Motley Fool Money - Hot IPOs, Cold Pizza & Star Wars

Episode Date: November 20, 2015

Wal-Mart surprises. Jack in the Box pops. Square makes its public markets debut. And Urban Outfitters buys a pizza chain? Our analysts discuss those stories and share three stocks on their radar. Plus, corporate governance expert and film critic Nell Minow talks Wall Street reform, Volkswagen, and Star Wars. For a free preview of our MDP service, go to MDPRadio.Fool.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey, hey, hey. We have got the latest earnings from Wall Street. The one-and-only Nell Minow is our guest, And as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin this week once again with the big picture for retail and definitely looking better than last week, guys. Walmart's third quarter profit came in higher than expected. They had an upbeat forecast for the holiday quarter.

And something we rarely get to say, Matt, shares up more than 7 percent this week for Walmart. I know. Well, it's been rare for them. They've had a really tough couple of years here. Results were better than expected, but I think that's kind of what we're seeing with all these retail companies, the ones that are actually the stocks are moving up. It's just, it's not as bad as we thought. And I think that's the case with Walmart. I mean, if you look at the revenue, still down year over year by 1.3%, okay, if you strip out foreign exchange,

revenue is up 2.8%. So, Bravo, Walmart, you're keeping up with inflation. I mean, you know, compare... That ain't easy. You're right. It's not easy. But, you know, profits were better expected, but they're down down quite a bit because Walmart's, as we know, is invested in technology. They're investing in their people. They're raising salaries. trying to refurbish a lot of their stores. But a lot of that, I don't know how much of that is paying off. If you look at, for example, their e-commerce sales, e-commerce sales were up just 10%. And I compare that with Amazon, a much more mature e-commerce platform. And their revenues

more than double that growth rate. So my take on Walmart is this. I think over the next 10 years, no doubt tens of millions of people will still be shopping at Walmart. They have a $20 billion buyback on the table. It's a 3% dividend now. But I just think this model, it doesn't work. I mean, I can't, I haven't met anyone under the age of 30 who has any interest in going into a Walmart ever. Well, I know I'm much older than 30. It was quite an experience. I will say they have a lot of stuff.

A lot of stuff. But I just don't get the attraction of the model anymore. And I just think long term it's going to die. I will say though that Doug McMillan, the CEO, I give him points for the investor. I think it was an investor day recently where he came out. And he, in my opinion, he went sort of beyond. what he needed to do in terms of transparency and just very bluntly communicating what they're doing in terms of investing in their people, in the e-commerce platform.

And I feel like at least if you're looking at this company, you got to feel good about McMillan and the way he's going about his business. I just think is Johnny come lately with this with a lot of their efforts? And I just don't get the growth picture. I mean, it's one thing to go back and say, we've got to make our stores better. We're trying this new urban concept. We're investing in our e-commerce business, but I just think it's too late. Best Buy's third quarter profit was mixed. Profit came in higher than expected, but same store sales, Jason, barely in the positive column. And that's just not the kind of momentum you need when you're going into the holiday quarter.

Yeah, but isn't really a win for Best Buy this quarter, just in that we are actually talking about them. I mean, for the past couple of years, I think we've all more or less been talking about Best Buy's slow demise. And it just hasn't happened really. Now, I do think that with Best Buy, part of their success has come at the expense of H.H. Greg. We are seeing H.H. Greg really die that slow death. And so, I mean, it's kind of, you know, one of those big box retailers can't exist. The other one can. And so, again, kind of going back to what Maddie's talking about with Walmart, I think, you know, Best Buy, again, it's facing sort of that challenge going forward of, you know, consumers' behaviors are just changing. even slowly, but we're seeing more e-commerce. We're seeing that become more and more important as time goes on. Now, Best Buy is obviously investing in that. Online revenue this quarter was 8.8% of sales versus 7.5% a year ago. So there is improvement there. But when you compare that to something like an Under Armour or a Nike, for example, they are still far behind in their

direct-to-consumer efforts there. So they still have some ground to cover. And what I'm not seeing from Best Buy, what I think we've all kind of hoped to see to a degree, agree here is a way for them to differentiate themselves in becoming more of a service provider, right? I mean, it's the reason why this holiday season doesn't necessarily look all that great for them is because there isn't really that device that everybody wants. There's not really that big of a reason to go to Best Buy, and it doesn't really help their cause that Black Friday essentially is every day on Amazon.com at this point. And so, I mean, we're seeing already a lot of deals being kicked out in the email inboxes there from Amazon and other

retailer like on Arm or Nike. And I think Best Buy is going to face some challenges there. But again, I think, you know, this is not a stock that I'm sitting there saying, go out and buy it today. It's not one that I would say, go ahead and short. I mean, I think I can see a scenario where next year they do okay. But again, a lot of headwinds. There are a lot of challenges, and it's just a very fast-changing space. They've been slow to change. I'm pleased to see we're working Amazon into every story so far. I will try to keep that up. I think the only chance the Best Buy has to differentiate themselves, would be through exceptional service, where you go in and you need help picking a television, you

need help picking a computer. They fall so far, by the way. They fall so far short of differentiating themselves in a positive way with that metric that I can't see them turning this around. And then that begs the question. You go online to buy something like a TV. I mean, are you trusting more of this collection of reviews that you read on this online platform, or are you trusting the input of a sales representative there at the store, who may or may not have ever even bought? their own TV to begin with. So I think that you're starting to see how we're more crowdsourcing opinions and reviews on things like that. And those are becoming more and more valuable. Time goes on as well.

All right. Let's move on to home improvement. Third quarter profits for Home Depot and lows. Both came in higher than expected. And Ron, they're both putting up some pretty strong same-store sales numbers. Well, you know what Amazon says about. No, I'm just kidding. This is definitely the one bright spot among others of retail. And that's because we have a solid housing market. People are seeing their home values increasing. And actually, the warm weather actually helps here, because it extends the outdoor season and it extends the time at which people can do their home projects. And that certainly helps. Both strong reports from both companies, I think Home Depot edged lows out a bit as it periodically does and as the stock has done. But still

is very strong. You have things that are comparable, like Home Depot, same source sales, are up 5.1. Lows is up 4.6. 4.4% increase in transactions for Home Depot edged out lows at only 2.5. The one bright spot for Lowe's, with their average ticket increased 2.1 percent where Home Depot was less than one. But still strong reports. Home Depot raised guidance. Lowe's just reiterated guidance. That's obviously more positive. And you see that positivity actually show up in the valuation, with Home Depot being just a bit more expensive than Lowe's. Yeah, but you look over the last couple of years, Lowe's has really performed well. The stock

up more than 50% in that time. And there was a stretch there, Jason, where Home Depot was just taking their lunch money every single quarter. And now they're a little bit like Visa and MasterCard in terms of, you know, you can have more than one winner in this space. Definitely a little bit more parity there. And Home Depot has maybe 400 or so more stores than Lowe does today. One thing I will add there, and I just think this is a really nice sort of dynamic of this market, of these two stores, is that weather is never really an excuse, right? If it's warm, then that's great for them. If it's cold, well, hey, that's fine too, because people need snow shovels and salt. So either way, I think they have a reason.

If they're a reason to really gin up traffic and sort of, you know, get consumers out there for whatever may be going on. And just a really tremendous performance on both companies. You look past the last five years. If you sunk half your savings in Home Depot and the other half in the lows, you've got to be feeling pretty good about that right now. An interesting metric coming out of lows, which I think speaks to larger projects, which the weather helps versus snow shovels and things like that, is that. transactions over $500 was up 7.2% for lows in this quarter, which is a pretty strong metric. The number one stock in the Dow Jones Industrial average this year is Nike, which increased

its lead after announcing a two-for-one stock split, a dividend increase, and a $12 billion stock buyback program, and shares up 7% this week, man. That is the trifecta when you want to get investors excited about a stock. I just question the timing. Now, the $12 billion buyback, that's a meaningful. buyback. That's buying back more than 10% of Nike's outstanding shares. And I can't blame, I mean, this is a great business. Steady, huge cash flow, always great returns on invested capital, of course, one of the most popular brands in the world. It's a business you want

to be investing in. I just question the timing here. I mean, Nike stocks at an all-time high. We're looking at 30 times this year's earnings. And in general, I just, this makes me a little uncomfortable because in buybacks, I mean, there's not a conference call I read that I didn't read this quarter that didn't include something about buybacks. And I just think it's something a lot of companies are turning to now. And sometimes that can be a signal that there just isn't a lot to be excited about. There's not end demand for products and services. So, therefore, companies have a lot of excess cash like we know they do. And they're buying back stock. A, that boost your earnings per share. It can return value to shareholders in a way because it

does shrink generally the shares outstanding. I just think that's telling me something a little worrisome about the economy and end demand. So regardless of what the business is, if you hear Company X is buying back their stock, your first thought is, well, they're lacking imagination. Well, yeah. I mean, let's just put this way. I'm a little more cynical these days about buybackson than I have in the past. What about you?

I often think they're signaling that they believe their stock is undervalued, but it also means that they believe their stock is undervalued relative to other opportunities in which they could put their cash. And if they're not seeing strong opportunities to put their cash into, as Maddie said, that can be troubling. I think the popular opinion is to feel pretty good about share buybacks. I think his investors really, I tend to look at it with a little bit more pessimism. Initially, the first thing I do is I go look at their share count outstanding over time. And is that something that has come down or is that flat or is it up? That'll tell you a lot about how good

they are at buybacks or really what those buybacks mean. Coming up, we've got a new horse in the race for 2015's most questionable business decision. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Hill here in studio with Jason Moser, Matt Argusinger, and Ron Gross. Fourth quarter profits for Jack in the Box came in lower than expected, but the company offered some strong guidance for 2016, Jason, and guidance trumps results. Yeah, I really need to go to a Jack in the Box. I've never been one. I've never eaten in a Cuedoba, never eaten a Jack in the Box. This is a stock that's done really well here

over the past couple of years. I think, you know, we look at the restaurant business today, sort of the way the space is changing. It's really proving out these concepts that have more than one brand, one concept under their umbrella. So, you know, we have Buffalo Wild Wings, and they've got Pizza Rev and Our Taco, even Chipotle is bringing some new concepts under. So I think, you know, the restaurant company that can have more ways to make money is proving to be, you know, actually worth looking at here. With Jack in the Box, it's always been kind of a Cudoba story. We've talked before about the potential of them actually spinning off the QDoba concept, but I think wisely they're going to keep that, you know, in-house for now

because it's a big moneymaker. And they're going up against some pretty tough continent. numbers from last year. So we talk a lot about businesses that are victims of their own success. I'm not saying that will happen here necessarily, but we go back to share by-backs, for example, and this is a good example of a business since 2011. Their share counts down 32 percent. And we've seen that play out on the earnings-per-share side. Now, on the net income side there, net income is not growing it nearly the pays earnings per share is. And so what that tells you is, you get that multiple with those earnings-per-share numbers there, and that's kind of supporting the stock price right now. The question is that you are not going to be growing up.

investors need to ask is, is that sustainable for the coming year? Are they going to be able to lob up those same kinds of growth numbers? Or is that something we see kind of compressing over the course this coming year? I think the jury's still out there. Third quarter profits for the gap fell nearly 30%. The parent company of Old Navy and Banana Republic also lowered guidance for the full fiscal year. And yet, Ron Gross, the stock up 6% on Friday. What's happening here? I am scratching my head. I cannot figure it out. The only bright spot was that They matched revised expectations. Why that bids the stock up? I just can't figure it out. Things are not going well here. The Gap stores, same-store sales were down 4%. Banana Republic

is the worst of the lot at minus 12%. The only bright spot is Old Navy. We saw a positive 4% same-store sales there. And online was up a bit as well. But gross margins weakened. Earnings were down. They're resorting to cost cutting, closing 175 underperforming stores. Things are not going well at the gap. Stock valuation reflects that, and the word cheap has to be in quotes, because maybe it deserves to be cheap, a PE of only 10 and a 3.5 percent dividend yield. For those who want to take a flyer on gap, that could be interesting, but I think there's more trouble to come. You know how in sports there are teams that do well in the regular season and then just

gag in the playoffs? I feel like that's what the gap is with Old Navy. Yes, I get that all. Every quarter, Old Navy does well. I feel like if you're looking at the the Gap, it's just like, yeah, old Navy. What did you do besides Old Navy? So Gap is like the Cincinnati Bengals? Is that what you? The Cincinnati Bengals, it came to my mind, too. The Cincinnati Bengals of the apparel retail. No hate for you, Cincinnati Bengals fans out there, but the facts are what they are. They are.

Square, the mobile payment company, went public this week. Shares rose more than 40 percent on the first day of trading. A lot of nice headlines, Matt. It really isn't quite that rosy, though, is it? No, not at all. I mean, they were pricing this between $11 and $13. by the end and it came in at $9.00. And so, yes, the stock is up and it actually ended up closing around $13 on its first day. But this is a company that coming into the IPO at $9 was a $3 billion valuation, but Square raised capital a year ago in the private markets at about $6 billion in valuation. So coming in, this stock has lost, this IPO has

lost a lot of luster. And by the way, doing the deal at $9 and not 1113, they gave about $100 million in funding that they could have had through the IPO. So, Square is an interesting one. It's Jack Dorsey. It's the CEO and founder of Twitter as well. And it's really right now they're making 95% of their sales, just helping individuals and small businesses do credit cards transactions, which is, it's a big market, but it's also a very competitive one. It's very low-margin business. And Square is hoping to break into some higher margin areas like payroll processing and working capital loans and things like that. It's just, but I don't know. It's really hard. They're not profitable. And I would say we were talking about this past

week, that the IPO market's getting a little, the IPO, the private market, whatever you want to call, it's just getting a little stalled, I think, in terms of capital. And we, it's kind of telling us something interesting about what's happening in that market. Stalled, but do you think frothy in terms of valuations, especially in the private market still? Do you see some of that coming down? Still, but I think I actually think there's some rationality coming into that a little bit.

I'm going to say, it seems like the enthusiasm is starting to wear off. A little bit more sanity coming in. I'm happy to see the market really sort of look at these businesses square and match and say, okay, maybe we should look at these with a healthy dose of skepticism because their paths to success aren't necessarily so clear as maybe they once seemed a year ago to the folks in Silicon Valley. Right. Third quarter profits for Abercrombie and Fitch came in much higher than expected, and the stock

up 20 percent on Friday. Jason, they cut back on their discounting, and that move is really paying off for them. Surely. I mean, at some point, being a victim of your own success reverses course, and you become a beneficiary of your own failures. And so, I mean, Abercrombie and Fitch has just been a just dismal situation for a while now. We seem like we talked about them every quarter, and it's never been good. And so it's nice to see they're sort of maybe turning the tide here. Now, let's be very clear. This isn't the quarter that tells us the story is turning around. But, I mean, they stanched

the bleeding, so to speak, I think. And that's encouraging. Direct-to-consumer sales, about 21, 22 percent of overall sales, which is in line with what they did last year. I think that's encouraging, especially when you compare that to other retailers. Buying back shares as well. Since 2011, share accounts down about 21%. And that's encouraging. But hey, they brought in a nice quarter and they didn't even need to buy a pizza joint to do it. Yeah, what about that? Urban Outfitters this week came out with yet another dismal quarter. Their third quarter, same store sales were terrible. And they announced that they're buying

a small pizza chain. It would be one thing if they were really good at retail and they said, now we're going to go bring our expertise to the restaurant business. They're terrible. at retail? What makes them think they can run a restaurant? Trying to make more dough? Oh. Oh. Nice. Isn't pizza the answer to everything, really? I mean, like, pizza is one of those things. You can say, hey, there's some pizza. Well,

it's not very good. Well, yeah, but it's pizza. So, well, let's go ahead and have it anyway. Even not good pizza is still pizza, right? So I mean, I guess maybe they're thinking that no matter what, it's a way to kind of drive traffic. It's a huge example of diversification, most likely. I mean, it's on the face of it seems really silly. Let's be clear. I see no ration. I see no. No rational thinking behind that acquisition there. It just seems bizarre on every level. I agree with you that even mediocre pizza is still pizza, but I feel like even a really

terrible retailer like urban outfitters can screw up pizza. Sure. What about bacon, though? I mean, is there even mediocre bacon? Can you screw up bacon? I don't think you can't. Turky bacon. I mean, I'm not eating that crap. But I mean, regular bacon? Tough to screw up. You could cook it a little bit wrong or too hard or, you know, I don't know, but microwave it. It's kind of not something. Now what? I think you just keyed in on Urban Outfitters next acquisition.

Hey, now. Guys, we'll see you later in this show. There is only one guest who can talk big banks, Volkswagen, and the business of movies. Nell Minow is next. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill.

Nell Minow is an expert in corporate governance. She is also the film critic known as the movie mom. And she joins me now. Nell, happy early Thanksgiving. Thank you very much. The last time you were on the show in the spring, Volkswagen was one of the most highly respected automakers in the world. They had a thriving business. And then the emissions scandal happened.

A lot of opinions about who's to blame, what the damage is going to be. What did you think as you watch this story unfold? Well, I hate to say it again, but it was a big fan. I told you so. They've got like the worst corporate governance ever. All you need to know is that the guy who controls the majority of the voting stock put his fourth wife on the board, the one who used to be the kid's nanny? Where were the other three wives? They weren't also on the board, were they?

No. But, come on. Really? No, that's an absolute nightmare. And it bothered me a lot that the story was reported as a consumer fraud story, which it certainly is. But it's an environmental story along the lines of BP. You know, we don't have iconic photographs of oil-drenched birds, but what we do have is something like 10 times the amount of bad stuff being put into the air instead of the water.

And I am hoping that the various governments that are working on this will treat this as an environmental affront as well as a consumer fraud problem. It's interesting that you mention that because it's absolutely true that when you've got photographs, when you've got video, it makes something so much more real to a mass audience. And yet, in some ways, the damage could be more widespread with this emission scandal. I mean, at least in the case of BP, yes, we had oil-drenched birds. It was contained. But it was contained. And it's just, this sort of seems like a story that could spiral for years.

Yeah, there's going to be a lot of asthma. There's going to be a lot of lung disease as a result of this. All of our current projections, as scary as they were on climate change, will have to be rejiggered. And, no, it's a very, very, very serious problem. And I'm not sure that, well, I am sure that replacing the CEO is not enough to address it. they're going to have to have a thorough change. And I'm predicting right now that they may end up doing what Altria did and just saying our name has been so severely damaged. We're just going to have to start over. Do you think, though, that they're going to be, I don't want to say protected, because that's probably

the wrong word, but when you consider just how important Volkswagen is to the economy in Germany, one in seven jobs tied to the auto industry in Germany. It sort of feels like they're going to have a lot of leeway with the government. Well, there are going to be a lot of jobs involved in cleaning up this mess. So I don't think it's a, you know, it's a job issue. It's always a mistake in my mind to look at a false dichotomy between jobs and abiding by the law or jobs and environmental protection. There's always lots and lots of jobs.

And Europe is ahead of us on this. Lots of jobs to be created in environmental protection and in compliance. Believe me, some of those engineers who created the defeat device, they'll be out of a job. They'll need to replace them. Let's move from Germany to Wall Street. John Reed was the CEO of City from the mid-1980s to 2000. He had an op-ed recently where he said, the big banks. Like the one that he used to run are, and I'm quoting here, inherently unstable and unworkable.

That's a pretty big charge from a CEO like John Reed. Yeah, I kind of feel like I got and I told you so on that one, too, because I have been saying all along that too big to fail means too big to succeed, too big to control, too big to comply with the law. And I kind of feel like he should maybe give back all of that big pay package. that he got. Yeah, he's calling for going back to Glass-Steagel, which I think might be a good idea, but would not be enough. And what he's saying is that as optimistic as we were about the benefits of conglomerates and the synergies and all those great buzzwords that were so popular in the

90s, it turns out that there are things that are simply too big for any group of people to monitor and to keep out of getting in each other's way. And we've seen that over and over and over again, and he's quite right. And the question is, is the government strong enough now after all of the weakening that has come out of lobbying expenses and political contributions to follow through on what he's recommending. We're a year away from the next presidential election, and on this show we focus on business, not politics, and yet the political season has begun, and there really are candidates on both sides who are talking about reigning in Wall Street. I'm curious

what a Nell Minow administration would prioritize in terms of Wall Street. Well, you know, I feel that it's time for the government to look more carefully at what I call the demand side rather than supply side of finance. The largest investors in the country, of course, are institutional investors, pension funds, and mutual funds, and endowments, and insurance companies, and yet we've done very, very little to get out of their way in providing the kind of oversight that capitalism needs to thrive. It's interesting to me that for the first time this year, our neighbors to the north in Canada had a number of no votes on say on pay, and they're very rattled by that. None of the companies have changed their pay yet, but they're talking about it. And so what I would like to

see is the Treasury Department, the SEC, and the Labor Department, which have jurisdiction over these various institutional investors, and to remind them that as fiduciaries, they're obligated, to provide more of a monitoring role than they currently do. As you may know, there's a lot of pressure to go the other way. They're trying to loosen up the fiduciary standard, even more than already has been, to allow institutional investors to self-deal, regardless of the impact on their clients.

I think that's absolutely catastrophic, and I would hate to see that happen. The administration is on the right side of that, but there's a lot of pressure from the hill to go the other way. You're listening to Motley Full Money talking with Nell Minnow, corporate governance expert, film critic, extraordinary. Let's talk about the business of movies because it's certainly looking like a good year for the box office. And particularly if you look at the top grossing films of the year, a lot produced by Disney and a lot produced by Universal, Jurassic World, Avengers Inside Out, Furious Seven, minions. I'm curious, as someone who has followed this industry very closely for decades, when you see

a couple of studios controlling the top grossing films, is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing, or are you indifferent? You're just hoping that it's a healthy movie industry. I want to see a healthy movie industry, and the movie industry is much more unpredictable than even, say, the stock market. There have been a number of films that have come out this year that everybody thought were slam dunks that have died at the box office. Look at the Steve Jobs movie. You couldn't ask for a more leading indicators of success than that one in terms of the director, the subject matter, the screenwriter, the stars,

and yet, for some reason, nobody wanted to see it. I don't think it's because the market's been saturated because the Ashtick Coochard movie didn't do all that well. The Alex Gibney documentary went to television, but it, you know, didn't play in theaters. And so I'm not sure why that is because I thought it was an outstanding film. So I'm not, I'm a little sanguine about the idea that certain studios control a lot because there are always little independent films that knock everybody's socks off and do very, very well. The most successful film in history in terms of return on investment was a very, very low budget independent film,

my big fat Greek wedding, which made a lot of money for Tom Hanks. He made more money on that as producer than he ever made as an actor in any of his films. And so I think it's a very, very healthy market out there in movie world. And on the flip side from the Steve Jobs, because you're right, that was a film that really had all the makings of a hit. On the flip side of that, for me, anyway, is the Minions movie. Because I get a superhero movie making a billion dollars. I get fast cars.

I get dinosaurs. don't tell me anyone on this planet was predicting minions would do a billion dollars at the box office. I certainly wasn't. I was disappointed by it. And, you know, we had just had a great spinoff from an established series, animated series in the Penguins movie, the Penguins of Madagascar. And so I was really hopeful. I loved the despicable me. The first one, I liked the second one. I thought the movie was a disappointment. I didn't think the villains were all that interesting. And to be honest, the minions don't talk, which is hard. You know, if you're Sean the Sheep, you can get away with that. For me, not so much. But I think internationally, that's a great thing because the one thing that we know that does well internationally is

light dialogue and a lot of action. And people love the minions. I mean, how many minion trick-or-treaters did you get? Plenty. Yeah. The Star Wars movie is, we're just a couple of weeks out. It seems like the only way this movie fails is if it does not become the highest grossing film of all time. I mean, the expectations are incredibly high. What are you expecting out of this movie? You know, I try to, not to be overly optimistic because you don't want to get crushed, but I am a total Star Wars fan.

I went to the first one when it first came out into theaters and sat through it twice. I was so excited. You could still do that in those days. Wait a minute. You didn't leave the theater? You saw it twice with one ticket? Yes. You could do that in those days.

Wow. Those were the good old days. I went with my then-fiancee one week from becoming my husband. We went together and we said, let's just stay again and see the scene in the bar. Well, let's just stay until the trash compactors. And we ended up staying through the whole thing a second time. So, yeah, I'm a big, big fan. And I cry every time I see the trailer for this new one.

I'm so excited about it. Harrison Ford, Han Solo, one of my favorite movie characters of all time. It looks absolutely fantastic. And they brought in all the right people to work on it. And so I'm really crossing my fingers that it's as good as I think it's going to be. Definitely not as big as Star Wars, but certainly a surprise, I think, this year is the success of the recent Peanuts film. It's a G-rated movie. It's brought in $100 million at the box office.

I know I was surprised by this success. I was very surprised. I was really nervous about it because they stepped away from that iconic aesthetic that we've seen in all the previous Peanuts movies that's very simple, like the old comic strip. and they went to a 3D fully animated CGI look, and yet Charles Schultz's son and grandson wrote the screenplay. It's very, very true to the spirit and the characters. One thing I think is hilarious is, as you know, in the Peanuts movies,

the adults don't speak. They just go, want, want, want, they brought in the greatest trombonist in the world, trombone shorty. Nice. They don't play that part. So you can tell you took the whole thing very, very seriously. I'm glad it did well. But I want to talk to you about another movie

that's coming up that is right up your alley. And that is the movie of the big short. Do tell. Well, it's one of my favorite books. It's certainly far away my favorite book about the financial meltdown. And so I was holding my breath on that. Great cast.

Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell, Christian Bale. And I've seen it, and it is great. I'm not supposed to talk about it, but I have to tell you, I loved it. anybody who has any interest in investing or finance has got to see this movie. And just to give you an idea, when they get to the boring technical stuff, they have to explain about CDOs and credit-fault swaps.

They take Margotts, the gorgeous actress, who was Leonardo Caprio's wife in Wolf of Wall Street. They put her in a bubble bath sipping champagne, and she explains it to you. I'm sold. I'm absolutely going to be watching that film. Were you surprised at all, though, that the director of this film, I mean, this is a drama, and it's his first drama directing. Adam McKay, who is better known as Will Ferrell's writing partner and directing and producing. I mean, known for success for big comedies like Anchorman and Talladega Nights, but they gave him the keys to a high-price drama. Well, I heard Michael Lewis talk about it, and I have to tell you why I wasn't surprised. he made a very funny film with Will Ferrell called The Other Guys about two policemen,

and it was a good movie, and over the closing credits of that movie, for no reason and having almost nothing to do with the plot of the movie, he had a PowerPoint explaining the financial meltdown just because he was interested and he cared about it, and he had to talk to somebody about it. So that's in the closing credits of, and you can see it on YouTube, of the other guys. And so I knew from that that this is something he had. is very interested in. And Michael Lewis in a talk that I heard explained that he came to when and he said, you have to understand. This is the greatest obsession of my life is what went on here.

I know your stuff. I love your stuff. I'm going to have Selena Gomez explaining the technical stuff so that people will sit through it. I'm going to have Margo Robie in the bubble bath. I'm going to have Anthony Bourdain. And it's going to, I'm going to get the biggest stars in Hollywood, and we're going to tell this story to people who need to understand it. And he really has done that. I thought it was great. Last question, and then I'll let you go. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, what's a movie that we should watch with our family? You know, there's a movie that I love for Thanksgiving called What's Cooking?

It's about four different families, all preparing for Thanksgiving in their different ways, and they're all different cultures and ethnicities, and some are immigrants, and each one of those dealing with family craziness and dysfunction in their own way, And it was made by the same director who went on after that to do Bend It Like Beckham. And I just love it. I think it's a real neglected gem. So I think that's a great one. One of the best reasons to be on Twitter is that you can follow Mel Minow.

You can get our thoughts on corporate governance, executive pay, movies, and a whole lot more. Nell, have a great Thanksgiving with your family. Thanks for being here. Anytime. Bye-bye. Coming up, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. This is Motley Full 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 ourselves 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 Mozer, Matt Argusinger and Ron Gross. A couple of things before we get to the stocks on our radar. First, behind the glass this week. It's not Steve Broido, but longtime listener, Steve McCrae, hanged out of those. Thanks for coming over to full global headquarters. Also, Matt Argusinger, Million dollar portfolio. The service that you run is reopening to new members for the first time in a while. Give me the 15-second pitch on what it all is. Sure. It's a million dollar portfolio. It's our kind of our flagship real money portfolio service at the Fool. And we're building a portfolio in a million-dollar portfolio that

really is trying to pick the best of the best companies from our five newsletter services here at the Fool. And so, for example, if you're a James Early fan, which I know we have a lot of them out there, he's the advisor on income investor. And so we are regularly looking at the income investor scorecard, trying to pick the best dividend stocks for a million dollar portfolio. But that goes for stock advisor, rulebreakers, inside value, hidden gems. Just the best of the best companies, building a portfolio, trying to, you know, beat the market. If you want more information, you can go to MDPRadio.fool.com. That's MDPradio.fool.com. We've got a site with a lot of great content, videos, etc.

Check it out. Interviews with Maddie, Jason, and the rest. All right, just a couple of minutes. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Ron Gross, last week you mentioned Perry Ellis, which is up 15% since So, bam. What about this week? Nice call. Going with Markell, M.K.L. Often called Baby Berkshire.

Just hit $900 per share this week. Don't let that price scare you. Longtime Chief Investment Officer and full favorite Tom Garner was just elevated to co-CEO this week. I'd love to see that. We think it's exceptionally well-run specialty insurance company. Jason Moser? Yeah.

You know, I've talked about TripAdvisor before, and I'm going to talk about it a little bit more. TRIP. You know, this is one that we've gotten a lot more clarity on the instant booking. product that they're rolling out, not only with their hotel partners, but now we know that Priceline is a partner. And it looks like this actually is an exclusive deal right now with price line, which means no expedia for the time being. I think this is going to continue to prove out a lot of value here, and I think it will continue to grow and diversify the revenue stream. And just real quickly, my daughters are ready to add the next stock to their portfolio.

It came down to Wayfair and TripAdvisor. They couldn't decide. So I went to Twitter for a poll. And overwhelming, Twitter has said TripAdvisor. So it is my daughter's next stock purchase. TripAdvisor, baby. Thank you, Twitter verse. Mattie, we've got about 30 seconds. Okay. Speaking of a million dollar portfolio, our latest buy in MDP, Chipotle needs no introduction, ticker CMG.

Fears of slowing growth, the E. coli scare, we had a chance to buy Chipotle at about a 10% discount to our cost basis in MDP and way off its all-time high. I just think if there's a time to buy into a great restaurant concept like Chipotle, this is it. Great price today. You go into Chipotle, what's your go-to order? I go with the three tacos almost every time. Nice.

Barbacoa tacos. All right. Matt Argusinger, Jason, Mozer, Ron Gross. Guys, thanks for being here. Thank you, Chris. That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Full Money. Our engineer is Rick Engahl. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.