Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 12.16.2011

Episode Date: December 16, 2011

What was the most significant business story of 2011?  Who was the most influential business leader? What are the most overlooked stories of the year?  What were the most undervalued stocks of the year? On this week's show, our analysts tackle those questions and share some stocks on their radar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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From Motley Full Hidden Jem, Seth Jason, from Motley Full income investor, James Early, and from Million Dollar portfolio, Ron Gross. Gentlemen, it is our year and special. Welcome. Can you feel well? Every new year. It's not new year yet. Oh, sorry.

We're going to look back at 2011. The highlights, the low lights. We will talk stocks in a little bit. To heck with that. Stocks. Let's focus on the news and the companies that made up the business year of 2011. And Ron, I'll just start with you. What is your business story of the year?

There's been a number of interesting stories. I have two for the price of one for you. Okay. I'm going to go with the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's in conjunction with the debacle that we... experienced with the debt ceiling where our beloved Congress just couldn't get it done. Do you think it was political grandstanding on their behalf? Yeah, I think it was a bit of a political mess.

Now, I think in reality, there was not a lot of repercussions from this downgrade. I think people thought we were going, you know, falling off the edge of the abyss. It seems like everything kind of worked itself out. Treasuries were okay. Everything seems to have worked itself out. They weren't okay. They got cheaper. Right, exactly.

But for that one week's time, it was big. There was a lot of, you're courtering. There was a lot of doom and gloom leading up to that. There was sort of like end-of-day scenarios. It didn't make history. First time it's ever happened. You think we're going to get back up? Nah.

As in peace got it in for us from now. Think they do? All right. James, your business story of the air. I'm going to go boring, Chris. And it mentioned the pending EU collapse. It's been all over the news, but it is a big story. I haven't heard about it.

The European economists apparently didn't have it all figured out after all. And this could have ramifications, not just for Europe, but for the future of socialism economically. So earlier this year, I mean, all of the Europeans. Take that Europeans. We do have a few listeners over in Europe. Well, not those ones. The ones who run the countries. But earlier in the year, I'm just flashing back to, I mean, this is a story that just rippled throughout the year and the phrase kicking the can down the road. I mean, if nothing else, it seems like we all got that prediction right, because back in February, March, April, we're like, yeah, they're just going to keep kicking the can down the road. How long is this road? How long is this road? is my question. How much longer can they do this? Can anybody here explain what they agreed to recently?

I kind of have no idea. I mean, they agreed to something, right? But it doesn't make sense to anybody. But then Angela Merkel kind of unagreed right afterwards. It's very cryptic. Ultimately, what's going on in Europe, doesn't it all come down to Germany and France? Aren't they the two that are essentially in the driver's seat the whole time? They are, and they are taking the position that it's not their fault for the most part, that they loaned a bunch of money to people who couldn't pay it back and that they really shouldn't have to take a bath or actually their banks shouldn't have to take a bath. And I think that's a naive way of looking at it.

When you make bad loans, you are on the hook, just as the bad lenders or the bad borrowers are on the hook. So what's your business story of the year? I think it's the same thing. It's about bad debt and how it doesn't go away just because you say it should, which is what a lot of these efforts are about. They're about attempts...

Unless you're an American. Unless you're an American. They're about attempts to sort of pretend that things are better than they. they are in order to stop the runs on banks, in order to stop, you know, the fear cycle from ratcheting up borrowing prices so high that countries who need to borrow are unable to ever pay those obligations back. And it works to an extent. It works to small extents sometimes, but it doesn't always work and it isn't working in Europe. And oddly enough, it's working

better in the U.S. because, as we mentioned, even despite that credit downgrade, the U.S. dollar is seen as a bit of a safe haven, and U.S. Treasuries are seen as a bit of a safe haven. And so people who have money to put somewhere and they want it to be safe, they're still buying treasuries, and they've driven the price up. The yields are still near record lows. To Ron's earlier point, obviously there are always a lot of candidates for Story of the Air, whether you're talking about business or sports or anything else like that. One that's in the mix is the total meltdown that happened at MF Global. should point out to our listeners, we actually have an in-depth series on the MF Global Meltdown on Fool.com.

We had a whole team of people working on this. We had people going to congressional hearings. It's really a pretty robust body of work. So anyone looking for more information on the MF Global Meltdown, you can check that out all weekend long at Fool.com. Did we have anyone punching Corzine in the head because it seems like it could use a dope slap? Unfortunately, he had some bodyguards with him. But we tried. We weren't the only ones who had that idea.

I think. We always like to focus on things that maybe aren't getting a lot of attention from the financial media. Ron, what's your candidate for overlooked story of the year? Whenever we do the big macro on the show, I'm always... Which is every week. Which is... But now we skip it sometimes. Almost every week. I'm always interested in the fact that we and everyone reporting the news never focuses on the real unemployment rate. It's always kind of this unemployment rate, which currently sounds

at 8.6 percent that is discussed. but not the one that is at 15.6%, which counts the under-employed, as well as those people that have been fed up and have just stopped looking for work. And to me, it seems like that's a much more important number that we should be discussing. And yet, you really have to dig for it to find it. Don't you think that's one of those things that's never going to happen? Because I agree with you that it's a downer. But regardless of what party is controlling the White House, there's no upside to say, you

know what, we're going to switch. We're going to go over the real rate of one. That's double. And now all of a sudden it's double. All right, well, we'll have to lead the charge right here. Okay. James? Chris, I will go with the Japan Fukushima incident in that it didn't derail nuclear power in the U.S. the way many people thought it would, and the way it actually did more in Europe, nuclear power is dirt cheap. It is sort of a competitive advantage for us. We're 20 percent nuclear, which is not as big as many other industrialist nations, but that's still pretty big. And if you look at a stock like Exelon, which is sort of the grand eddy of nuclear power in the U.S., it's actually trading higher than it was before that incident. Do you think...

Meanwhile, the Germans who are landlocked do not have to worry about earthquakes and tsunamis busting their nuclear plants. It just decided a little bit before the spin in the wake of this, no more nukes here at all. And so they're just going to kill people slowly with coal emissions and natural gas. Well, you know, you've got to do it one way or the other, I suppose. Great move, Germany. Seth, your overlooked story of the year. We've talked about this a little, but I don't think we've talked about it as much as it should be. And it's that the Android market share gains in the smartphone war, really they're sort of brushing the iPhone aside.

And that is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One is that Apple is such a darling. You wouldn't imagine that it has any competition at all to listen to most of the press talk about it. The other is that Android still kind of sucks a little bit first. a lot of people. It does a lot of things in a klutzy fashion. It's not really unified. It doesn't do things as simple as letting

somebody on the phone accept a meeting invitation through Gmail. My father's phone won't do this. Apparently, Android phones in general don't do this. It's really not all that great. You would think the folks at Google would be a little annoyed about that. Yeah, you'd think so, but not. And so it goes to show you, I mean, Android

is still kicking butt market share-wise anyway, and it's all about the price, which most of these Android devices, you can be had for $0.00. And placement. They're just in sort of every phone ecosystem. And they're kind of close to an iPhone. They're like an iPhone clone. And people are willing to settle for that at the right price. What about the developers? Because it seems like every year you've got Apple, you've got Microsoft, Google, they're all making pitches to the developers. What's the one that they favor? Is it Android? Is that part of the success? According to some polls I've seen,

interest is highest for Android, and I think that's because of the market share gains, and the fact that there aren't as many apps so far, so you have a better chance of standing out when I think the iPhone has 400,000 apps or something. So chances are anything you want to do has already been done over there. But then it's also Windows phone after that. You've got more of a captive audience at Windows phone, and I saw some interesting numbers this week that the click-through rates for ads were much, much higher on the Windows phone platform than on Android or on Android,

or on iPhone, like twice as high, which should be really good news for developers who want to support themselves. Where do you peg iPhone versus Windows phone? On what? On 1 through 10 scale of just overall goodness. I don't like the iPhone. I didn't get one for years for that reason. I don't like to have to press eight buttons to do what I'm doing. And I didn't get an Android phone because of the sort of the issues I was talking about can't accept meeting invitations and other stuff. You have a Windows phone. When you talk about the click-through ad rates, that's not you. though. You're not clicking on ads. I never click on any ads. That's what I want to know. Apparently a lot of people do. Could they write into us and tell us why? If you click on ads on Facebook or on your phone,

drop us an email. Radio at fool.com. We talked earlier in the week on Market Fullery, our daily podcast, about Time magazine. The person of the year was the protester. The protester, as embodied by the protest in the Middle East and Europe and Occupy Wall Street as well. while I was saying to our producer, Mac, earlier today, the thing that stunned me was that apparently one of the finalists for person of the year was Kate Middleton. Wow, there's a high bar. I just, I would love to be in the room at Time Magazine when they're just like, who's the person who's advocating, no, it really should be Kate Middleton over Seal Team Six or the

protesters. The Chief Team Six is a good one, yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure that a lot of that argument is what's going to sell more covers. You think? I think so. So cynical. Let's pivot off. I've been in those rooms before. I know how they operate.

Let's pivot off of that and go to your business person of the year. Ron? Business person, 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, who as we speak is getting ready for the largest tech IPO in history. It's a fascinating story, a $100 billion valuation, perhaps. And he's been in the news for years. He was Time Magazine's person of the year last year. Yeah, but he has not fallen from grace and the company just continues to grow. But he's a jerk, isn't he, though? I have never met them, man.

What do you think is the potential for a company like that after it goes public? Because, as I've said before, I have to believe that you've got other companies that are really looking forward to Facebook being public, having to go through the same level of transparency that they have to go through as public companies. What's the potential for Facebook? The numbers, I think, look pretty amazing. 800 million users, I think, or something like that. and obviously very high revenue, profitable.

The $100 million is the issue. I think people will be gunning for them to see that valuation come down. $100 billion, I think. Is he the next Steve Jobs to you? Gosh, I think no. I don't think so, but I think, I mean, you've got to give the guy his due. I mean, 27 years old, $100 billion company. It's fascinating.

Is James the next Steve Jobs, dude? He's very close. I'd settle for being one of those twins who were suing him. Winklevoss. Winklevoss. The Winklevog. Very attractive. James, your person of the air?

Chris, I'm going to go with Fortune Magazine's John Watson, CEO. This is Fortune Magazine's number three person of the air business person. This is the CEO of Chevron. As of 2010, this is one of my beloved oil companies. And John apparently listens to our show because he has really been getting into this deep water drilling thing that I have been getting into too for such a long time. You're into it? I'm into it.

We've used up all the heavy to get to, I mean, the easy light oil, and we have to go to the deep sludge down below. Plus, when you're... When you say you're into it, you have like a shovel? Not that into it, but conceptually I'm into it, yes. John Watson has been at Chevron for somewhere north of 30 years, just sort of broadening beyond that. Is that type of longevity a plus to you, or is it immaterial when you're looking at an investment?

Well, I mean, obviously at some point longevity becomes a liability. But yeah, I like people who have either been with a company or ideally been in the industry for a long time, yeah, certainly. Seth, you're a business person of the year. I'm going to go with Mr. Bezos at Amazon. Really? Yeah, even though the stock I read the other day had lost its gains due to worries about profitability, I think the company he runs just continues to do incredible things. I mean, the launch of the Kindle Fire, which I thought was just a laughable notion and is now seen as a viable

alternative to the iPad, you know, coming out of the Kindle itself, which entered into a space where there was already hardware and there was already software for selling electronic books. Everyone laughed at them. And they just continue to get it done. They continue to take a bigger share of sales. And it's a weird place because you look at the website, it's not all that slick and futuristic looking, but he just continues to drive customer loyalty in an interesting way. I found one the other day. I went to return something, and it was kind of a cheap item,

and I'm on Amazon Prime, and I buy a lot of stuff from them. And I clicked through to get the return, and they said, you know what, don't even bother to send it back. We'll just refund your money. You were talking about that the other day, the customer service people. It's unbelievable. We had a problem with the Kindle, and not only did they send us a new Kindle, but they were concerned that perhaps we didn't have a good enough cover for it, and they sent us one just for free. Very nice. Very nice of them. I don't know if that makes it a great stock. Maybe that makes it a terrible stuff. Well, that was another thing you touched on earlier, Ron.

What is it 102 times earnings or something like that? It's up there. It makes it a great business to be a fan of, anyways. But a great business there. And he's a great CEO. He's no Reggie Middleton. He's pretty good. Who among us is? Coming up, we will dig into the stocks of 2011.

So stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money. Try me on that money. Just try me, honey. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here in the studio with Seth, Jason, James, Early, and Ron Gross. It is our year-end special guys. Let's focus on the stocks of 2011.

Overvalued stock of the year. Just quickly. Ron. Could have picked any social media stock, really. I went with LinkedIn, 113 times cash flow. It's a $6 billion company, 14 times revenue. Microsoft is two times revenue. That's going to be pretty offensive to a value guy like you. James?

Bank of America throughout most of the year. Not crazy overvalue, but I have no idea what's going on with a company. Therefore, I had to create overvalue. They run sideways with a very good handoff from the Fed. I don't like that. Seth, what's your overvalued stock for 2011? A lot to pick from. I'm going to go with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

This is a stock that currently, well, it got hammered by the market. It still trades for 34 times earnings or something like that. It was over $100 a share at one point. And then started to be some discussion of perhaps crummy bookkeeping and miss a little on earnings here or there. And all of a sudden, bang, the bottom falls out. This is what happens in a popular stock. suddenly becomes less popular and starts to scare people. All right. Let's move to undervalued stock of the year. Ron, what do you got?

I got Microsoft. Keep going back to it. Fifty-six million dollars of cash, $8 billion in cash flow in the latest quarter alone, six times EBITDA. Why aren't you carrying a Windows phone? Stocks chief. I'm going to ask this because I haven't asked this in a while. As a longtime Microsoft shareholdings. I'm sorry, all right? No, no. Is or should? Steve Baumar, the CEO, stepped down in 2012. He's been there a long time. He's been there more than a decade, and I'm a shareholder who's interested in seeing a change at the top. What do you got for me? Give me some good news. I don't think you'll say it.

Really? Should he? Should he? I don't think it helps the stock one way or the other. Really? Yeah, I think the company's doing what it needs to do. The stock's going to take care of itself. The reason the stock hasn't gone up is not because the company hasn't done. Well, the reason is that the multiple has gotten sort of insanely low. I mean, Microsoft makes it ton more money, sells a lot more product than it did five, ten years ago. The growth rates have been great. The multiple that investors have been willing to pay is just shrinking. I was just hoping for a little good news. So I just take your three percent. Take your three percent dividend and just

keep quiet. Stop whining. Okay. I will. James, what do you got? Chris, if Time Magazine can name the protester as person of the year, I'm going to name the consumer products company as is my undervalued stock. I'm thinking more specifically productor and gamble, Unilever. These are companies that have not maybe that too, have not really risen with the market quite as much, but they're very solid, they're very consistent dividend pairs, lots of cash flow, and I just think their time will come.

Okay, Seth, what do you got? Super Value, to me, is something of a mystery. It's a company that nobody likes because it's in the grocery biz and it's not Whole Foods, and if you're not Whole Foods and in the grocery business, you must be dying. But the company, even though it has a very high debt load, it has no

problem paying its interest and paying that debt down ahead of time, No problem producing a lot of cash flow to pay out as dividends as well as to fix up the stores. They've got good leadership, I think, in place a lot of ex-Walmart types who seem to be turning things around, yet the market just consistently ignores it. So I think you have to look at it again. Ex-Wilmart type just sounds sexy somehow. Tommy, he's an ex-Walmart type. Where is super value concentrated geographically?

This is the whole problem there all over the country. They went on this giant spending spree years ago, and it's the hangover from that that is the reason the stock was just eventually killed. So they are all over the country centered originally. The company's based in Minnesota centered out there. But out here, you'll find shopper, for instance, shopper food warehouse. Out here, that's a super value. Oh, so that's my favorite store to shop at, actually. They've got different brands underneath the super value writ large.

Several. Thank you, guys. We'll bring you back later for your radar stocks for 2011. Coming up next, Nell Minow joins me in studio to talk about the latest news from Warren Buffett and the must-see movies this holiday season. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill.

Long-time listeners will know that in the nearly two years we've been doing this show, we've had a lot of great guests, but there is one that we have had on more than the rest and with good reason. Nell Minow is with Governance Metrics International, which rates corporate boards of directors. She is also the film critic known as the movie mom. It is her ninth appearance, but it is her first in-studio appearance. Nell, welcome. Thank you very much. We finally got you in studio.

Next time will be 3D. Exactly, exactly, yeah, because 3D is huge. Definitely want to talk movies and boards of directors, but I want to talk about a couple of things that have come up in the news this week. And let's start with Time Magazine. time named its person of the year, and the Times person of the year is the protester, and that includes obviously protests in the Middle East and Europe, but also the Occupy Wall Street movement here in the U.S. You follow Wall Street. What do you think about the Occupy Wall Street movement in general? I made a point of going to visit Occupy Wall Street twice,

and I've also spent some time with the D.C. outpost. And I think that Occupy Occupy Wall Street has already accomplished their number one goal. They have changed the vocabulary of the conversation. When John Huntsman referred to Mitt Romney as owned by Wall Street, to me, that was the ultimate success of Occupy Wall Street. They have now made Wall Street a pejorative in our political dialogue, and that was what they hoped to do. Their other agenda, I think, is an important but a complicated one, and I hope we will make

some progress on that, and that is the pernicious effect of campaign finance. corruption. And so I hope that will happen. But in the meantime, the number of uses of terms like income disparity has skyrocketed in the media and on the news. And I think, therefore, they've accomplished what they wanted. The movement has taken a little bit of criticism in terms of not really having a clearly defined message. What do you think the message should be? Listen, I think it is genius of them not to have a clearly defined message because the more clearly you define your message, the more our system will splinter you into a kind of petty discussion of topics that are just distracting. So the fact that they have identified a major source of injustice and are opening up

a conversation about how to address it, I think was actually very canny on their part and as part of why they've been so successful. Warren Buffett was in the news this week. His son Howard has been named as a non-executive chairman at Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett said that his son is going to serve as a guardian of the company's values. It's an unpaid position. He is a farmer, Howard Buffett is. What do you think of this arrangement? I thought it was a very, very wise step.

There's been a lot of focus on who is going to succeed Buffett in his job as basically. stock picker as an as investor and not so much focus on what clearly is important to him which is who is going to succeed him in his job as tone at the top as we all know he had a bit of a curfuffle earlier this year when one of his designated lieutenants got into trouble and I thought he handled it very well and I think what he said with this appointment was the same thing he was saying with that which is that our number one goal here is the preservation of our values, and we mean that in the ethical sense as well as in the financial sense. And Howard Buffett is not just a farmer.

He is a philanthropist who has shown himself to be very thoughtful, and I think that's a very good step. You've had the chance to sit down with Warren Buffett and interview him. What makes the guy tick? What do you think is the secret of his success? because as track records go, he's got an incredibly long track record of success. Yeah, I think he's very straightforward about what his secret of success is. His secret of success is not being distracted by things that distract other people.

And, you know, he lives in a modest house. He drives a modest car. I've been in his modest car. Believe me, it's a modest car. What kind of driver is worn? He's a very careful driver. He's a very good driver. But when I was there, the couple of times that I visited him, the traffic in Omaha was not too challenging.

It wasn't like driving around Midtown Manhattan. I was going to say that that probably helps a little. But I think he specifically likes to stay in Omaha to keep him away from the kind of distracting gossip that runs so much in Wall Street. He gets up every day. He looks very dispassionately at the numbers. He makes his decision on that basis, and then he goes about his business. and he doesn't let anybody's ego get in the way. And I think that's why he's done so well over such a long time.

Your organization, GMI, has been praised for its ability to assess risk. With that in mind, what are a couple of companies that are high in risk that might not appear that way? I know that as an investor myself, there are certain companies that I just sort of look at and think, Well, that seems like sort of a safe sort of plotting along company. But I'm guessing with all the public companies in the world that there are, that there are some that are just, you know, as we see around here, lurking gators. You know, just below the surface is a tremendous amount of risk. Yeah, we came out with a risk list just a little while ago and tried to give some examples of some of the things that we look at that worry us about companies. And I think what I would say is that, as I've mentioned, excessive compensation, compensation with no relationship to performance is probably my favorite indicator, but we're looking much more robustly at accounting than we used to.

And so I guess I think I'll answer your question by saying one sector that we're concerned about right now is the for-profit universities. We think that there are a lot of accounting dodges that they use. And we also think that the government is going to crack down on the extensive federal subsidies that they have been benefiting from. They are also very highly paid. They're much more highly paid than their equivalents in the nonprofit university system for very, very poor returns by comparison. We've talked to accounting. We've talked to executive compensation. I'm curious, though, is there a risk factor that is, in some ways, for lack of a better term, a red-haping?

Herring, that's something that either institutional investors or individual investors seem to get agitated about and focus on maybe too much. And it's like, you know what, that's not nearly as big a deal as executive compensation? I think some of the conventional indicators like earnings per share are gamed so thoroughly by companies that they're really not very meaningful anymore. You're listening to Motley Full Money, talking with Nell Minow from Governance Metrics International, Also the movie mom. A couple of questions about the movie business. We were talking earlier about Netflix, which has certainly stumbled in the second half of 2011, but I think one of the positive announcements the company has made recently that has resonated with some of their shareholders is that Netflix is going to be producing some original content.

They signed a deal to bring back arrested development. Do you think that's really the future for a company like me? Netflix? Is it original content as opposed to licensing movies from other studios? Yes, I do think that that is exactly where they need to go. I think whoever owns the content is going to take home the ball at the end of the game from now on. Because with the delivery systems in place now, as people can get the content streamed to their iPads or their televisions directly, really the studios are going to go back to controlling that business. There's no reason for them to have a middleman anymore. They control not only the movie, but they control all the goodies and the extras, and they can sell it to you in parts. You can buy a movie with the director commentary or with

the interviews or without or with the backstage stuff or without. They're going to be able to unbundle that stuff and sell it to you very, very efficiently. And so I think whoever owns the content is going to own the game from now on. Let's move on to movies themselves. The end of the year, every year, you get those movies that are released right around Christmas or that last week just so that they can qualify for the Oscars. I think this year it's movies like The Descendants, George Clooney's movie, Iron Lady, about Margaret Thatcher, Tinker Taylor, Soldiers Buy. What are the ones we should be spending our money on?

The one that everybody should go to is probably we bought a zoo. It's great to see Cameron Crow back behind the camera. It is just a very nice, good old-fashioned family movie based on a true story. And so I like that one a lot. Only opening in L.A. and New York for awards consideration, but coming out in January is extremely loud and incredibly close. That's what Tom Hanks. With Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock about Little Boy's Father's Killed in 9-11. It is excellent.

I thought it was great, wonderful score by Alexander Dupeload. and it was made by the guy who did Billy Elliott. I just thought really, really, really well done. So I like that one a lot. I was a little disappointed by some of the big movies that are opening up, like The War Horse, which I did not think was as good as you usually expect from Spielberg. And also Iron Lady, obviously, brilliant performance. By Merrill Street.

Brilliant performance by Jim Broadbent as Margaret Thatcher's husband. But the movie suffers from the same syndrome as Jay Edgar. And I'm not just referring to the prosthetic makeup. I'm referring to the very nonlinear storytelling, not knowing what really happened and what is really imagined and not substantive enough, not really dealing with some of the policy issues. Is there a business movie for 2011 that you would recommend to folks? I highly recommend both inform and content, margin call. I think it's an excellent film. Very, very interesting.

We talked about some of the distribution issues. This one is a rare film that was really ahead of the industry and being available on video on demand as it was released in theater, so you can get it right now off of iTunes. Brilliant performances by everybody, inspired by the fall of Lehman, but it's got Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettney, absolutely Zachary Quinto. Very well done.

Kevin Spacey, I think. Kevin Spacey. But also, Even though it was inspired by Lehman, it is general enough that the dynamics in it applied not just to the financial world, but really any large organization. So I thought it was extremely well done, brilliantly acted, very powerful ending. We always like the hidden gems here at the Motley Fool. So one movie that's not really on anybody's radar that we should find a way to see. A movie that was really overlooked this year

is called 50-50, and that's because it's the true story of a guy who had cancer, but he wrote the movie so we know that it came out of it. And it stars Seth Rogan, who really is in real life the best friend of the guy. And so he's kind of playing himself. So I think people were afraid of it because it has cancer in it, but it is a really smart, really good, very well-done movie with a wonderful Anna Kendrix from up in the air. And then I just also loved win-win with Paul Jammati earlier this year. A really smart story about a lawyer struggling with a bunch of stuff. Last year, you confessed to us that one of your guilty pleasures was the A-team. Yes.

So I have to ask, what is Nell Minow's guilty pleasure movie of 2011? Slightly less guilty this year because real steel, unquestionably. Real steel. Too much fun. This is the movie with the 10-foot fighting robots. They're like 20-foot fighting robots. The boxing robots. The Rockham-Sacham robots movie is a hoot and a half.

It is too much fun. And then also not at all a guilty pleasure, but a really solid thriller is Source Code, directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, who's just terrific, really smart, sharp movie with Jake Gyllenhall. Very, very well done. You're listening to Motley Full Money, talking with Nell Minow, the movie mom. We will wrap up with a round of Buy-Seller Hold. Award season, it's getting started in the movie business. Buy-Seller Hold, an Oscar nomination for Brad Pitt for his performance in Moneyball.

I voted for him as my best male performance of the year. I thought he was absolutely terrific in it. People don't give him enough credit, I think, as an actor, and in my new book about movies, I have an essay about him. But if you look over the course of all of his roles, he has a unique ability to take his movie star charisma and deploy it in a calibrated way. He can decide exactly how much he wants to use for any given performance. And in something like Ocean's 11, it's up full scale. And in this one, you know, he toned it down a little bit. and he made that character very real. And the scenes between that character and his daughter, I thought were great. There are rumors that this company will be IPOing in the first half of 2012. Buy-sellerhold, the business of Facebook. I am a strong sell on Facebook. I'm very bearish on Facebook. I don't think that there are that many barriers to entry,

and I think that there are so many things that they do wrong, that it would not be hard to come in and take it away from them. And finally, it is your ninth time on our show early next year. it'll be his ninth time on this particular show. Buy Sellerhold, Billy Crystal, hosting the Oscars in 2012. Bye, bye, bye. Really? Yeah, absolutely.

He is the best host that the Oscars has ever had. And boy, do they need it. Because that show is so moribund. So I hope he will bring it into the 21st century because it's been languishing for a long time. See, I feel about the Oscars. Oscars broadcast a little bit the way I think you feel about a company like HP, where it's like, it doesn't matter, you know, at the company, who the CEO is. If you don't fix the board, you're not fixing the company. I look at the Oscar telecast and go, you could get anybody as the host,

but until you get an executive producer who says, we're going to cut, you know, a third of the awards, we're going to make sure it's like the Golden Globes were in and out in two hours or two and half or something like that. The deck is a little bit stacked against you as a host. I totally agree. But the problem is they're trying to serve. three goals at the same time and the television audience is the last of the goal. So they're trying to serve the Motor Picture Academy number one and the people in the room number two. So a lot of what happens in the show is directed at the people in the room. Billy Crystal is more important than the producer because he'll tell the producer what to do.

He understands how to make the show work. So keep that in mind, folks. When you're watching the Oscars next year, you are dead last in the eyes of the executive producers. There's Nell Minno from Governance Metrics International and the Movie Mom. Thanks, as always, for being here. A pleasure. Coming up, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks that are on our radar. Hey, drop us an email, Radio at Fool.com.

Give us your best stock for 2011, your worst stock. Hey, you can even give us your best and worst movies. That's Radio at Fool.com. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program may have been. interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Chris Hillen, back in the studio with me, Seth, Jason, James Early, and Ron Gross.

Guys, this is the part of the show where we normally do the stocks that are on our radar, but we're going to make it the stocks for 2011. But before we do that, I'm just going to say you all missed the boat earlier in the show when we talked about the story of the year. The business story of the year was talked about on this show back in June when Kraft had its 12th billion-dollar brand in 10. That's the business story of the year because that's the story that our listeners responded to the most. We got Tang sent to us from all over the world.

We actually have a little bit of lemon pepper tang. We've been drinking this. I've not tried it yet. One of our colleagues picked this up on a recent trip to the Middle East. This was flagged by one of our listeners, Jacqueline Ray, in Dubai, and so cheers. Cheers. Nice bouquet, lemony pepper. I don't see much pepper.

I can use more pepper. Yeah. It's nice, and it certainly tastes better than the tuna tang. I think it tastes good. Do they have any with hot sauce? I would be up for that. We'll see what we can do. Chili tang.

All right. Two minutes left. Ron, your stock for 2011. I'm going to give you the most undervalued stock that I know. Okay. And it's a company I've mentioned before. It's L.S. Starat, ticker symbol, SCX, a microcap toolmaker, three times cash flow, 0.6 times its tangible book value.

Small company, $250 million in revenue, but it is profitable. And it is the most undervalued company that I know of. All right. Very interesting. Surely? Athol, Massachusetts. Yes, sir. That's where you're headquartered.

You run income investor. What is your dividend stock? I'm going with an income investor stock. It is McDonald's. The ticker is MCD. An unhealthy train wreck of a product offering from my standpoint as an eco-time. However, it is firing on all cylinders. Same store tails have been fantastic.

I should. I should. 52-week-eye. This company is cleaning house. What's your hidden gem for 2011? I think I've prepared the wrong one. No, I have a dark horse candidate. And this is a company that has stumbled, but still seems to have a fairly strong brand.

And I'm not sure they can pull it off, but I'm willing to give them a chance. And that is Logitech. When I first picked them in Hidden Gems, they were still doing pretty well. It was sort of a quality company at a reasonable price. Then they went big into this Google TV thing, and Google TV is a joke. And I thought it was at the time, but they spent way too much money on it. Google left them hanging with a horrible product. They had a write off all this stuff.

In the meantime, they completely missed out on this whole tablet. iPad thing. I heard of that. Yeah. So they're trying to catch up there. They generally have pretty good product engineering. They've got somebody new in charge and sort of a return of the guy who really knows how to keep the company running. So I think they can come back and do well from here.

The ticker is LOGI. Okay. Seth Jason, James Early, Ryan Gross. Guys, thanks for being here for our year and review special. Thank you, Chris. Thanks to our guest this week, Nell Minna. For more coverage, you can check out video highlights at FooltTV.com. That's it for this edition of Motley Full Money. Our engineer is Steve Brodo. Our producer is

Mac Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.