Motley Fool Money - The WWE's Premiere on Netflix

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Last year, Netflix reportedly spent more than $5 billion for a 10 year rights agreement with the WWE. Last night was the first chapter for viewers. (00:14) Nick Sciple and Ricky Mulvey discuss - The buzz around Monday Night Raw’s debut on Netflix. - What’s allowed in Tribal Combat and why wrestlers don’t respect the boundaries of an announcer's table. - The new “100% margin” opportunities for the WWE. - Why TKO Group Holdings is one of Nick’s largest personal stock investments. Then, (17:58) Alison Southwick and Robert Brokamp discuss some fundamental ways to prepare your portfolio for 2025. Companies discussed: TKO, NFLX Sign up for Stock Advisor and access our members only podcast Stock Advisor Roundtable at www.fool.com/signup Host: “The Cincinnati Cobra” Ricky Mulvey Guests: “Cash Money” Nick Sciple, Alison “Swagger” Southwick, “Hulk Bro-gan” Robert Brokamp Producer: “The Virginia Kid” Mary Long Engineer: Rick “The Answer” Engdahl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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In tribal combat, there are no rules. You're listening to Motley Full Money. I'm Ricky Malvey, joined today by Nick Seippled. Nick, I got a different level of excitement in my voice because we are now a Monday night raw recap show here on Motley Full Money. Appreciate you being here. Great to be here with you, Ricky. We've got lots of friends in the industry on YouTube and other platforms.

Happy to join the international wrestling community. So last night, the former heavyweight champion of cable, made its streaming premiere Monday Night Raw moved to Netflix. We've known about this for about a year now, but last night was the first broadcast. What did you think? What'd you think of the premiere? What'd you think of the broadcast?

It was a massive TV event. It really felt that way. Stars in the crowd from McCauley Culkin to Vanessa Hudgens to Travis Scott, not to mention that the biggest wrestling stars in the world, John Sina, the Rock, Roman Raines, Solo Socalla. So it really felt like a big WrestleMania event, and that's, I think, the way the WW treated it. You have this first launch on Netflix, this one of the biggest cable TV shows of all

time, now moving to streaming, really a monumental moment when you think about how people consume media, but also think about lots of new first-time viewers in the U.S. tuning into Monday Night Raw because it's on Netflix, because it's at the top of the banner, but more importantly, around the world. Netflix is the leading streaming provider in countries like India and the Middle East and Latin America. And these are countries that already have an interest in wrestling, but haven't had access to the content previously because this has mostly been on US cable TV channels. So I think a really monumental moment for Netflix too. Again, continuing to move under these live TV events after their Christmas Day event in the Paul Tyson fight.

This is going to happen every week now. So in a way, this is just another episode of Monday Night Raw, but I think it represents a transition of how we consume media and really how Netflix is trying to bring in customers. I mean, it was another episode, but they brought in the superstars. You're seeing John Cena, you were seeing Dwayne the Rock Johnson, both of whom did not wrestle. Nick, I don't watch a lot of professional wrestling.

I was reminded of how much of wrestling is kind of standing and reacting to what other people have done is a crowd reacts. But this is also a, you know, this is also a program that was dominant but saw some declines. Raw on the USA network saw about 2-ish million average viewers in late 2019. That was down to about 1.5 million viewers in late 2024. This is a platform change, and this is a sporting entertainment product with a very devoted following.

But do you think this platform change is going to restart sort of that long-term viewership growth for the WWE? You know, I would say yes and no. So in some ways, yes, you get out from under the declines in cable subscribership that we've seen, you know, eat away at viewership for the past number of years. In other ways, no, part of what's seen all programs decline in an overall viewership is there's more options. In the Netflix era, you can click on any potential program anywhere. So I think audiences in general are more fractured.

I do think WW is going to see a huge jump in viewership by moving to Netflix, both because of what I said earlier, the kind of new drive-by viewers, that because it's at the top of Netflix, we're going to watch the program, but also folks around the world. Netflix, again, they have rights to Monday Night Raw in the U.S. and around the world, but they also have rights to WWE's other programming, NXT, Smackdown, and the premium live events around the world. So this is going to be at the top of the queue for folks globally

that historically just haven't had access, both WWFans and non-WWFANs. So just having access to those demographics, I think, is going to be great for WWE. And I think on the other side, Netflix gets access to the WWE audience. They have over 100 million subscribers on YouTube. I think lots of those subscribers are outside the U.S. So the ability to bring access to those viewers potentially is going to drive growth in Netflix subscriptions, particularly internationally.

Yeah, I think you're also going to have a younger viewer demographic that, you know, is flipping through to see what's on. And when they want to do that, they go to Netflix. Not so much cable. and every Monday there's going to be an option of Monday Night Raw. There was a new viewer of the WWE last night, and that was my fiancé because I had to put it on. And to order to prep for this, I made it through a little over two hours of it. I couldn't do all three.

I did not get to the CM Punk versus Seth freaking Rollins match Nick. But I made it through most of it. And, you know, my fiance, she was pretending not to watch it. But then she started asking some questions, and I thought how wonderful I'm talking to an expert on this company tomorrow. So let's save it for him. So these were her questions about the WWE, specifically about the first match, which was Tribal Combat Solo Sacoa versus Roman Rains.

I'm going to throw you the questions because I didn't want to answer them. So I'll let you answer them. Here are the questions. Why are they out of the ring? Why is he throwing him at the announce table? I don't think I like this. More of a comment. What's tribal combat?

Why is there a commercial break in the middle of the match? And why are random people coming into the ring? Nick Sipel, your thoughts. Yeah, I saw these questions ahead of time. Try to think of ways that didn't sound ridiculous. Couldn't do it. Happy Sam's tuning in. Lots of viewers like her.

But here's how I'll answer it, right? This is a story made for TV. That's why you're going to see a commercial break in the middle of the match. In the same way, you might see a commercial break, you know, after your favorite FX show goes to a cliffhanger. It's been running for over 1,500 episodes and an unbroken story about good guys and bad guys sometimes with new supernatural powers. and it all makes a sense in the context of the story. We all have to settle our conflict by fighting in the ring. That's what's happening here with Roman Raines and Solosicoa battling out for the Ulafala and who can be the real tribal chief of the bloodline. But I think really it's great that new viewers are tuning in to WWE through Netflix.

And there's going to be a certain subset of folks that just become those dedicated WWE fans. It's not for everybody. And if you're an outsider, it can sound. really ridiculous in the same way that superheroes or reality shows do, but it has a dedicated audience that's always been around. And this is also a product that really travels globally in the same way those other kind of ridiculous media programs and pieces of content do. So, you know, that's WW for you. That's my answer to Sam. It was a unique viewing experience. I don't know if it was an active choice on Sam's part to tune into the program. You mentioned the ads. Let's talk about it because there is a change in the business and change that's meaningful.

for Netflix's business with the introduction of ads. There are now ads in the ring, which is new for wrestling fans. Shout out to Snickers in Fortnite for sponsoring the action. This is new. And additionally, there were commercials that we mentioned. These felt, Nick, to me, old school.

Like, we're talking subway sandwiches, candy commercials, Netflix ads. I was watching the Golden Globes a couple of nights ago. It was pretty much just pharmaceutical ads. And you're seeing sort of these almost older television style commercial. going to this new streaming service. You follow this more closely than me.

Any reflections on the ads or how the WW changed its broadcast since moving to Netflix? Yeah, you know, the character of the ads, I think that just reflects who Netflix is selling to and the type of advertiser maybe they're going after. He did notice a change in the ring when it comes to the number of ads in the ring. Previously, we'd only seen Logan Paul's and a prime drink in the ring. This time, we saw four different in-ring sponsors. You saw Fortnite, as you mentioned, the center ring sponsors, Snickers, Cricket Wireless, Riyadh Center season, which will come back to later, I think, and Hulk Hogan's Real American beer, which I think the promo for didn't go the way

they hoped when Hulk Hogan came out. But the W.W.E management has talked about they have more flexibility and how they run commercial breaks in the U.S. than they had had on previous platforms. One thing I think to watch Netflix is not doing ads for international viewers doing special programming that goes to those folks. I think long term, that's going to change. I think there's going to be an ad in those platforms, not something you saw in the US with something to keep an eye on. Also, on the WW in-ring advertising, this is all 100% margin revenue for WWB, just slapping a logo on the ring and something that we've seen more emphasis on under new management since the TKO merger.

I think you expect to see a lot more of these types of deals as things go on with Netflix leveraging that audience. Netflix deal for the WWE is 10 years, which is very long for sports broadcasting rights when it was reported no exact numbers, but deadline reported that it was more than $5 billion. We've talked about one side of TKO Holdings. The other side is the UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is Nick, a little bit more my speed. I'm happier to talk about that than the WWE.

that's going to be up for a new negotiation as the ESPN deal ends at the end of this year. And both of these businesses, for those listening, about half of the business of TKO. The revenue splits about half for WWE and the UFC. UFC is an interesting one for broadcasting rights because it's enjoyed not just the money from going to ESPN, but also a sign of legitimacy for a new sport that was really frowned upon for the first, I would say, few decades of its creation, right? And, you know, I see that the UFC probably likes the legitimacy that ESPN offers. But when you're seeing this deal with Netflix, the excitement that's happening there,

are you expecting a similar move for the UFC to go to Netflix? Or what are you going to be watching here as these negotiations transpire? Yeah, I think, you know, lots of folks seem to think Netflix is an option, lots of reasons to point to Netflix. So as you mentioned, just the drive-beye viewership, the routine kind of tune-in that Netflix has that maybe you don't see on on other platforms. But I think likely that UFC sticks with ESPN, because Dana White has said that he likes that relationship, legitimacy they get from ESPN. But the real answer is, why not both? Just like how many of the other big sports leagues like the NFL and the

NBA have been able to split their rights among folks like Amazon, ESPN, the NFL, just put a game on Netflix. I think TKO is in a position to split up those UFC rights to be able to get the top dollar. Maybe it keeps. the number, the UFC 305, 306, those types of events on ESPN and moves fight nights and that type of programming to Netflix or Amazon. Maybe we see, you know, the minor leagues of UFC, Dana White's Contender series on Netflix while we remain with ESPN for the rest of the program. I think there's lots of options. What TCO is going to do is maximize the money that they can get from their potential partners. They're in a great position here where lots of people

want to do business with them and all the other big sports. leagues have done their deals already. So this is the last big fish left out there. They're in a great position to be. The other player that comes sprinting into the ring from, I almost said from the top rope, but that metaphor doesn't make sense. Sprinting into the ring from the rafters is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is announced last night. The Royal Rumble is going to Riyadh. Say that five times fast. It's interesting to be because it's meaningful for the business of TKO is Saudi Arabia has taken a larger interest in bringing combat sports and entertainment to its country. They're bringing big heavyweight fights. They've already brought some UFC matches. Now they're bringing more WWE over

there. More sponsorship in general. There was a, there was an event. It's sphere called a, uh, uh, Riyadh season, noche UFC. What is this interest from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia mean for the WWE and UFC parent company, TKO Holdings? Yeah, I mean, the short answer is, is money, right? They have, uh, WWE has had a relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia going back a number of years. They were the first of these big sports companies to carry out events there. It's been tens of millions of dollars each time they carry out an event in Saudi Arabia. Also, now again, as you mentioned, both the UFC and WWI generating sponsorship revenue from Yadzis and trying to promote the sport there. There's been rumors that potentially Dana White is going to get into boxing with the help of the kingdom

of Saudi Arabia, but certainly having money interested in investing in your sport and marketing, your sport has been great for the business of TKO Group. And I think more broadly than Saudi Arabia's international interest in WWE has been extremely meaningful for this business. They just set a new arena record for the gate for this event, the first raw event on Netflix in Los Angeles. But that broke record set previously in 2024 in Berlin and Leon France and other international markets. So I think the international ability to hold these events, receive rights fees, whether it's

from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the Scottish tourism industry, all this is 100% margin revenue for TKO. That all goes to the bottom line. So a little bit ago, actually, I picked up some TKO stock. Part of it is when we had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about wanting to be an arms dealer in this media environment. And plus, my experience in Denver, there was a regular UFC fight night between Rosemah Unis and Tracy Cortez. If you don't know either of those names,

the place was completely sold out for just a regular fight night. And it was so impressive to me. Many investors, though, have been burned by putting money into fight promotions. And on a forward earnings multiple, this is a somewhat expensive stock. You're looking at something in the 50s here.

But I know you think about media, you think about valuation, I think you're also an owner of TKO. What's your bull case for the stock right now? Yeah. So I am an owner of TKO. It's one of my largest personal holdings. I think we laid out part of the bull case earlier when it comes to rights fees.

I think the UFC is going to put up a really big number when they renegotiate their deal, expected to be a 10-year deal for UFC later this year. Also, if you look forward to 2026 and further out, we've got the U.S. rights for premium live events that are up for renegotation. That's for the WWE. Those are currently with Peacock, but that is something I might expect Netflix to pick up to add to those international premium live events. I think both those rights fees, the UFC rights and those premium live events outside in the U.S. excuse me, are going to be a significant step up and generate lots of revenue. Again, 100% margin revenue for TKO. Also, I mentioned earlier, more site fees. We mentioned

what's going on with putting the Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia. I expect that to be a record fee in order to get that event placed in Saudi Arabia. I think you're going to see more international events, higher site fees, and management's also talked about asking for site fees for things like Fight Nights, Monday Night Raw, Smackdown, that sort of thing. Again, lots 100% margin revenue as you're able to get that. More advertising revenue, again, at 100% margin. As we said earlier, they had five ring sponsors this time around with Fortnite and many of those others.

Previously, you just had one or zero, and that's, again, revenue that wasn't there before for the company. At the same time, you're still consolidating the UFC and the WWE teams at the start of 2024. You consolidated the ad team between UFC and WWE. That is fewer costs for the business at the same time, generating significant improvements to operations. and sponsorship revenue. And through the third quarter of 2024, is up 50% year every year. So you have a business that's got several catalysts on the horizon with more sites fees, growing audience with Netflix and more costs getting squeezed out of the business

as those two companies consolidate. So I really like TKO going forward. I think it's in a great spot in media. Nick, we ran a little longer on that story than we normally do. But you know what? If I have a motley full analyst telling me about a company, that's one of their largest personal holdings. I'm going to reserve, I'm going to hold space for it on the show. Appreciate you being here. Thank you for your time and your insight.

Thanks, Ricky. Anytime. If you enjoyed this conversation and you're ready to take your investing chops to the next level, head over to fool.com slash sign up to join Stock Advisor. That's our flagship investing service. As a Stock Advisor member, you'll get two new stock picks each month, rankings of a whole scorecard of companies, and access to all episodes of our premium podcast, Stock Advisor. Roundtable. That show is only available to premium Motley Fool members. It focuses on foolish recommendations and takes a deeper dive into the businesses we cover featuring full analysts you already know from listening to Motley Full Money. Tom appears regularly on bonus episodes of

Stock Advisor Roundtable to discuss what's new in the Stock Advisor universe and to answer questions sent in from Motleyful members. That's full.com slash sign up and I will also include a link in the show notes. Up next, Robert Broke, Camp and Allison Southwick offer up some tactical ways to improve your investing processes as you kick off the new year. What does leadership really look like? On the power of advice, a new podcast series from Capital Group, you'll hear from athletes, entrepreneurs, and executives who've led on the field in the boardroom and in their communities. It's not about titles. It's about impact. Discover what drives them and the advice they carry forward. Subscribe and start listening today. Published

by Capital Client Group, Inc. January is the time of year when you review how your portfolio performed, evaluate the managers of your portfolio, yourself included, and maybe do some rebalancing. But it can also be a time to do some soul searching about what kind of an investor you want to be. Yeah, as an investor, you really have a lot of decisions to make, right? How much money you'll put in various assets and how you'll get exposure to those assets. Are you going to buy individual securities or just invest in mutual funds or index funds? Are you happy with your current portfolio or should you move to some things around?

And finally, are you going to make all these decisions on your own, or are you going to get some professional help? And the start of the new year is the perfect time to sort of reevaluate all those decisions. Now, those are a lot of big decisions. So where should someone start? Let's start with something boring. Cash, right? Everyone needs it. You need to pay your bills. You need it to cover expenses that you'll have in the next few years. That money, of course, should not be in the stock market. It's a year later. So you're closer to your goal, so it might be time to add some money to your cash cushion. And then there's the emergency fund of three to six months worth of essential expenses to cover in case, you know, you lose your job or you have an unexpected big ticket expense. And I say this

as someone who woke up on Christmas Eve morning to a busted water heater in a flooded basement. So you're going to have that money set aside. So start by determining how much cash you need and then make sure you're getting a competitive yield on it, right? The Federal Reserve cut rates a few times last year, likely going to be another cut or two this year. But it's still possible to get 4% or more on your cash, at least for now, but you have to go search for it. One place to search is Motley Fool Money, a Motley Full website that has the same name as this podcast used to be known as The Ascent. And make sure you do the same for the cash you have in your brokerage account. The default options are often well below what you could get

from a money market fund or even a higher yielding cash option in the brokerage account, but you just got to do a little more digging. Okay, so it starts with choosing how much to have in cash and getting a decent yield on that money, how do you determine how much you should have in stocks and bonds? Well, you can come up with that on your own or get professional help with doing it. But even if you go it alone, it can help to see what other professionals are doing.

And the easiest way to get both help and to see what Wall Street thinks is via target date funds. These are funds that have a reasonable mix of cash, bonds, and stocks of all types. They do all the rebalancing for you. And they gradually get more conservative as the retirement date in the name of the fund approaches. I took a look at the average allocations for some of the funds offered by BlackRock, Fidelity, Two Real Price, and Vanguard, and here's how they currently break down. So a target date fund for 2025, in other words,

someone who's retiring this year, average allocation, 46% stocks, 54% bonds and cash. A 2035 fund, so someone retiring in a decade, 66% stocks, 34% cash in bonds, and then a 2045 fund, 85% stocks, 15% bonds of cash. So, I think those are reasonable starting points for someone who has maybe sort of a middle of the road, moderate risk tolerance. If you're a more aggressive investor who's more comfortable with risk, you could probably increase the stock allocations by maybe five to 10 percentage points. Also, if you dig into the funds, you'll see how they're allocated to assets like small caps, maybe different types of bonds, international stocks. What may be surprising if you look at these is that they tend to have more than a third of the stock allocation

invested in international stocks, which really weighed on the performance of Target Date Funds since the U.S. has outperformed for well over a decade now. But one of these years, international stocks will outperform. We just don't know when. Now, the downside to Target Date Funds is that they're intended for a very broad audience, millions of people. So if you're looking for more personalization, you might want to check out Robo Advisors. Two of the bigger providers of Robo advising is Betterment and Wellfront, though some of the big name firms also have these types of services like Vanguard and Schwab. They charge a bit more around 0.25% a year, but are more customized to your risk tolerance. Some also offer benefits like tax loss harvesting,

and maybe a little bit of financial planning. A third option, if you're looking for professional help, of course, is actually hiring a financial advisor. This will be a good bit more expensive, but you'll be able to meet regularly with an actual human being who also ideally can create a comprehensive financial plan for you. We like fee-only. financial advisors, you pay them for their advice. There are fewer conflicts of interest in terms of commissions and things like that. And you can find fee-only advisors at the Garrett Planning Network, G-A-R-R-E-T-T, NAFFSA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, and the X-Y Planning Network. All that said, you'll have more control over your allocations as well as

how you do the rebalancing if you do it all yourself. And again, I think the broad allocations and Target-Dade funds are a good starting point, which you can then adjust. for your risk tolerance. A couple of other sort of foolish rules of thumb to consider are limiting the amount of your portfolio in one stock to 10 percent and limiting the amount that you have in one sector to around 20 to 25 percent. Those aren't hard and fast rules, but it's an indication that your portfolio is becoming more concentrated. All right, we don't really talk much about bonds here at the Motley Fool because, well, unless you're Steve Roydo, most fools find them pretty boring. But they also have not been good investments. In fact, over the last five years,

the Vanguard total bond market ETF has lost money. So, do investors really need bonds? Historically, you invested in bonds because they earned anywhere from one to three percent above cash. But that has not been the case for the last five years or so. In fact, we've been going through just about the worst stretch for bonds in U.S. history, thanks to a mixture of really low interest rates during the pandemic, and then the rise of interest rates since then, because when rates rise, bond prices fall. The forward outlook for bonds looks better today. with the 10-year Treasury yielding around 4.6%. So I think bonds are worth considering, but you'll get more predictability from owning individual

bonds versus bond funds. When you own an individual bond, you know exactly how much interest you'll get. You'll know how much you'll get when the bond matures, assuming the issuer is still in business. With bond funds, they're kind of move up and down and you don't have quite that certainty, except for one type of bond fund that I think is worth considering. They're called target maturity bond ETFs or define maturity ETFs. They only own bonds that mature in the same year, so you get some of the benefits of owning individual bonds. Two of the biggest issuers of these are in VESCO, and these types of

ETFs through Vesco are called Bullet Shares, and then I shares. Their type of this type of bond fund is called an I bond, but it's not to be confused with the I bonds that Uncle Sam issues. All that said about bonds, I won't blame you if you just want to stick mostly with higher yield in cash or treasury bills these days, because you're not getting that much extra yield from bonds right now. Now it's time to talk about the investments near and dear to fool's hearts, stocks, or as we sometimes pronounce it, stocks. There are a few ways to invest in the stock market. Yes, the Motley Fool was founded more than 30 years ago on the belief that the stock market is the best avenue for creating long-term wealth. And the good news is that you can actually

buy the entire stock market via an index fund. So let's start there. Unless you're an avid stock picker, I'm a big believer in making index funds the foundation of your portfolio. The most common choices are a fund based on the SEP 500 or an index fund just based on the total US stock market, and those are great starting points. But there are also index funds based on different types of indexes. And you can use them as a way to get diversified, low-cost exposure to a segment of the market that you don't have, such as international stocks, small-cap stocks, many different sectors, even a diversified collection of dividend pairs. The bottom line is that index funds are really hard to beat because they don't pay a team of fund advisors, managers to pick and choose the investments so their costs are very low. Over most 10-year periods, index funds beat 80 to 90 percent of actively managed funds they compete against.

Actively managed funds being those ones that do pay a team of managers to pick the investments. You'd think that they could beat an index fund, but the evidence is that most don't. Okay, so you could just stop there. You could build a diversified collection of index funds, rebalance once a year or so, and spend your time on things other than your portfolio. But if you're listening to this podcast, my guess is that you want to devote more time to it and you want to pick individual stocks, likely because you're hoping to beat the market. When you go this route, when you move more of your portfolio into individual stocks, the range of potential outcomes widens. Greater potential reward, but also greater risk. So, for example, three of the best performing stocks in 2024 were NVIDIA, which returned 171%,

Vistra, which returned 260% and Pallantir, which returned 341%. Just over the past decade, Nvidia has returned an average of 75% a year. You're not going to get those types of returns and index funds. On the other hand, you usually won't see an index fund drop 70% to 90% a year or just lose everything, as you will, with individual stocks. You may also often hear that the U.S. stock market has historically always recovered from a downturn, which is true. You can't say that about individual stocks. I'll just give you one example. Cisco traded above $80 a share in 2000, then fell to $10 a share by 2002, and today it's around $60.

So it's still 25% below its all-time high set almost 25 years ago. Owning individual stocks requires more time, more knowledge, and attention. But if your goal is to be the market. It's the way to go. And it can be very rewarding, both financially and intellectually. If you're going to go that route, one foolish rule of thumb is to own at least 25 stocks. And frankly, just be honest with yourself about whether it's working for you. Choose an appropriate benchmark. Could be the S&B 500. Could be a total stock market index fund. Could be, you know, if you're just focusing on value stocks, just choose a value stock index fund or just a value stock index. and keep yourself accountable, right? If you're not beating that benchmark after five or so years,

despite all your time and attention, maybe you'd be better off just investing in an index fund and spending your time doing other things. All right, we've talked about how to allocate someone's current portfolio, cash, bond stocks, but how should investors think about account types and where to put new contributions? All right, we've covered asset allocation. Now let's talk asset location. Yeah, and the account you choose depends on your goal, right? So for retirement, go with a 401k or an IRA, you're going to get tax advantages. You want to contribute to a 401k at least to get the full employer match and then go to an IRA if your 401K isn't so great, meaning maybe it has high costs or limited investment choices, right? Maybe you want to pick individual stocks and you can't do that in most 401ks. On the other hand, you may just stick with the 401k if you're not eligible for a Roth IRA or you're not eligible to deduct your contributions to the traditional IRA. Generally speaking, you'll pay a penalty on withdrawals from retirement accounts before age 59 and a half, though there's some exceptions. So if you need the money before that age, you're probably better off investing in a regular

brokerage account. But you'll pay taxes every year. So you want to lean toward tax efficient investments. Maybe stocks that don't pay dividends or index funds are actually pretty efficient as well. You would use your retirement accounts for your tax inefficient investments like REITs, maybe higher bonds. If you have a Roth account, you choose the Roth for the investments that you think have been greatest potential because that's the tax-free account and that's the one you want to grow the most.

Then I'll just add one other type of account. If you're saving to pay for an education, choose a 529 or a Coverdell. For both of them, withdrawals are tax-free as long as the money is used for qualified education expenses. The biggest difference is with the 529, much higher contribution limits. Really, there's no contribution limit. Pretty much have to choose from a menu of mutual funds. The CoverDell, you can only contribute $2,000 a year, but you can use it to invest in individual stocks. Then finally, on this topic, as you think about which accounts will receive new money this year, use those contributions to rebalance your portfolio. So put money in the assets that you think you don't quite have enough in. Could be cash, could be bonds, could be different types of

stocks that are kind of lagging. Or if you're retired, use withdrawals to pair back overweighted assets. Maybe you've had some stocks that have done really well. You might want to sell some shares some shares of those to reduce your risk, but also that's how you're going to raise some cash to pay your bills. All right, bro. How I usually end our little chats is by asking you to put a nice, big, pretty bow on it, just like you probably put a big bow on that busted hot water heater. I wish. Oh, my goodness gracious, what an expensive endeavor that has been. Anyways, the most important thing really to keep in mind is that with all these things I've talked about, there really aren't mutually exclusive. You can do a little bit of everything.

And frankly, that's what I do. Most of my portfolio is in index funds, but I do have some actively managed funds that I try to stay on top of. About 30 percent of my portfolio is in individual stocks. I even have some target date funds in my wife's retirement account because I want that to be sort of a set-it-and-forget-it type of account. So you don't have to just choose one or the other. Over the past month, I've heard of Motleyful members who are telling me that they decided they want to move more from individual stocks to index funds, partially because they want more diversification. And I've heard from others who are going the other direction. One is because he retired and he has more time to spend on his portfolio. So, I think the bottom

line is try a few avenues that seem compelling to you, then let your interest, your available time, and most importantly, the results dictate how your investment strategy will evolve. Happy investing. As always, people on the program may have interests 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. All personal finance content follows Motleyful editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers. The Motleyful only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening. We will be back tomorrow.