Motley Fool Money - 4 Stocks We're Thankful For

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

Cue the sound effect, it's time for our Thanksgiving Special! (0:21) Ron Gross and Jason Moser discuss:  - Humble Pie (aka, stocks we were wrong about)  - Stocks we're thankful for  - Turkey stocks to avoid  - Financial topics we really hope don't come up this holiday season (19:11) We revisit our conversation Scott Galloway, author of the bestselling book “Adrift: America in 100 Charts” and discuss a potential rebranding for nuclear energy, and which CEO has created the most shareholder value. (37:20) Jason and Ron share two stocks on their radar: AMETEK and Taiwan Semiconductor. Stocks discussed: APPH, WD, SBUX, DIS, HD, COST, NKE, BRK.B, TSLA, BBBY, AME, TSM Host: Chris Hill Guests: Jason Moser, Ron Gross, Scott Galloway Engineer: Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What? Oh boy. Fantastic. You guys go hard. Daredevil Born Again official podcast Tuesdays, and stream Season 2 of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again on Disney Plus. unlike any other. Motley Fool Money starts now. That's why they call it Money.

Full Global Headquarters. This is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Full Money Radio Show. I'm Chris Hill. Joining me in studio, Montley Fool Senior Analyst Jason Moser and Ron Gross. Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey. Hey. Hey. It's our Thanksgiving special. We will give thanks for some stocks. We'll call out a few turkeys. We'll revisit a conversation with bestselling authors, Scott Galloway. And yes, we got a couple of stocks on our radar. It's our Thanksgiving special, which means only one thing. Dan, that's right.

It's the one show per year where we actually break out the special effects. It gets me every year. Let's start, Jason, with a serving of humble pie. Because, you know, what's Thanksgiving without pie? What is a stock or a business story this year that you were wrong about? Well, we all need this. I think that you've made an incredible leap as an investor when you can appreciate and actually look forward to making mistakes because you know that you will get better from them.

And Chris, my humble pie this year, App Harvest, a company that I've talked about before on this show, a company that I own, a company that I've recommended. It has been a very, very disappointing performer since I recommended it and purchased it. To be clear, and I want to make sure everybody understands this, I am still keeping my shares, but this is one I clearly got in on far, far too early. And for those who are unfamiliar, App Harvest is in the business of controlled environment, agriculture, ultimately growing or building these indoor farms in order to try to solidify and stabilize our food supply. We saw that really kind of take a hit here over the last few years.

And so I do like what the company is doing, but this was a company that was brought to the public markets via SPAC, and we know how many of those SPACs have turned out, right? Spax brought companies to us at a far earlier stage in their life cycle, than probably we would normally see them. So it was exciting, but it was also very easy to become a bit separated from the potential of where the business could go in time versus where it actually was at that present-day moment. So for me, the lesson learned, recognize where a business really is, what reasonable financial expectations look like.

It's not to say it can't or won't work out, but it typically will take a little bit longer. Chris, spack me once, shame on you. Spack me twice. Shame on me. Ron, what form does your slice of humble pie take? For this one, I'm going to humbly choose the worst performing stock in the instant income portfolio, which is a portfolio of dividend-paying stocks that I put together each year for our total income service.

Walker and Dunlop, WD, is down about 40% since this portfolio was created only eight months ago. It's likely, I think, to be fine over the long term, but this year has really been brutal. They are a commercial real estate financial services company, with interest rates increasing and real estate falling. They've just taken it on the chin, quite frankly. As CEO, Willie Walker said on the most recent earnings call, in this rising rate environment, every deal is under pricing pressure. Mortgage servicing has been hit especially hard.

As I said, I think it's going to be fine. Again, as Willie Walker said, the pricing pressure is solely due to interest rate increases. and it will abate the moment rates stabilize. Only 12 times forward earnings, 3% yield, I humbly suggest. I think we're going to be okay. My humble pie is, it's not one stock. It's really just the idea of my being very wrong in 2022 about former CEOs returning to their original jobs. This happened earlier in the year when Howard Schultz came back to Starbucks.

I was saying, no, that's not going to happen. And recently, when Bob Chepec at Disney came under fire, one of our coworkers said, you think Bob Eiger would ever come back and be CEO? And I said, no. And he said, no, what percent of chance would you give? And I said, zero. Zero percent chance that Bob Eiger is coming back. And yeah, fortunately, it's pie.

It tastes delicious. Flipping from humble pie to stocks were thankful for. Jason, what do you got? Well, I'm thankful this year, gave me the opportunity to buy shares in a company I've long admired the Home Depot. We always talk about our trips to better our homes, right? Home improvement's a massive market. Nothing, nothing really, I think, going to get in the way of that.

Near-term macro concerns, I think, have hit virtually every corner of the market in some capacity. And even the biggest market leaders are feeling the pressure. And if you look at Home Depot, those shares are down close to 25 percent year to date and trailing the market. I actually think that has represented an opportunity. There are big tailwinds, obviously, in an aging, existing housing market. You've got over half the homes in the U.S. today are 40 years or older. Housing supply that still needs to catch up with demand.

Home Depot to me just stands out as it's an investment that I'm going to enjoy owning for many, many years to come. Along those lines, Ron, I am also thankful for a stock that I finally bought this year. Actually, two stocks that I finally bought. Berkshire Hathaway and Nike. A shares? Not the A shares. If so, after the show, can we tell?

It's all good. My pockets are not that deep. But finally, after years of listening to you talk about Berkshire Hathaway, finally bought some B shares. And Jason, for all of the times you've talked about Nike, when it took a hit earlier this year, I thought, this seems like an opportunity. And I'm not going to let this one pass me by. Ron, what about you?

So I wanted to pick a stock that I've recommended at The Fool and that I also own personally. So when I scan down the list of my stocks to see what my biggest winners have been, Costco jumped out of me with a 1,000% return for me personally. And listeners will remember that I've spoken about Costco many times, even recently, on this show. Lots of admiration for former CEO and founder Jim Sinigal, created an amazing corporate culture. Current management has continued that legacy. relentless about the value proposition for their customers, especially that $1.50 hot

dog and drink, which isn't changing anytime soon. I love the membership model. I love the pricing power. I love the 90% retention rates they enjoy. I first bought Costco back in 2008, when I first recommended it in our inside value service, for those that remember inside value. So lots of nostalgia here for me, plus not too shabby of a return. Bill Mann mentioned recently on the show, talking about Apple, and And just the, you know, obviously, when you think long term about Apple, you're thinking about Steve Jobs. But Bill pointed out, you look at the stock appreciation under the leadership of Tim Cook, and it far outweighs what the stock did in terms of Steve Jobs and his leadership.

Kind of the same thing with Costco. Jim Senegal sort of set the tone, did such a great job leading that company. Craig Jelinek, under his leadership as CEO, the performance of Costco shares, is really pretty phenomenal. Yeah, he took over something that was already had this wonderful business model. He didn't screw it up. He took it forward. We always say the stock's not cheap, the stock's not cheap, but yet the stock keeps moving higher.

So perhaps we're even underestimating where a company as great as Costco is should be trading. Ron, quick question. Just use your personal take on the matter. I'm sure you probably recently saw the headline recently where Sam's Club is taking the price of their hot dog and soda down to what a time? $1.38, I think. And they're one-upping Costco's $1.50, right? I mean, I would need to do a taste test. I bet the beef is inferior if it is even beef. Yeah, maybe they're turkey dogs. More of our Thanksgiving special after this. Put down the leftovers and 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 I'm going to sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Full Money, Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. It is our Thanksgiving special. Thank you for listening. Thanks for spreading the word on social media, for rating and reviewing Motley Full Money on whichever platform you're listening.

It's the kind of thing that helps other people find the show, and we appreciate it. So thanks for doing that. Thank you to our radio stations across America that broadcast our show every week. And we're thankful for listeners like Rich Smith, who dropped an email to to say the following. Thank you for all the content you provide. It means a lot more to me this year because I'm currently serving overseas. I'll be spending Thanksgiving 2020 with my military family, but seeing the new episodes of Motleyful Money show up in my podcast feed helps to pass the time a little more easily. Shout out to everyone else serving our great nation

and away from their loved ones. Be safe, take care of each other and stay connected, sincerely, Rich. Wow. Such a great note. Thank you, Rich. Thank you so much for doing it. for your service as well. Amazing. Absolutely. All right. Let's get back to using the sound effect more with turkey stocks. This is more forward-looking.

This is a stock to avoid. I want to point out, I looked at the list of stocks we talked about on last year's Thanksgiving special, and we did right by the dozens of listeners, because last year we said, stay away from Peloton, stay away from Zillow and Avis. budget group, all three of those stocks down in the past 12 months and down worse than the S&P 500. So I feel like we did our listeners. It's solid. Ron, a turkey stock that people should stay away from? It's got to be Bed Bath and Beyond, Chris. This is a stock you and I have owned on

and off over the past year, 18 months or so. I think we may even have made some money on it, thanks to the Wall Street Betts crowd, perhaps. Thank you. Shout out to the Reddit community. Now, I think it's permanently impaired, and I think it's time to stay away. I know it's tempting to take a shot at a stock when it's $3 a share, when it was at 30 sometime over the past year. Even if it gets back to 10, you'll hear people say, that's a triple. How hard could it be to get back to 10?

Well, Chris, I think it's likely more of a zero than it is a 10. The meme stock, folks, notwithstanding. I can't predict that. My original hope was that new CEO, Mark Triton, was going to turn this around. He did not. He went in all-in on private label. He did sell off some non-car assets, which I appreciated. But his merchandising strategy, which he was really famous for over at Target, just really, really fell flat. And he is no longer at the company. They're closing 150 stores. They're reducing costs, moving, thankfully, to a national brand merchandising strategy, trying

to firm up relationship with vendors. But most importantly, it's trying to firm up its balance sheets. So it's time to execute the turnaround. $3.4 billion in debt. Bankruptcy is a real, it's not out of the question here. It's a real challenge. We have to keep an eye on it. It's too risky for me. I think I'm going to stay away. I recommend others too as well. There was so much there, Jason. And yet, I think the poll quote for people online is going to be, I think the business is permanently impaired. It's like, boy, it is tough to bounce back from permanently impaired. What about you? What's

a stock to avoid. Yeah, you know, I know this will probably send a few of the diehards in my direction. But you can't, I don't know, to me, Tesla is one, I've never owned Tesla shares before. I mean, obviously, it's had a tough year. Stock's down somewhere around the neighborhood of 50%, but it seems like everything's down 50% this year. But again, I look at Tesla. The valuation for me is never really fully made sense. is 10 times the market cap of a Ford, for example, yet Ford brings in double the revenue. Now, I understand, of course, that will change. Tesla is growing. But we always talk about, well, is it a car company, is it a battery company, is it a power company? Maybe it's going

to be a metaverse company. It's like razzles. First it's a candy, then it's a gum. Personally, this really boils down for me to leadership. And it really boils down to, I just do not feel good about all of these things that he's really. Elon Musk is doing. I mean, the Twitter purchase, you got him with SpaceX, the boring company, whatever else he wants to do. He's recently testifying in court that he doesn't want to be a CEO at any company. So, I mean, like, it seems to me very difficult to have any faith that you can really trust what this guy is going to do. I'm not saying that Tesla is permanently impaired.

Don't get me wrong there. But it does feel like, to me, there are a lot of catalysts on the horizon, in the near term, at least, that could take this stock lower. So, again, it's not to say, don't own it. If you like, great, good on you. But it just feels like things are going to get worse before they get better. First of all, I love the voice that you did, because that is sort of the voice I always imagine when people are like, you don't get it, man. You just don't get it.

You're not looking at this company the right way. Did you buy some Bitcoin? No, I didn't get Bitcoin. You just don't get it, man. Second of all, on a more serious note, I'm just looking at my own notes, and I just jotted down, before coming in the studio, I just wrote down for a stock to avoid. I wrote Tesla, and then a hyphen, and then I just wrote, the CEO is very distracted. And on a more serious note, I have to go back to something Bill Manson said recently on the

show about management. And sort of, he was talking about small businesses and how he looks at management and how important that is when a business is smaller. And then as a business grows, he continues to look at management, but he looks more at, well, what is the team underneath the, you know, in some cases a founder, CEO, that sort of thing. And that's the sort of thing that I look at. When I look at Tesla, there are other companies, too. I don't want to just single out Tesla, but there are, you know, Tesla is one of those companies where I just look at and I think, well, what is the what is the Ben strength? Who are they relying? Because, I mean, it really is true, Ron. As

We were talking earlier about Apple. Part of what enabled Steve Jobs to do what he did was he had an amazing operator in the form of Tim Cook, who he could rely on for all of the operational parts of the business. And Tesla, I think one of the best things Musk could do, not necessarily step down as CEO, but just set up a structure where he's delegating a lot more. Delegating for sure, but make no bones about it. This is his company, and you can, all you have to do is listen to the trial going on now about his pay package, where they basically said, we needed to figure out what we were going to do to keep him because he's the company, and if he walked away, we'd be in trouble.

Maybe if he steps down, they can bring in Bob Eager. Where do you think we go from here? I know we are a month away from our 2023 preview, but just thinking about management, it really does seem like everything is on the table. both in terms of the question of whether or not we go into recession and what challenges businesses have, what the leaders of these businesses are dealing with. It seems like, I guess where I'm going with this, Ron, is it seems like a particularly rough time to be a public company CEO. Oh, yes. Taking away guidance, hurting people with poor guidance, not having good visibility

into your own business. After all, who should have more visibility than the leader of a company? It's a rough time, for sure. Supply chain disruptions, notwithstanding. That makes it even worse. All right. Before we go to break, something we started doing a few years ago, a little something I lacked called, not at the table. Just a business or investing story, you're just hoping does not come up this holiday season, Ron. All things crypto. Now, last year, when everyone thought they were a crypto genius making money, making money on everything from Dogecoin to digital picture of apes. I especially didn't want to talk about it then. I don't want to talk about it now, even though those same people are

wringing their hands saying, oh, gosh, what happened? There's a lot of real people losing a lot of real money. It's not that funny, but I just don't want to go there. Leave it off of my table. I'm looking at my notes, Jason. I just wrote down one word, crypto. What about you? Well, crypto definitely comes to mind. I mean, it's not something where I consider myself an expert by any means, I'm not sure as hell don't want to talk about it either. People are going to think I'm piling on here. But, man, can we just, not put Elon Musk. All right? Just for a day. I mean, he bought Twitter. He closed the deal. He owns it now. He's tweeting all the time. That's great. Even more so than usual. Matter of fact, I think there's probably a relation

to it. How many tweets he offers out a day versus a decline in Tesla share price. There's also a crypto link in there with him as well. It's all things lead back to Musk. I'm sure. I'm sure he's going to do something in the next couple of months. It's going to warrant, another headline, and us to talk more about, oh, can you believe what he's doing now? But let's just one day. Let's give it a rest. Yeah, I don't know that your wish is coming true. In my house, it will. We've just got to turn all things over to Charlie Munger.

Charlie, what do you think about crypto? Charlie, what do you think about Tesla? Charlie, what do you think about Musk? Just whatever Charlie says. He's not on Twitter, but I mean, is there someone who's just like tweeting out mongerisms? I'm pretty sure there is. Yeah, there's like among drisms. All right.

Jason Moser, Ron Gross. Guys, we'll see you later in the show for stocks on our radar. But up next, we've got a conversation with bestselling author Scott Galloway. So stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill. Scott Galloway is a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business,

host of a popular podcast, and the author of several bestsellers, the latest of which is Adrift, America in 100 charts. Earlier this fall, I caught up with Galloway and started the conversation by asking how he got the idea for his new book. Well, I'm fascinated by charts and trying to communicate information with images and visuals. We've had an alphabet for 1,500 years, but we've been interpreting actions and taking instruction through images for tens of thousands, whether it's paintings on cave walls or trying to figure out when to plant the crops based on the height of the sun in the sky.

we can process information communicated through visuals six to 60 times faster. And I've always over-invested in everything I've done in finding someone exceptionally creative to help display information visually. I always say with everything we put out, a podcast, well, that's actually not true in a podcast, but a book, a video, I always say, can we say this with an image as opposed to words? And we produced several thousand images across our body of work over the last decade. And I thought, if you were to try and pick the 100 most illuminating or shocking or insightful and then group them or cluster them into themes that told a story, how would you do it?

And so there's narrative. It's basically the book is laid out a chart, then a page of narrative, then another chart. And it tries to tell a story around A, some of our biggest problems. And then I save the last chapter for what I think are some potential solutions. The process you just described reminds me a little bit of a documentary filmmaker who has, you know, in some cases, 70, 80 hours of footage and tries to distill it down to maybe 90 minutes or two hours.

How challenging was the process of getting it down to 100 charts? Because certainly if I was your publisher or your publicist, I would very much be focused on a nice round number like 100. Yeah, it's definitely the phenomenon. If I'd had more time, I would have written you a shorter note. The hard part wasn't what to include. It was what not to include. And we literally have several thousand charts.

And I sort of backward integrated and I said, what are I think are the biggest issues facing America and that people aren't or that are sort of underreported, or if you will, many of them. And then what charts best illuminate the issue. But the hardest part is finding that narrative and that arc, that story arc that tells a story with them, and then trying to bring it all together. That's the hard part. The hard part is the clustering and the sorting.

You can find the ingredients, but somebody really intelligent figured out, oh, chocolate and peanut butter actually go really well together. And so, yeah, that was the hardest part. But it's something, you know, this was fun. This stuff is fun. It's writing a book is the hardest thing I do professionally. There's supposedly a hormone that comes over women right after childbirth that gives them amnesia. Otherwise, they would never have more kids because it's so painful and unpleasant. And I think there's a similar process with writing a book.

About halfway, this is my fourth book, about halfway through every book, you think, why the heck did I agree to do this again? And so right now is the euphoria stage. You know, you get to the end of the book like never again. I get to speak to smart people like you. I get to have fun. People are nice to me on Twitter and LinkedIn, and all of a sudden, I can feel that amnesia washing over me. And already we're like, well, what's the next one? So, yeah, we'll see. When I think about your first book, which is about Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, was that book, as you were writing this one, was that book, I don't want to say a North Star, but was part of the process of putting this book together, looking back at that first book about big tech?

and essentially saying, I want to update what I wrote before. There are some similarities, but, I mean, for example, in the fore, my publisher didn't want charts. The conventional wisdom, when you put charts in a book, it feels like a textbook and it won't sell. And we said no, and I think we have 30 to 50 charts in the four. I just think sometimes it's just much more illuminating to show the dominance of these companies graphically. The difference, the major contrast, though, versus the four is I started the first. the four is a love letter to these companies. They are the largest recruiter out of my class at Stern. I have a decent amount of economic security because I've owned their stocks for a long

time. I love their products. And then as I really dug into the research and kind of marinated in the data around these companies, the book turned, morphed into a cautionary tale. By the end of writing the book, I was just like, you know, it was kind of like for a moment, When you write a book, the day you finish the book, you feel like for a few minutes, you know more on that topic than anyone in the world, and that a few minutes later, you don't because things change. But I felt like I was the kid who could see dead people. And that is I thought, these guys are scary.

People don't realize. People don't remember when I wrote the four in 2017, the only debate about the four was who was going to be president, Jeff Bezos, or Cheryl Sandberg. The general assumption was Cheryl Sandberg was the lock-on for governor of California and then going to be Bloomberg's running mate and then be president. And we were just all so enamored with these companies, including Mark Zuckerberg. And I generally, for a moment, I'd like to think I saw the externalities a little bit sooner than some other people just by looking at the data.

This book, Adrift American 100 Charts, I started out very pessimistic, polarization, failing young men, income inequality. There's just some rise of the shareholder class, decline of the middle class. But by the end of the book, I felt much more optimistic because I think one of the major messages of trying to get across in the book is the biggest problems we're facing are of our own making, and we can absolutely unmake them. And I have a chapter in the book called The World We Made, and if you look at the things we have faced down, if you look at the things we have pushed back on, if you look at the things and really bad at the ideas that we have defeated, there's nothing we're facing now that we can't defeat. There's this great photojournalist, I think her name is Maria Amalow. Mariana Amelow. She's colorizing World War II photographs. And there's this wonderful photograph of a landing craft, an allied landing craft that's

just front skate is just dropped, and there are a couple dozen young men. Their average age was 26. Our average wage was $800 a month after inflation, waiting towards Omaha Beach. two of three of those men would not leave that beach alive. And I imagine them turning around and somehow, through some sort of space and time, Loki-like metaverse, you know, wormhole can see into what's going on in our lives. And we say, oh my gosh, we're facing income inequality. We're facing polarization in our media.

And them going, I can't imagine they wouldn't say, you can't fix that. Look what's waiting for me on the beach. Look what I'm about to sacrifice. and overcome. And whether it's coming up with vaccines that saved one to two million American lives by most estimates, no one's waiting in line for Russian or Chinese vaccines, whether it's 50% of global philanthropy is sponsored by American organizations, and we've taken world poverty down.

The World Health Organization in 1970 said, let's commit to cutting it in half in 40 years. They cut it in half in 20 years, and then they cut it in half again. And most of this has been American-led. So I actually came out of this book, started down and started at half empty, started at half-full, come out of the book actually quite optimistic about America and our ability to face down these challenges. I was going to say you end this book on a very hopeful note. You know, for anyone who might be thrown off by the word adrift in the title, you end the book with, I think, a great deal of optimism. And as you touched on recommendations for specific remedies, things like simplifying the tax code,

the one that really caught my attention was rebranding nuclear. And I'd love to have you share a little bit more about this because I think this, among other things, it relies on your expertise as a professor of marketing. But when I was reading that, I thought, oh, yeah, nuclear power really could use a rebrand. Well, think about Hollywood and how it portrays electric vehicles or wind and solar. These are generally like the ultimate boyfriend in a Hallmark Channel movie is a guy who owns a solar farm or installs solar panels or our heroes, our innovators coming up with electric vehicles.

Think about Hollywood and nuclear power. Start with Monty Burns on The Simpsons. The evil guy owns the nuclear power plant. or there's that incredible docudrama Chernobyl, or there's the China syndrome with Jack Lemon, where we're going to burn a hole through the – I mean, it's just there is – you know, Hollywood has done a great job of basically like Nazis, then South Africans during apartheid. They always find a bad guy than the Taliban and nuclear. Nuclear is the corporate bad guy, maybe only second to tobacco executives.

And if you look at, and I'm not an expert on energy, but it strikes me that if you look at the fact that one power plant or one reactor can power a city the size of Philadelphia, when you look at the actual number of fatalities stemming from 50 or 60 years of nuclear, when you look at the fact that we are arguably funding a war in Ukraine with fossil fuel dependence, it just strikes me that any serious. And then you also quite frankly, just look at the, relative efficiency or inefficiency of some of the cleaner sexier technologies, wind and solar, just how much of it we'd have to build to replace fossil at the rate we want. I would argue that most data leads you to any serious conversation around the type of pace and cadence we need to establish to turn back climate change has to involve a sober conversation around nuclear. And that's not to say there aren't risks. That's not to say there aren't externalities.

But the emissions, I think the total nuclear fuel spent from U.S. nuclear power plants could be put in cement casing six feet high and cover a soccer field. Now, it's dangerous stuff, and you've got to be really careful with it. But that's nothing I believe compared to the emissions of most other, especially fossil fuels. And some very bright people, including Bill Gates, and some people I really respect are saying, yeah, this is, you know, let's start calling it elemental. energy because, and there's some interesting conversation now around whether we put off plans to mothball some plants in California, Germany is thinking maybe they don't unplug their plants. But I think nuclear and the advances in nuclear are really interesting. Even some of this new technology where you can have a mini plant the size of a Winnebago that

can power a fairly sizable town or even something the size of a backpack that can power a neighborhood. So I'm actually really excited about nuclear. I think it offers a solution, sometimes the most obvious solutions are right in front of you. Bill Gates is someone you referenced in an article you wrote recently for the Atlantic entitled America's False Idols, really about tech entrepreneurs. And one of the things that caught my attention in the article was the number of times a company founder lists his name in the S1 filing. which seems like it might be a new exercise for investors. Just go through the S-1, see how many times someone like Adam Newman lists himself in the WeWork, IPO, paperwork.

I am curious, though, Scott, if you look at sort of the next, the follow-on leaders of companies differently, if you look at someone like Tim Cook differently than Steve Jobs or Andy Jassy different from, Jeff Bezos because, I don't know, they don't have everything that comes with being a founder attached to them, and instead they are an operator. Yeah, so there's a lot there. The idolatry of innovators, and by the way, if I wrote that article again, I probably wouldn't include Bill Gates in that imagery because I actually think Bill Gates is doing really good work.

and I have a lot of admiration for him. I think we could do worse than have the wealthiest people in the world with the same foci as Bill Gates. But anyways, having said that, the kind of charismatic storyteller leader has been a key component of any of these companies that have accelerated from zero to kind of half a trillion dollars or more. And that is their ability to articulate an incredible vision, whether it's Steve Jobs in a showmanship or Jeff Bezos' 1997 investment letter where you read the thing and you just want to buy shares or Adam Newman, who I've been on stage interviewing before, who's just incredibly charismatic. You just want to be around him and a part of what he's building. That ability, that competence of a CEO to articulate a really compelling vision such that they attract cheap capital.

And basically, to use another World War II reference, overwhelm the enemy with just brute strength. That's what capital is. Typically, the company in any sector that has access to the most capital, the cheapest capital, that's kind of the odds-on favorite to win. And so a really compelling CEO who can raise a lot of capital, kind of well ahead of the curve, and pull the future forward with that capital.

They can buy amazing things, plans, property, IP, people, wins. What's unusual about you brought up Tim Cook. He's an exception. And Tim Cook has added more shareholder value than any individual in history. And people might say what Steve Jobs did, taking a company from zero to $300 billion, in was more difficult, but nobody has taken a company from $300 billion to $2.5 trillion.

Tim Cook has added $2.2 trillion in shareholder value. No one has ever done that, accomplished that. And he's a supply chain guy. And I don't know if it says as much about the difference in CEOs, because I still think at the end of the day, they are spokespeople. And when you listen to Tim Cook in his own way, he just kind of reeks a credibility and integrity. And the performance is just so outstanding. I think the jury's still out on Andy Jackson. I don't know if he brings the same level of compelling vision and storytelling as a Jeff Bezos. And I think that's still TBD. But I think this Elon Musk weaponizing or leveraging whatever the term is Twitter with 90 million followers,

and as a result, spends almost zero on traditional marketing. And General Motors has to spend $2 billion. I mean, the storytelling, visionary, charismatic CEO has kind of become the the criteria for a CEO. They become our new heroes. We have an idolatry of dollar, and specifically tech CEOs, every third year, times person of the year just picks the richest tech person. And I think it's a phenomena talking about the book, the idolatry of innovators is nations become wealthier and more educated. Their church attendance and reliance on a super being goes down. But we need new idols. We need to look to people who can answer the unanswerable.

And technology is the closest thing we have to sort of mysticism or magic or spirituality. Because my life, if I knew amazing things, I have no idea how it works. So Steve Jobs kind of is the information age, Jesus Christ, and I would argue Elon Musk is kind of taking that mantle. And it leads to some very unhealthy places. These firms aren't regulated the same way other firms are regulated, and these individuals are given a wider birth than any leaders in history. And unfortunately, I think of wallpapers over things such as teen depression or organizing insurrection. And my last point, I'll stop this word out. an illusion of complexity that's fomented by these companies, that these are big problems

we can't figure out. And yet, you remove one account from Twitter and 30 to 60 percent of election misinformation goes away on one night. Amazon gets critic bombed on their load of the rings series, where people are showing up and making incendiary comments and fake comments. They close the comments section down. They use AI. They enforce identity. They posted 48 hours later, and the comments are legitimate and have more veracity. So they figured it out in 48 hours, but Meta and Google throw up their arms and say, these problems They're too big. No, they're not. We're not talking about the realm of the possible. We're talking about the realm of the profitable. So they create this illusion of complexity to try

and stave off what are fairly obvious solutions and actions they should take. The book is Adrift, America in 100 charts. It is out now and available wherever you find books. Pick up a copy. Scott Galloway. Always great talking to you. Thanks so much for being here. Chris, thanks for your good work. After the break, Ron Gross and Jason Moser are back with a couple of stocks on their radar. This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser and Ron Gross. It is our Thanksgiving special. We have just enough time for radar stocks. Dan's not going to hit you with the question. That's how little time we have. Ron, what's on your radar?

Going back to Taiwan Semiconductor, TSM, Pure Play semiconductor foundry, shares are almost 25% cheaper versus the last time it was on my radar stark on March 18th. Big news is that, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a purchase of $4 billion of Taiwan's semi-stock. China, global economic slowdowns are the main risks here. But it looks cheap to me, plus you get a 2.2% dividend yield. Jason Moser, what are you looking at? Yeah, it's the $30 billion market cap company you've never heard of, Amatech. That's right, ticker AME.

Amatech is a global manufacturer of high-tech industrial solutions that play an important role in many important and growing markets. They generate revenue through products marketed and sold via electronic instruments and electromechanical. Think thermal management systems. Dan, think things like precision manufacturing systems. They serve industries like semiconductors, aerospace and defense, health care. And their primary strategy is growth via acquisition, identifying small leaders and small niche markets, acquire them, bring them under their umbrella, and maximize those efficiencies, grow the business. I've never heard of this company. Dan, what do you want to do?

to add to your watch list? I'm not entirely sure that Jason's company is real, so I'm going to have to go with Taiwan's semiconductor. That's going to do it for this week's Motleyful Money Radio show. The show is Mixed by Dan Boyd. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.