, but below what Intel's been targeting. Intel's been looking
at 15% annual growth in this business, at least projecting that. It dropped to 11% in
2015 and dropped to 5% in Q4. The CEO made some cautious comments about that going forward.
in 2016. They also saw, as we've heard from almost every company, that there's a bit of
a slowdown going on in China. Didn't know that was going on. But that's kind of affecting
their PC market. I didn't really realize that China is now Intel's largest PC market, and
so a weakness there is really going to hurt them. We recently sold Intel, Jason knows
this, in a million-dollar portfolio. I think it was the right move. It's not quite that
tech bellwether it used to be. It's very large, and it's still very dependent on the PC market.
Fourth quarter results for Wells Fargo were mixed, profits a little bit higher
than expected, but overall revenue coming in a little bit light, Jason.
Yeah, we know that Wells Fargo is the leading bank, domestic bank here in regard
to mortgages. It's the energy portfolio, interestingly enough, for not only Wells Fargo, but really
banks all over the country that are taking hits because of all of these falling energy
prices. When these prices get lower and these banks have a lot of outstanding loans to all
of these energy companies around the country, well, it just becomes a little bit more difficult
to collect on those loans. Thankfully, for Wells Fargo, it's so big, it can't fail, right,
Chris? No, I mean, honestly, it is so big that it's not something that is necessarily
going to keep them from performing. And it's interesting, the reserves they set aside to
cover potential loan losses almost doubled from a year ago, and its net interest margin
did fall a little bit. But again, I mean, this is a bank that is the leader in the mortgage
market. They have a number of different ways they make their money. But I think this all
does kind of get back to the question of, I mean, these big banks, I mean, are they
really too big to fail? Are they still so big that if we do run into another crisis,
it would cause some type of domino effect throughout our entire economy, given that
we are a credit-based economy today? So, very well-run bank. But again, I think you
have to look at this greater banking industry and wonder, has anything really changed? I'm
not so sure that it has. The holiday retail numbers are starting
to come in, and so far it's not looking that great. Shares of Best Buy hitting a 52-week
low this week after their same-store sales fell just over 1% run.
Blaming it on mobile phones, the same-store sales in the computing and mobile phone business
down 6.7% during that all-important holiday season. Not great. A couple areas of positive
news, online sales was up 12%, 13%. Consumer electronics up 4%. Appliances up 13%. But
that computing and mobile business is such a big business for them that it's hard to
combat that. And it kind of really told the story here. So, they're not planning to cut
any more stores. They've done a pretty good job since 2013 when the new CEO came in. They've
cut costs, they've revamped their inventory, they've reduced discounts a bit. So they've
done what they can do, I think. But this is just a tough business, and in the wake of
folks like Amazon, it's really difficult to compete. Before the show, we noticed that
Walmart just announced they're closing 269 of their stores, including all of their smaller
Express store concepts, and that's to focus on e-commerce, because that's where the business
is right now, and it's a tough road.
Sorry, I was just going to say, I think that's a watershed moment for Walmart,
by the way. They put a lot into that. They know the urban market, and that's what they've
been going after. To pivot away from that, and to really say they're going to focus on
e-commerce, I don't know. I've said it before, I just think Walmart is a slow-moving train
rec, and it's just picking up momentum.
Well, you look back to those retail numbers for the holiday season here, retail
in general came in at about 3% well below the NRF's projections there. But e-commerce,
on the flip side of that, was actually well above their expectations, around 9%. So, the
winners are plain to see.
Coming up, can great coaches make great CEOs? We will discuss that and more
as we dip into the Fool mailbag. Stay right here, you're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser, Matt Argesinger,
and Ron Gross. Guys, another week, another new radio station starting with the Motley
Fool Money. Affiliate family, KINXFM 102.7 in Great Falls, Montana. Ron, you want to
hop on a plane, hit Montana?
I'm there. Can we ride some horses? Go skiing?
Maybe not in January. Maybe we ...
This shows you what I know about horses.
Let's wait for the summer. Few stocks having as bad a week as GoPro. Shares down nearly
30% after the company lowered guidance and announced it is laying off 7% of the staff.
Matty, this is one of those stocks we talked about earlier. This is down for a reason.
Oh, yeah. Where do we start here? They're now targeting revenue of $435 million
for the recent quarter. That's down from a range of $500 to $550 million. That's a big,
big drop-off. They're seeing a lot of weakness in sell-through of the Hero 4 cameras, which
is the latest generation of their wearable cameras. To me, the big worry here is inventory.
If you go back to the end of September, going into the holiday quarter, they had almost
$300 million in inventory, up 147% from the prior year.
So, obviously, GoPro put a lot into this final quarter.
They did take a small charge for obsolete inventory, or they're intending to now in
the past quarter.
I just think that's going to pick up.
I think they've got way too much inventory.
They're probably going to have to take charges against that.
So, expect a lot more earnings down drafts for GoPro going forward.
It doesn't look pretty.
I'm not in the camp that says GoPro's a fad, which a lot of people in the market have concluded
about the company. I still think there's a lot going forward. I like the partnership
with YouTube, I like Nick Woodman a lot. I do think there's a lot of value to the brand,
but it might take a while to turn it around.
How much pressure do you think management feels right now about the transition
towards becoming a media company?
I think from a financial media perspective, there's a lot of pressure. I don't think Nick
Woodman's going to change anything about how he's managing the company, though.
RadioAtFool.com is our email address, RadioAtFool.com, from Courtney Whitmer in Leesburg, Virginia.
My husband and I are huge fans of Shop House. With the recent brand damage that Chipotle has suffered,
do you think this might spur them to try and develop their other brands as a means of driving growth?
Jason, obviously, Chipotle owns Shop House, the Asian concept, Pizzeria Locale.
I don't know, it might be time to start ramping up plans for those two.
It could be. I mean, we know that call-in, call-out, every quarter management continues to
stay on message that the namesake Chipotle stores are going to be the main
source of growth here for the coming years. And honestly, I mean, I feel like if this is
one management team that was really feeling the pressure to perform in the short run,
then they might try to pull that lever. But this is a different management team,
I think, we have here. And Steve Ells, I think, listening to the conference the other day,
They really got a lot of expectations out there, eliminated a little bit of uncertainty,
explained how they're going to sort of make things better.
And the focus really is primarily to bring customers back into Chipotle and regain their customers' trust.
So, you know, most people don't even realize that Shop House or even Pizzeria Locale are affiliated with Chipotle at all.
I think that's probably a positive in the sense that it's created a separate identity.
So they will pursue those growth avenues in time as warranted.
But for now, the message is clear that they will be focusing primarily on the Chipotle
namesake stores. From Matt Spordone in Boston, Massachusetts,
I'm a Stock Advisor member, but I have a question regarding how I'm investing. I invest 8% of
my pay into my employer's 401 plan, and they match up to 6%, which is great. I've
also been buying shares of individual stocks every month, but only a share at a time. My
plan is to diversify my portfolio with at least 15 stocks, and then beef up and buy
some more shares for each of them as time goes on. Does this strategy make sense? More
specifically, buying only one share at a time." Great question, Ron, and great about the 401
K plan. Yeah. So, Matt, in general, I think
what you're doing is fantastic, and you're going about it in a great way. A couple of
thoughts. So, when you only buy one share of stock, you're likely paying a very high
commission rate as a percent of your purchase. For example, you buy one share of Starbucks
at $57, you pay $9 in commission, that's a 16% fee, a 16% commission rate. So the stock
has to go up 16% for you to just break even on that one share. That's a bit tough. I prefer
to see you maybe accumulate enough money where you can buy several shares of a company to
try to get that commission rate down. In fact, we even say try to keep it under 2%.
The other thing is, I'd like to see you have a measure of diversification, either through
an S&P 500 index fund or an ETF. Perhaps you do have that through your 401 that you mentioned.
If so, that's great. I think you're doing a great job. Just give some thought to those
commissions. Yeah, fees always matter.
Always. Before we get to our final email,
Matty, I just want to mention Supernova. One of the services that you work on is open for
a short amount of time to new members. This is one of our services that only is open to
members a couple of times a year. For those who are interested, what's the deal with Supernova?
Sure. I love Supernova. I've been there since the beginning. If you're a stock advisor
or Rule Breakers or a David Gardner fan, I think you'll find a lot of value in Supernova,
which is essentially making portfolios out of those great stock recommendations. I'll
just throw out that, with this Supernova open in particular, we're launching a new mission,
it's called Odyssey 2. It's a new portfolio, you're getting on the ground floor of that.
It's following the footsteps of Odyssey 1, which is the portfolio that I'm on. If I go
back to 2012 when we launched, Odyssey 1 came out of the gate in a market very much like
this. Very volatile, things going in the red. Odyssey 2 is seeing that same situation. But
these days, if you look at Odyssey 1's performance, we've done great. It takes time, and I think
with Supernova, you're getting on the ground floor of a great new portfolio.
We've got a microsite for anyone interested, looking for more information, a lot of great
information, including some short videos featuring Matt Argesinger, David Gardner, and others
talking about investing, also individual stocks. You can find it, just go to supernovaradio.fool.com.
That's supernovaradio.fool.com. Final email, and fresh off this week's National Championship
Game in college football, from John Hadley, who writes, I heard an ESPN analyst say that
if he had a Fortune 500 company, he would hire Alabama coach Nick Saban to run it. It's
obviously an off-the-cuff comment, but does it have any validity? I know that one of our
executives here at The Motley Fool, Carol McDonough, big Alabama fan, she's not looking
for Coach Saban to leave anytime soon, but what do you think?
John, I think that's a great question. I'm a big fan of systems, and I think Nick
Saban's got one of the best football systems in the country. If you think about putting
him in charge of a Fortune 500 company, he would hate dealing with investors and the
media. He would hate it. He would loathe that. But I think if he came in, he would find great
people. He'd set up a great system. I almost see him as more of a chairman of the board
in a way, rather than just a day-to-day CEO guy, but either way, I love that.
Yeah, just in line with the systems. You know what they say, great leaders surround
themselves with great and even better people. I think that Saban is one of those guys who's
proven it year in and year out. He just really attracts great people from his players to
his coaching staff. So, yeah, whether it's CEO or chairman of the board, I think he could
do OK.
Also, I work for Belichick, by the way.
I'm a huge Bill Belichick fan, as we all know.
We just lost a couple of listeners there.
Oh, no.
All right, guys.
We'll see you later in the show.
Up next, we're heading to the Motor City for an in-depth look at the automotive industry.
Stay right here.
You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Red Monday.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money.
I'm Chris Hill.
The North American International Auto Show kicked off this week in Detroit with more than 850,000 people expected to attend.
Here to help us sort through some of the headlines is Joe White, transportation editor for Thomson Reuters.
He joins me now from Detroit.
Joe, I know it's a busy week, so thanks for being here.
Sure, any time.
What is your headline for the 2016 auto show?
Well, you know, here's what a lot of people said, and certainly what I felt,
which is that the real auto show this year was the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,
which was the week before the Detroit Auto Show press days.
Several of the big automakers, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes, Daimler-Benz,
had bigger announcements in Las Vegas, particularly as it relates to their autonomous vehicle strategies
and their technology strategies, their ideas for getting into car sharing,
going after Uber and going after Google.
All of that was out of CES.
So anyway, let's get back to Detroit because there were a few things here.
The new Mercedes E-Class sedan was unveiled, at least officially, here in Detroit,
although there was a pretty big sneak peek in Vegas.
Chrysler redesigned, renamed, relaunched its minivan,
and they're hoping to get the millennials who grew up in the back seats of minivans
20 or 30 years ago to buy another one for their kids.
Did they come up with a new word to replace the word minivan?
No, but they did come up with a new name for their minivan,
which was actually an old name that they're recycling.
They're calling it now the Pacifica, the Chrysler Pacifica.
People with really good memories might know that that was a name that the Chrysler put on essentially kind of a large station wagon that they built during the days when they were owned by Daimler, which didn't do very well.
But they brought that name back, and they've put it on this new minivan, which they're trying to position as something like a crossover and something like a minivan.
they're trying to hit sort of a rifle shot. It's still got sliding doors. That's what counts.
Honda Civic wins Car of the Year. Volvo XC90 gets Truck of the Year.
You cover this industry a lot more closely than I do. I don't know about you. The fact that Volvo
is winning Truck of the Year was a little bit of a surprise to me.
Yeah, you know, it's sort of like the Oscars where these movies that no one ever sees win
the awards. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I've driven the XC90. It's an awfully nice vehicle,
And it really does seem that Volvo is getting back on track.
But you're right.
I mean, it's still a small brand in this country.
But, you know, Volvo is trying to do something pretty interesting with that vehicle.
They're trying to make it more efficient, more of a technology showcase.
And so we'll see.
We'll see if people pick up on the brand and recognize that they have something new to say.
That segment is awfully competitive, this sort of large-ish luxury sport utility vehicle.
So they have some work to do.
The German companies are definitely after a lot of the same customers that they're after.
You mentioned the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.
And in advance of that, one of the reports was that Ford Motor and Google were going to announce a partnership, a joint venture on self-driving cars.
We haven't heard anything since.
What is the latest with this dance between Ford Motor and Google?
Well, first of all, I mean, you're right.
It was the dog that did not bark.
And I won't take up a lot of time, but I will say I've been to a couple of no-show rodeos like this
involving Google and established automotive companies in the past.
I mean, I remember Continental was left kind of tapping their toes at a press conference in Frankfurt one year
after a whole bunch of rumors that they were going to have some big alliance with Google.
Now, here's what did happen.
What did happen was that John Krafcik, who is the auto industry veteran Google has hired to run their self-driving car project just a few months ago,
came to Detroit, spoke at the Automotive News World Congress, which is adjacent to the opening of the Detroit show,
and essentially said, he looked out at a room full of 500 or 600 automotive industry executives and said,
I want to partner with you. I'm looking for partners.
I want to partner with all of you. He didn't say that he had any partners and Ford has not
said either that they aren't working with Google or talking to Google or that they are. It appears
that what's going on is that these companies are trying to figure out how can we work together
and still compete if that's what it comes to. Because Google certainly is either or can be
both a collaborator with the big auto companies or a threat, and maybe not or, and a threat.
Clearly, Google wants its Android system in the dashboard of your car, connecting your
smartphone, your Android smartphone to the dashboard and the screens and the infotainment
system of your car.
There's an area of collaboration.
But whether or not the car companies really want Google to basically take over the brains
of a self-driving car that they might build, that's not at all clear.
They're very, very wary of that because they saw what happened to the telephone handset makers.
They became essentially marginalized in the value chain, and they don't want to do that.
Last year, we saw record sales for the auto industry, and the falling price of gas certainly helped with that.
When you talk to people in Detroit, how much credit is given to the price of gas being low?
And to what extent is there concern that when gas prices rise again, it may have a negative impact on sales?
There's a lot of concern about that, although you don't necessarily hear it from automaker executives,
but you hear it from just about everybody else.
Mike Jackson, who's the head of AutoNation, which is the largest dealership chain in the United States,
again came here to that same conference, the AutoNews conference, and essentially said to the industry,
look, we're hitting a plateau in sales. It's a good plateau. It's a high plateau,
but it's a plateau. And it's time for us to pay more attention to inventories and not overload
on cars. Be very careful about having too many vehicles in the dealer lots and suddenly have
sales slow down to a really significant degree and leave us kind of holding the bag. You're right.
I mean, volatility of gas prices is a big problem for the automakers right now.
It's kind of a good problem to have because large, expensive vehicles are going off a lot very briskly.
But the small cars that they spent a lot of money developing over the last five years when gas was expensive
are now just kind of sitting there.
And the electric cars that they need to sell in California and several other states to meet regulatory requirements,
they aren't selling.
And those are problems.
And I think, honestly, I think if you pour truth serum into the drinks of the CEOs of big car companies, they would tell you, you know what, we need a gas tax that keeps gasoline, you know, $3 and above so that we can sell these efficient cars that California and other government agencies want us to sell.
You're listening to Motley Fool Money, talking with Joe White, transportation editor for
Thomson Reuters.
One of the big stories of 2015 in the business world, not just the auto industry, but in
the business world, was the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
And this week, French authorities raided the offices of automaker Renault as part of its
investigation into Renault's emissions.
As of this taping, right now, there's no evidence of cheating.
But, Joe, if this happens to another automaker, aren't the knives going to come out?
Isn't every regulatory agency going to start knocking on the door of every automaker, regardless of suspicion?
Yes, is the short answer.
A slightly longer answer is that this is kind of the nightmare for the auto industry.
And it was always kind of there pretty much from day one of the Volkswagen scandal that regulators would say,
wait a minute, if these guys are cheating, is anybody else cheating? Are we, the regulators,
doing enough to police the industry and make sure that everybody's playing by the rules?
And so, yeah, the situation with Renault is pretty dramatic. I mean, the stock took just a beating
today. And even though it's not at all clear whether Renault has done something wrong, I think
that it's pretty clear that in Europe, and I suspect in the United States, not I suspect,
I know in the United States, because the EPA has said so, that regulatory scrutiny of the carmaker's compliance with emissions is going up.
That almost certainly means that costs are going up.
And whether any of these, even if none of these other companies are found to have done something wrong or illegal,
all of them face the prospect of much tougher compliance regimes, likely higher compliance costs, more testing, and all of that.
And in Europe, it's pretty clear that the tolerance that European regulators have had for pretty wide variations of actual emissions or between actual emissions and test emissions, that tolerance is going away pretty quick.
And it's going to be much tougher in Europe for companies to get by without actually doing what is required to keep emissions within the legal limits.
If regulators are wary about emissions, they have to be even more so about the prospect of self-driving cars on the road. When you talk to people in the industry, is there a best guess as to when you factor in technology advances, when you factor in the pace of regulatory approval, is there a best guess as to when self-driving cars could be mainstream?
well there are a lot of best guesses and um and and this is that this is a hot topic in fact even
you know you know here in detroit as we speak uh the secretary of transportation is about to
announce that the federal government is going to is going to try to put some more allow some more
flexibility on some of the vehicle safety rules to allow wider and more expansive testing of
autonomous vehicles on the road. So to answer your question, the consensus appears to be that
a limited hands-free driving, and I'm using that term kind of deliberately because there's a lot
of different definitions of autonomous driving that are floating around, and I'm a simple guy,
and so here's what I want to know. Can I take my hands off the wheel? And over the next couple of
years, several companies, GM, Audi, Mercedes, certainly Tesla is already doing it, will allow
you to take your hands off the wheel under limited circumstances, in a traffic jam, on a highway,
on a traffic jam, so the car can kind of follow the car in front of it and stop and go. In highway
driving, where the car can see lane markers and keep itself positioned between those lane markers
and operate safely. When will we get to the point where, and I think maybe a lot of your listeners
are familiar with the video that Google shot a couple years ago of an autonomous car taking a
blind man out for a sandwich at McDonald's. A really endearing and kind of a really smart and
touching way to kind of say, what's the goal here? That scenario, a car driving someone who's
incapable of operating the vehicle safely himself or herself from point A to point B in a city,
that's probably farther away than a lot of the kind of optimists believe because the complexity
of doing that doing it safely and doing it in a way that will um pass muster with regulators
and this is really important litigators lawyers um automakers are very concerned about getting
sued right the first one of these cars that hits somebody or goes off the road accidentally
there's going to be a giant lawsuit enormous nervousness about that it could be longer than
a lot of people think before a fully autonomous car is something that you see every day.
Two more questions, and then I'll let you go. Apple is doing their best to hide their
electric car project. But Elon Musk recently made the comment, it's pretty hard to hide
something when you hire a thousand engineers to work on it. What is the sense in Detroit
of Apple these days? How are traditional automakers looking at Apple? Is it something
that they're concerned about right now, or do they think,
we've got plenty of competitors right now in 2016?
Well, actually, both of those things are true.
I mean, they do have a lot of competitors in 2016,
just within their own ranks.
There's plenty to work on.
The auto companies, I believe, are concerned about Apple,
which in part explains all the activity.
just this month and over the past couple of years by many of the big car companies
to demonstrate to their investors and to their potential customers that they're in the game
when it comes to electric vehicles, in the game when it comes to autonomous technology,
in the game when it comes to connectivity and keeping you connected on the road to the mobile
internet. They want to basically establish or reestablish barriers to entry so that companies
like Apple can't come in and eat their lunch. I mean, the concern is that Apple will create a
vehicle that is branded as an, you know, that you think of as an Apple product. And who needs
Ford? Who needs Chevrolet? So I do think that Apple probably will find the auto business more
complex than some of its fans would think. It's a highly regulated industry. A cell phone is not a
car. Even an electric car is a far more complex gadget than anything that Apple produces today.
So quite where Apple will shake out in this, who knows? But Elon Musk, got to know, he lives and
works in the same community. And Apple has tried to hire away a number of his people. And they
could be a formidable competitor, because honestly, if Apple really wanted to be in the car business,
they could take out a checkbook, just about any one of them that they might have,
and write a check and buy Fiat Chrysler. They could do it today.
Was there any feature on any vehicle that you've seen so far at this year's Detroit Auto Show that
made you think, you know what, the next vehicle I buy, I want that thing to be in it?
You know, that's a really good question. And I honestly can't say that I saw anything that just
wowed me like that. And there was not a real knockout product at the Detroit show. There
were some very, very nice products. The new Lexus Luxury Coupe is a beautiful-looking
automobile. So I'll give a little shout-out, though, to Honda. Honda relaunched the Ridgeline
pickup. And again, some of your listeners may have been lucky enough to see one of these
things. It's kind of like seeing a pterodactyl. They didn't sell very many of them. But they've
redesigned this truck. But if I wanted a pickup truck or needed a pickup truck, I would love to
have a Honda Ridgeline. Why? Because in the back, in the load bed, they've engineered a deep,
cooler-sized well with a drain in the bottom. So this thing is, when you're in your next
tailgating party, you've got a built-in beer tub with a drain in the bottom. You can fill it up
with ice and put the beverage of your choice in there. And I just thought, well, that's pretty
fun. That's a cool feature. It's not very high tech. It's just kind of an ingenious thing put
in to kind of acknowledge that, yeah, you know what? A lot of people use a pickup truck as the
basis for a party. You want to know what's going on in the automotive industry, follow Joe White
on Twitter, read his stuff online. Joe, thanks so much for being here. Sure, anytime.
Coming up, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. This is 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. I'm
Chris Hill, and joining me in studio once again, Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, and Ron Gross.
Just a couple of minutes to get to the stocks on our radar this week. Ron Gross, what do you got?
Well, this is relatively easy in light of the market turmoil that we find ourselves in. So,
I recommend picking your favorite well-run company and either starting a position or
adding to it. And I'm going to go with the big daddy of them all and say Berkshire Hathaway.
BRKB, $125 a share, down 7% this year, down 17% over the last year. Shares are now trading at
1.3 times book value. Warren Buffett himself says Berkshire would be buying back stock at 1.2 times.
So we're approaching that all-important measure. I think it's a great time to buy Berkshire.
Jason Moser?
Yeah, Berkshire Hathaway crossed my radar, Ron. I thought you'd like that.
I'm going to go with one I've tapped here before. It's called XPO Logistics. The ticker
is XPO. But they are in transportation, logistics, primarily trucking and freight brokerage.
Sounds sexy.
It is. The extremely sexy world of trucking and logistics. But the smart leadership
in Bradley Jacobs, who has been around for a long time, made a number of acquisitions,
not only in this industry but the energy industry as well. Very big market opportunity, and
The price has taken a bit of a hit lately, so it's one that's back on my radar to take
a look into.
O' Matty?
I know Jason's going to love this. I like Twitter, ticker TWTR. It is just down
all-time lows now. I would just say, if you look at digital advertising, digital advertising
for the first time is going to exceed TV advertising this year. A lot of that is going to Facebook,
Alphabet, but a lot of it's also going to go to Twitter. I just think they're really
going to benefit. I see it everywhere. It's huge in the media. So underrated.
Let's bring in our man Steve Broido from the other side of the glass. Steve,
we've got about 30 seconds. Berkshire Hathaway, XPL Logistics, Twitter,
any of those you want to put on your watch list?
Berkshire sounds pretty enticing right now. That sounds a good argument.
You're not already a shareholder of Berkshire? Not yet.
This is a perfect time.
All right. Ryan Gross, Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger. Guys, thanks for being here.
Thank you.
Once again, supernovaradio.fool.com. Check it out for more information on our
supernova service. That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Fool Money. The show is
mixed by Rick Engdahl, our engineer, Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks
for listening, and we will see you next week.
