Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 08.06.2010

Episode Date: August 6, 2010

The US economy sheds more jobs. BP caps the well.  And Research in Motion introduces a fresh Blackberry.   On this week’s Motley Fool Money Radio Show, we discuss those stories, share some stocks on our radar, and talk with Peter Miller, author of The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Motley Fool Money. Thanks for being here. I'm your host, Chris Hill, and I'm joined by Motley Fool senior analyst Joe Maker, James Early, and Tim Hansen. Guys, good to see you. Good to see you, Chris. On this week's show, BP Caps the Well, price line gives William Shatner something to sing about,

And China braces for a crash. We'll also talk ants, bees, and investors with National Geographic Senior Editor Peter Miller. But we begin with Friday's jobs report, and the numbers were not pretty. Private employers added only 71,000 jobs in July that was below the consensus forecast of 90,000. The unemployment rate held at 9.5% and the underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers looking for full-time work, and people who have given up looking altogether, the underemployment rate remains at 16.5%. James Early, not a lot of positives here. True, Chris.

At this point, we almost don't need a jobs report to tell us that we're hurting. I can do that for you. What's really important, though, is that starting as of July of last year, we started to see some positive momentum in jobs, specifically non-farm payrolls. The rate of decline slowed. It started getting better. We actually added a few jobs this spring. But with June and these July figures now, the momentum has officially reversed.

So it's obviously bad. The takeaway here is that the Fed might step in now to try to prevent deflation. Deflation is something that encourages businesses and consumers to conserve cash, which is even worse for employment because nobody wants to hire. Tim Hanson, what do you think? Well, you know, the thing about this report that's a little bit foreboding is that it doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon. I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal recently that said that crisis preparedness firms, the firms that help companies prepare for layoffs, have seen their revenues double year over year.

So that means that they had a really good month in July, which means that a lot of people were getting laid off or prepared to get laid off, which means that this jobs weekness may continue. These are the companies like in the George Clooney movie, up in the air. Exactly, the ones who specialize in firing and then quote-unquote transitioning employees. Joe Maker? Yeah, I mean, I've been watching this jobs front for a long time. obviously, and I keep thinking that the picture is going to turn and it keeps not changing. So I've been a fan of paychecks, for example, for about a year and a half now. HR services payroll processing, and I keep pushing back my models to reflect that the stock isn't going to turn quite like I thought it would.

I still think it's a nice buy over a year, year and a half, but I said that a year ago. James Early, you mentioned the Fed. The Fed's meeting next week. It seems like there's just going to be increased pressure to keep interest rates low. Do you agree with that? I wouldn't see why it would be anything otherwise, Chris. Yeah, I do. All right, let's move on to the weekend BP. BP says they have completely sealed the well in the Gulf. The Coast Card says it's not the end, but that it virtually assures us there will be no chance of oil leaking into the environment. The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 11, killing 11 workers and creating the largest offshore oil spill in history.

Now, guys, this is a business show. We focus on business implications. So in terms of the implications of the well-being capped, Tim Hanson, what does BP's future look like to you? One of the things BP has been talking about recently is potentially having all their gas stations, the United States, rebranded to go back to Amico gas stations. That would obviously be expensive,

and you would lose some of the momentum the company is built up over the years, potentially. But one thing I don't think people like us do enough is remark when things go right. And as one of the people who was first out of the gate criticizing BP, for the disastrous way they handled the first few weeks of this bill. I mean, I think the company deserves some credit going forward for the way they've gotten the skimmers down there, the way they've now shot off the well.

And according to a recent NOAA report, a lot of the oil has actually either been dispersed or cleaned up. So BP deserves some credit for that. And if they're able to leverage that going forward, you might have a situation like the Johnson and Johnson voluntary recall many years ago where the company actually gained a brand cachet over the years by being responsible. So going forward, you know, BP could actually actually, actually end up gaining some brand equity if they play their cards right.

James? For perspective, though, I mean, it has taken them four months to stop a seven-inch pipe from leaking. I mean, I tend to think this might seem like good news simply because it's not as bad as it could have been. It's like going into the hospital for a heart attack and finding out you only have an aneurysm or something. It's still bad, right? It's still good news in some ways. It's all relative. But back to the rebranded, because that's something that's been talked.

We've talked about that on this show, and it's been talked about in the media for a couple of months now. I mean, I looked at it as something like, this is a fate of complete. At some point, maybe a year from now, BP has to rebrand itself. But it sounds like you're saying no. Well, that's how it was looking. And obviously, it seemed like a savvy move at the time. I mean, people were out on Twitter, on the Internet, and the newspapers on every news show criticizing the company for being so atrocious.

And, you know, if you're a consumer of gas, and, you know, obviously, I think people who buy gasoline aren't necessarily, you know, wedded to a brand. You're sort of looking for the cheapest price around. But, you know, if you have a company with a horrible reputation, you probably would avoid them. If you saw an Exxon and a BP across the street at this point, even though people don't like Exxon, you probably don't like BP more. But, you know, if they have some success cleaning up the oil, and I think they deserve some credit for that. Jim? Yeah, I mean, you make some good points, but one thing I'll throw out is big picture refining and marketing for these guys is a tiny part of the business.

So they really make all their money doing exploration and production. So, yeah, that would help the individual station owners, but I'm not sure that it would really do much. for them big picture profit-wise. There is still the moratorium on deep water drilling. Going forward, are there some oil-related companies on anyone's radar that may benefit now that the well is apparently kept for good? Well, there are a ton of companies, Chris, with Gulf exposure that have been kind of on the rocks. I mean, obviously some of the direct ones are companies like Apache and a darko petroleum.

You've also got Chevron and Conoco Philips as well. And I think all these are going to benefit. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. We're talking about some of the headlines this week. China is worried about a crash. According to reports, regulators in China have asked the country's banks to conduct stress tests to gauge the effect of a 50 to 60 percent drop in housing prices. Tim Hanson, you and the Global Gains team, you guys were just over in China.

I'm assuming it's a coincidence that this report comes out just when you return. Well, you know, we bought a few apartments while we were over there. She isn't looking like a great investment now. But, I mean, this is a fascinating development. The reason for that is that, you know, it's not every day that a banking regulator asks its banks to conduct a stress test on a 50 to 60 percent housing decline. To put that in perspective, that would be probably about double what the worst market here in the United States saw during the doldrums of our own housing crisis.

And that would wreak havoc on China's banking sector, which incidentally is state run. Now, the government came out afterwards and said, you know, that was just, It was just something we were trying to be conservative. We don't actually foresee this happening. Just a hypothetical. Just, yeah, what those things? We're just spitballing here. So, but, you know, you don't ask a bank.

It takes time. It takes effort. You know, it might leak out. You don't take the risk of asking them to do that test unless there's some probability of that happening. And so the takeaway for investors here is that if you have any exposure to China's banking sector at this point, and if you own an ETS affiliated with China, which many people do because they've wanted exposure to the growing Chinese economy, you're heavily tilted towards

the Chinese banking sector, if you own that ETF, if you have any exposure to the Chinese banking sector, you want to rethink that right now. And an even bigger picture, I think a 60% drop would not only wreck the Chinese economy, but the global economy as well. Just in terms of global economics, it's not like the EU is necessarily carrying their weight in terms of the world right now in order for this sort of quote-unquote recovery we have going out right now to continue, China needs to pick up the slack that's been left in global demand by the United States and Europe. And if there's a 60% decline in housing prices, that would take

place probably in the Tier 1 cities in China, the Beijing and Shanghai, which have seen astronomical increases in housing relative to the smaller cities, which have somewhat sounder fundamentals. But the problem that you would run into is that it would wipe out a lot of wealth in China, which would reduce their capacity to consume. Tim, on that note, do we know how many Chinese own homes? I mean, in the U.S. is obviously a big number, and it's a big part of our economy. I guess it's smaller there. It is smaller. I mean, obviously, China is the country, 1.3 billion people.

About 400 million of those people still live sort of at the subsistence levels. They're not homeowners, so to speak. But, you know, the problem that people have seen in the Chinese economy recently has been with speculation. And there hasn't really been any good reports about how many people own two, three, or four apartments as investment property, so to speak. China made a mistake a few years ago in putting restraints. They thought the stock market was getting too volatile. So they put restrictions on how you could trade. and what that caused is for everybody who was trading in the stock market to start trading in apartments.

A bad decision at the time. How's that working out now? It's sounding great at the time, I'm sure. Everything sounds great at the time. There's another interesting report out of China that something on the order of a couple hundred thousand apartments that are owned registered no electricity usage over the past six months, which leads to the belief that they're totally vacant and a housing bubble is taking place over there. But, again, one of the big problems with China and why people need to be careful is that there's not a lot of great data. coming out of the government or out of the economic institutions.

I mean, that's true the United States too, but be careful. Coming up, Priceline gives William Shatner something to sing about, and we say goodbye to a business visionary. Stick around. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. If you've got the money, I got the time. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chris Hill here in the studio with Joe Mager, James Early, and Tim Hanson, as we dig into some of the companies making headlines this week.

Priceline reported much better than a company. expected earnings thanks to strength in its European business. Shares of Priceline were up more than 20% on the news and have more than doubled over the past year. Joe Maker, when I think about Priceline, I immediately think of the face of Priceline, William Shatner. But apparently Priceline owns Europe as well. Yeah, go figure. And especially with all the drama that's going on in Europe right now, you wouldn't expect to see that kind of strength coming out of there. But there are bookings in Europe were up 40% or 48% year over Euro, which is pretty massive.

shares are trading at 28 times earnings right now, which seems pretty rich, but I probably would have said something similar a thousand percent ago. So take that for what it's worth. This is personal, but if you had to be serenated by William Shatner, sing just one song, what would that be? Moon River? I don't know it, but I'm sure it's good. You don't know Moon River? That's a classic. I'm in a bubble.

I do not get out of it. It's tragically on hip. It is. But it's so on hip that it is hip, just like Shatner himself. Whole Foods reported better than expected top-line sales growth. Same store sales were up nearly 9%. The company raised guidance, and the stock fell on the news. James Early, what gives?

Yeah, Chris, the numbers were so good, the market could only punish them. I don't know. I think the problem was certainly the guidance, but we're still talking double-digit guidance, 10, 11, 12%, this is sort of the neighborhood Whole Foods deals in, which is tremendous for a store like this. I think it's a solid company long term with room to run. I don't know how great the valuation is now. I do know that I go to the Whole Foods to buy all my groceries,

and I will make one complaint that the buffet, I think we all go to the buffet. Sure, yeah. It's turned into a salt lick. I mean, if you guys know what that is, the food is so salty. I need like two gallons of water to get it down. So that would be my suggestion to save money on salt, Whole Foods. It should point out that John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, The co-CEO of Whole Foods is going to be doing a live chat on Fool.com on Tuesday.

I promise this to have some fireworks. Absolutely. So definitely listeners, check that out. That's Tuesday on Fool.com. On Thursday, Activision Blizzard reported a 12% rise in quarterly profits, but Wall Street was expecting more from the video game publisher, and the stock dropped as much as 6% in after-hours trading. Tim Hanson, what did you make of Activision's quarter?

Well, it was an interesting release because it disappointed the market. on revenues but beat expectations on profits and what that shows is that their online games business as opposed to their console business is starting to to come along and the investing thesis here is that you'll see margin and profit margin improvement over time as more as lower margin console games become a smaller part of the business and the higher margin online games where you know you don't have to make packaging you don't have to make a plastic cartridge it's just you know people download it off the internet as that becomes a bigger part of

the business the company's going to become more profitable and that looks to be taking place and for a company right now that has more than $3 billion in cash on its balance sheet and no debt, is generating more than a billion dollars in cash flow, free cash flow per year, which is a free cash flow yield near 10%, which is really attractive in today's interest rate environment. I mean, I think the market got this one wrong, and that Activision looks like a pretty promising long-term opportunity.

Is that because you're also secretly, you're a closet World of Warcraft player? Oh, no, I leave that to my wife. She's the nerd in the family. Your wife plays World of Warcraft. No, I was kidding, but. It didn't sound like it. You said that with conviction. I sold it pretty well, didn't it?

Although she heard that. She heard we call her a nerd on air. I'd be in trouble. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. We're going through some of the companies making news this week. Research in Motion introduced the new BlackBerry this week. The Blackberry Torch features a better browser and both a physical and virtual keyboard. Joe Maker, early reviews are that this isn't really a game changer.

And let's face it, this is a crowded space with Google and Android pickewarm. up Steam and the iPhone being such a hit. What did you make of research in Motion's latest quarter? Well, these guys are becoming somewhat of an also-ran here, considering the size of the market that they've got. Right now, consumers are flock into Android. Android in the past quarter sold more phones, or there were more Android-powered phones sold for consumers than through REM or Apple, which is huge. Right now, Google is activating 200,000 Android units a day versus only 100,000 two months ago, which is just an incredible growth curve. It's just to mean, does that sound like Google's preparing for war.

It really does. It sounds like they're stocking up there. One area where Blackberry still has the dominant position, though, is right here in D.C. It's the government sector. Tim, you're a former government worker. How much longer can Blackberry live off of that? You know, these were affectionately known as the, quote, crackberries when I was working in the government. People were addicted to them. But now, you know, I don't spend a lot of down on the hill anymore, but the friends of mine who still work there, not only do they have their government subsidized Blackberry, but they're carrying multiple devices on top of it,

like an iPhone or an Android phone, because, frankly, they're better and they're more fun. So BlackBerry continues to milk this cow for the time being, but as soon as the government subsidy wears out, I don't think employees are going to stick with the phones. James? Yeah, I'm with Tim. I mean, with the new phone, Blackberry has finally met the industry standard. Unfortunately, it happens to be the standard from 2006, so it's probably not going to be a game change. And I think as soon as the government and businesses migrate to the iPhone or Android, they're toast.

And finally, guys, it's time to pay our respects to a business visionary. Last week, Mori Yohei died at the age of 90. He was a pilot during World War II, a philanthropist. But most importantly, the man who invented the cheese doodle. He was the head of Old London Foods, a snack company founded in the 1920s by his father. of the cheese doodle, Yohei said, quote, we wanted to make it as healthy as possible, so it was baked, not fried. Cheese doodles were first marketed in the late 1950s and became so popular that by 1965, the company was bought by Borden and Yochai's wife. Like to say that their house overlooking Long Island Sound was the house that cheese doodles bought.

I mean, come on, it's a healthy snack. It's baked, not fried, right? Well, you know, I'm going to take the contrary of you on the cheese doodle, and the reason for that is just this. If I'm going to eat a food that's going to leave residue on my fingers, it better be ribs, and I'll leave it there. Yeah, there is the cheese dust thing there, isn't there? I've never had a cheese noodle. I wouldn't even know where to get, I guess it's Walmart. That's exactly what I would expect from you, James. Do you have a favorite junk food?

The guy who was complaining about salt at the Whole Food salad bar, I think. Yeah, I could see. I'm not eating the cheese noodle. We've well established that James is healthy to maybe even an unhealthy degree, but let's just go around the table real quick here. What is your go-to guilty pleasure snack food? Tim? Beer. Tim? Okay, beer. James?

Chris, I occasionally, and I have it at my desk right now, have an organic chocolate milk, which is a splurred. Really? Yeah. I feel bad all week. That's your guilty pleasure junk food. Let's move on. Joe Mager? Does bourbon count?

No, because it's not junk food. It's America's official spirit. Well, I actually am a big chocolate milk fan, too, so James and I have that in common. Steve Reuters? First of all, I must reference, I walk by James's desk, and I notice that he does have a large amount of milk, and it appears un-refrigerated, which is troublesome to me. In terms of... In terms of snack foods, I'm going to have to split up, split between nutter butters and bugles. Do you guys remember bugles? Oh, yeah. Wow. And those are made in my hometown of West Chicago, Illinois. Big shout out to them.

Wow, that is a big shout-out. I like the diversity there as well. Yeah, I've got to go with Tim there. I mean, the residue, the cheese dust, I'm a... I'm a... with Tim. I think ribs is the better way to go. In fact, now I'm getting a little hungry, and I'm thinking maybe we hit Rocklands. Maybe we hit Rocklands for a lot of people? That sounds like a plan. I'll bring the wet naps. All right. The guys will be back later in the show to talk about the stocks that are on their radar, but drop us an email, Radio at Fool.com. Tell us what your favorite snack food is, and tell us what song you want William Shatner to serenade you to. Picture yourself on a train and a station with plants. Coming up, what Southwest Airlines learn from ants and what investors can learn from termites.

Stick around. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. So do you want to get more done at work? It turns out you may need to get outside more and spend some quality time with ants, termites, and bees. Peter Miller is a senior editor at National Geographic, and he's the United States. the author of a new book, The Smart Swarm, How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies can make us better at communicating, decision-making, and getting things done. Peter, welcome to Motley Fool Money.

Thank you. Hi, Chris. So you begin the book with a dilemma that was facing Southwest Airlines, and they were wrestling with the whole notion of open seating, which Southwest had been doing for years. Exactly. But some travelers complained that it made them feel like. cattle and they had to get to the airport really early. How did Southwest go about deciding whether to scrap the open seating policy? Well, you know, they had done that for a long time.

Ever since they started, like 30 or 40 years, that was one of the things that set them apart. So that was sort of one of their signature items, and they were very hesitant to fool with that. But they were getting a lot of feedback from business travelers who were important to them. So they asked one of their scientists to do some computer modeling. And he thought, well, what do we have here? We have a lot of individuals who are cramming into a tight space reacting to each other, and he instantly thought of ants. He lives in Texas where they have some really interesting kinds of ants.

They've got serious ants, darling. Serious ants in Texas. You don't mess with the ants in Texas. So really what is. he was doing was he was doing a version of what we call agent-based modeling in which you have virtual ants, little virtual computer packages that act like, whatever you want them to act like. And so he programmed them with some very simple rules, which are, you know, get on the plane. If you see a spot that appeals to you, go try and sit down.

And he ran these simulations with these little virtual ants. And it was fascinating. He ran him over and over and over again, and the pattern that he found was that it was a little bit faster than open seating. But since open seating had such a following, it wasn't enough to replace it. So they went back to the drawing board and figured, well, what is the real problem here? The problem was that people didn't like getting to the airport early. So they came up with this idea of, well, if they can reserve a spot in line, that's almost the same as having a reserve seat, except that when they go on the plane, they can then still pick their own seat.

And that's the system that they put in place in 2007. So it's kind of a hybrid. But I thought it was fascinating that in order to get to that point, the analyst had used a biological model. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. We're talking with Peter Miller, author of The Smart Swarm. Peter, one of the things you write about in the book is hurting behavior. at the Motley Fool, we're very focused on investors.

What can investors learn from animal herding behavior? Well, the experts that I talked to about this pointed to two key principles that we see in nature, we see in any like herds of caribou or schools of fish. There's imitation where one individual will be finally attuned to what's happening to another individual and would simply follow that individual. So it's sort of like blindly following your neighbor or your herd member. And the other thing is panic.

Because if something, like think about a herd of caribou, if there was a wolf that suddenly appeared, the panic would spread through the herd rapidly. But it would also spread through the herd if there was an animal that thought he saw a wolf. It didn't. You know, he saw something like a tree. here's a shadow. Are you suggesting that investors panic from time to time? Well, two things.

I talked to an economist at Oxford named Peyton Young, and he said, hurting is a fairly well-known phenomenon among, for example, fund managers because there's much more downside risk from below-average performance than you have to gain from above-average performance. In other words, if your fund is doing okay, people in your fund are going to be happy. But if you come up, you know, as the zebra that's falling behind the herd, they're going to dump you. And the other thing he told me was that economic forecasters tend to do the same thing, you know, rather than basing their forecasts on the best data that they can get, they tend to kind of look at one another and hedge their bets so that they don't stick out as being the one who's wrong because they don't want

to be the zebra that gets eaten by the lion. Better that all the zebras just get eaten by the lion in the world of economists. Well, there's safety in being part of the herd. I think that's the message there. Now, in the book you write about the power blackout in 2003. It affected a number of states. And in this case, the initial event, you know, it's a tree touching a power line. near Cleveland, a computer glitch in Akron, and it ends up causing a blackout in New York City. Yeah, I think everybody who went through that blackout who remembers it vividly. It was a very stressful event for 50 million people, and for that to be caused by such an

ordinary incident, you know, trees touching up against power lines is an indication of how complicated, how complex the power grid is and how when something happens in one part of the grid it can ripple through the whole grid and affect everybody on the grid. The grid is a complex system. And what we can do is look at how some of the animal groups that we deal with, how they deal with environments that are complex. And in that particular chapter, I'm writing about termites. And termites, you know, live in, the ones I write about live in these big mounds in Africa. And they have events that are very stressful to them, too, like they'll have a rainstorm,

and the rain will wash away part of the mud on there. And then suddenly their mound will be exposed to the air. And so they have all of this instinctive behavior to send teams to the site of the breach and plug it up quickly with little mud balls. That's understandable, right? That's like they're patching up the hole. But what they discovered when they looked at termites is that throughout the entire mound, termites are sensing disturbance and plugging up a little hole sort of like a submarine crew

where they're closing all the doors and all the chambers in order to seal off the leak. And that kind of distributed problem solving where each individual termite is responding is exactly the same kind of behavior that some electrical instruments, engineers came up to come up with to create a grid that would be self-healing. In other words, the power lines and the bus bars and all the little electrical connectors that make the grid work would be intelligent and responding in a decentralized way to things that are happening. And they say that if we had had that kind of system, that we wouldn't have had the blackout.

And we did. And are there implications for investors? either to keep the stock market from crashing or just our own portfolios? Well, what we're talking about is a cascade. And in stock markets, what you have is cascades of information, right? You have a report that comes out, and that causes a reaction by people who know something. And then people who don't know something see the people who know something reacting, and it kind of spreads through the whole community.

and then you get this volatility. You get this twitchiness, you know, where you have like a school of fish that are responding to every shadow and a threat that they think they see in the sea. And instead of all of the investors basing their decisions on the information and experience that they have independently,

they start looking at each other very fearfully and nobody wants to be, you know, the person holding their bag. So is it, I mean, it sounds like possibly we should, if we can arrange it, if we can genetically engineer it, maybe we should have termites running wall soon. Or honey bees. All right, Peter, we're going to wrap things up with a round of buy-cell or hold. Let's start with the fact that New York City is dealing with an infestation of these. Buy-seller hold, the biological usefulness of bedbugs.

Well, I think that I would buy whatever it is that eats bedbugs. You know, I would definitely invest in ladybugs or spiders or whatever is the natural enemy of bedbugs. I read about that. That's pretty scary. It is scary, although one of the businesses that appears to be affected by it is Abercrombie and Fitch. So here at Motley Full Money, we're hopeful that maybe this means that some of the half-naked models will actually, you know, put on some clothing. We're not sure. For God's sake. Buy seller hold, the biological usefulness of Mel Gibson.

I don't know what to say about that. He's melting down in public, isn't he? I mean, you know, ordinarily, you like to see there's something redeemable about somebody kind of letting go and being crazy, but it's hard to find anything redeemable in this situation. It sounds like a cell. That's what I'm hearing. I would have sold early. Buy seller hold building a bat house in your backyard to attract bats to eat mosquitoes.

Yeah, that's a definite buy. Really? Absolutely. We have bats in the trees around. We live in a little lake, and it's really fun to watch them flying around at dusk, scooping up all the insects over the lake. If you're not necessarily a fan of bats, then putting birds. bat houses out is a nice way to keep them out of your attic. Okay, that's okay. I hadn't thought of it that way.

Buy seller hold giving your wife an ant farm as an anniversary present. Sell, sell. Is there ever a situation where giving an ant farm is a gift as a good idea? I don't think so. I really don't. I mean, it's the kind of thing you give to your nephew if you're mad at your brother or sister. And finally, we've seen the decline of monarchies all around the world over the last hundred years. So buy, seller hold, the future of the queen bee. Well, you know, the queen has no authority in nature. The queen bee is just a machine to produce eggs. So I think the idea that there's a monarchy in nature is inaccurate. The book is the smart swarm, how understanding flocks, schools, and colonies can make us better at communicating,

decision-making, and getting things done. It's fascinating stuff, and this is a great summer business book. Peter Miller, thanks so much for being here. Thanks, Chris. We are the... We like to sing because, because we are the... 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. Don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Chris Hill, and back in the studio with me, our trio of senior analysts, Joe Magar, James Early, and Tim Hanson.

And guys, something we haven't done for a little while. We're going to bring in Steve Broido. And Steve, let's do a little Harper's Index now. What do you got for us this week? Okay, number of live bees spilled onto a Las Vegas highway in December of 2004. That is, number of live bees spilled onto a Las Vegas Highway in December of 2004. Live bees. Tim Hansen.

Wow. That would... He's giving a serious thought. Yeah, well, you know, I'm trying to think about it. You respect the question. Yeah, absolutely. I'll say 942,604. Wow, that's specific.

James Early? I'm going low ball, 100,000. Joe? 99,000. And the correct answer is 22.4 million. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Tim, yeah, I think Tim wins that, but, I mean, can we just pause for one second? 22 million bees.

I mean, that's a lot of bees. You know what that is? That's a horror movie. That's a pretty high B to highway ratio. All right. Steve, next. Estimated percentage of bees that were subsistive. subsequently foamed to death in December of 2004 in Las Vegas.

99%. I don't think bees have a lot of resistance to poison foam. James? 5%. They escaped and died of starvation because there are no flowers. I'm going to say 25. It's like the BPO oil spill. They all just manage to sneak their way out. The correct answer is 100%. Hi, I have a roll. Thank God. Thank God the bees got wiped out in that spell. All right, Steve. What else? to 1980 to 1989, the percentage increase in U.S. consumption of potato chips.

Again, from 1980 to 1989, the percentage increase in U.S. consumption of potato chips. I feel like the 80s was a golden age for potato chip consumption. So this is annualized, Steve? I do not have that information. I think it's just total. Total increase. I'll say they triple, 200%. 30%.

Oh, sure, from the health food guy. We get a low-law number. Joe? I was actually going to say triple, but I'll up it and say 250%. And the correct answer is 67%. God. I mean, that's an increase, but not quite as much as I would have expected. All right, Steve Rodo, give us one more. The amount paid in January of 2006 for one of William Shatner's kidney stones. Well, I know he can afford a lot more of them now.

Am I going first again? I think, yeah, we're going to keep the continuity. A Shatner Kidney Stone, and this is four years ago. He can use that as currency in some countries out there. It's a delicacy in Morocco As long as you don't go heavy on the salt I'll say I'll say

$41,609. You're big into the specificity today I mean if you can't be specific, why be anything? 10 grand 9,99 And the correct answer is $25,000 $25,000. Ooh, I think I'm close.

Am I closest? You're over. 41, yeah, I'm over. Price is right rules. Price is right rules, so you went over. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure why William Shatner is selling his kidney stones, but hopefully, with all the money he's made off a price line, hopefully he's donating that 25 grand to charity.

At least that's what we're hoping. Or to the creation of a universal-type outer space city. One can only hope. Could be. I think that's what we've come to expect from, you know, from Mr. Star Trek. All right, let's talk about the stocks that are on our radar, and Tim Hansen will start with you.

You know, we talked about energy. a little earlier in the show, and I've been looking at the energy sector recently. One company that's caught my eye that isn't a clear buy yet, but I'm certainly looking at as Totale, which is the French Integrated Energy Giant. The reason I'm interested is because they've made sort of a very interesting bet on unconventional oil drilling, and that is to say very deep water and also in sort of more risky places politically like Africa and whatnot. So they have a higher cost of extraction, but to the extent that oil prices stay at 80 or continue

to rise. those wells are all going to be worth a lot of money to Total, and they have a big position in this part of the energy market that a lot of other companies don't have, which makes it very interesting going forward. What is the ticker symbol? That is on the New York Stock Exchange, TOTT, TOTL, often pronounced. Total, but you need to use your Smarmy European accent when saying it.

All right. James Early? You know, Chris, I agree with Tim that deep water is the future of drilling, and Total is actually an income investor recommendation. I'm going to give you one more, ironically, based on deep water drilling. that is Chevron, a company I recommended a few months back, owing partly to a depressed stock price thanks to this BP disaster, which looks to be on the mend, as Tim pointed out. And if this Deepwater moratorium reverses, I think it's even better news for Chevron. It's a 3.6 percent yield.

It's a strong presence in deep water, albeit domestic deep water, 18 percent return on equity, 6.2 percent dividend growth year over year. And I believe it spends more money on eco-tankycle. friendly projects and any other major oil company. And the ticker? It is CVX. Joe Mager. Well, I know my heart is warm to hear that about the eco project. I was going to... It's fairly a pretty low bar there. Exactly. I was actually going to go with Exxon, but for the spirit of mixing it up for the listeners, I'll go with Google, which is a pretty big reversal. So I'm a value guy. I like cheap stocks, so it's kind of strange that I'm saying Google.

I was going to say, and not only are you a value guy, you're just a cheap person in general. Sure, sure. Thank you. Looking at these striped pants that Joe's wearing. You get those on sale? I did, deep value. And that was a free shirt and free hat? Is that right? And free iPad, actually.

He told us the story. He said iPad got free. I don't even own my own shoes. So the Google story, it's what everyone thinks is this growth stock that doesn't have any sort of moat to it. This is a great business. It's got $30.5 billion in cash. They dominate internet search. They have 98% of market share of mobile search, which is the next big frontier in computing.

They get 2 billion page views a day on YouTube, which they're only just now beginning to monetize. It's crazy that I think YouTube's only five years old, but they're pulling in 2 billion page views a day. But there's a lot of optionality there, a lot of room to run. And the ticker symbol? Goog. Just pretend we. O-O-G. All right, Joe Mager, James Early, Tim Hansen.

Guys, thanks for being here. Thank you, Chris. Thanks also to our special guest this week. Peter Miller, author of The Smart Swarm, just a reminder to our listeners that on Tuesday on fool.com, the main website of The Motley Fool, John Mackey, the founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods, will be doing a live chat. That's Tuesday on Fool.com. If you missed any part of the show, you can find it at our website, motleyfoolmoney.com.

You can also get a copy of our free report, The Motley Fool's top stock for 2010. All that and more at Motley Fool. fullmoney.com. Our engineer is Steve Brodo. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.