Motley Fool Money - What Now for Investors?

Episode Date: January 15, 2016

The stock market enters correction territory. Is it time for investors to buy? Our analysts tackle that question, delve into GoPro's dramatic fall, and share some stocks on their radar. Plus, Thomson ...Reuters transportation editor Joe White shares some highlights from the North American International Auto Show and weighs in on the future of autonomous vehicles. For a free preview of our Supernova service, go to www.SupernovaRadio.Fool.com .   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:25 Gig speeds available via hot spots to Comcast Business and mobile customers only. Actual Wi-Fi speeds vary, not guaranteed. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money Radio Show. It's the Motley Full Money Radio show. I'm Chris Selling, joining me in studio this week from Million Dollar Portfolio, Jason Moser and Matt Argusinger and from Motley Fool Deep Value Ron Gross. Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey, hey, hey, hey. We've got the latest from big banks, big retail and more. We will head to Detroit for a report from the North American International Auto Show.
Starting point is 00:01:08 And as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin this week with the market writ large because the U.S. stock market has officially entered correction territory raw. And all three major indices have now fallen more than 10 percent off their recent highs. And I know it's not a great start to 2016. But if you're just looking at the headlines, there is a lot of fearmongering going on out there. It can create a lot of anxiety. The last time I checked the numbers, the S&P was back to mid-24. The Rouss, 2000, mid-2013 levels. So we have a real pullback here. This is not one of those, you know, a couple points here, a couple points there.
Starting point is 00:01:47 This is real and it's perfectly reasonable for investors to feel anxiety and to feel worried about this. So what do we do? That's the real question. And we could analyze the details here ad nauseum like some of those other business shows do. And you can start with economic growth and move to unemployment and interest rates and the strength of the dollar and inflation. China and moved to North Korea and move to the Middle East and what about oil and what
Starting point is 00:02:12 about the geopolitical and what about the politics here at home? I don't think that's the right thing to do. Ron, you just took everything. I think the right thing to do because it's actually not even possible to do all that. The right thing to do is what we always say is to put capital into solid companies that you believe in over a lifetime of investing. And if you do that, data has proven that you're going to be okay. I personally was gun-shy earlier this week.
Starting point is 00:02:37 I started to think about buying. I started, and I put the brakes on. I said, let me just think a little bit. But that's where I've come out now. Perfect time to start to put money back into the markets. You don't have to do it all at once, but you can start to bleed money in. Well, and to pivot off the emotional part of that, Maddie, literally a headline this week I saw was sell everything. Again, that kind of thing. Not really helping. Well, then there's another headline this morning that says, you know, this is in 2008. It's actually worse. I mean, we have to really.
Starting point is 00:03:07 pump the brakes here on a lot of things. I mean, a 10% correction, we're probably a little below that now, but that almost happens pretty much on average every year. In fact, so we've had kind of two 10% corrections in the last six months, but we went about three years without really having any kind of correction. I mean, the market was just straight up for three years or so since 2011, so it's not surprising. I agree with Ron completely. I mean, as fools, as investors, we really kind of were tempted to rush in here, look at a lot of our favorite ideas, down 15, 20%, and say, oh, it's time to buy. The bargains are out there, right? Well, there are some big, there are some issues out there in the economy, in the markets. And I would say, we're
Starting point is 00:03:46 going to get a lot of information come earning season, which is we're starting right now and over the next few weeks. I think a lot of companies are going to throw in the kitchen sink with their results and probably set the bar pretty low for 2016. And I think so, yeah, if you have some companies on your radar that you're watching that you believe in, show a little patience, maybe buy a little now, wait for more information. And Jason, as Maddie said, some of these stocks are starting to look like bargains, but some of them are down for a really good reason. Sure, yeah. Plenty of them are down for very good reasons. And I think it's easy to kind of go into a market like this and say, oh, everything is just getting peppered. It's a great buying opportunity. And I like that Ron sort of referred back to his, you know, put his foot on the brakes there for a second. Take a look back and sort of think for a minute, well, maybe things could get a little bit worse. Let's exhibit some patience here and sort of understand a little bit better what's going on. Because, I mean, you feel like we've been talking for the past year about, well, we want to see unemployment get better. We want to see the consumer become more confident. Well, in theory, we should be there, right? I mean, unemployment is better. The consumer should be more confident of energy prices are low. The consumer should be stronger right now. But the consumer is not. I think we have a tenant of consumer out there that you even see it in homeowners equity today. It's $4.2 trillion available, up $600 billion.
Starting point is 00:05:04 of the last year, but consumers aren't out there tapping that equity, spending it on things like vacations and new cars. They're spending it maybe on property, upgrades to their homes. They're being a bit more cautious in this environment. It's worth noting that the stock market had gotten a little bit ahead of itself. Historically speaking, the multiple was a bit higher. So this is, I think, a reasonable pullback, but I think it's also reasonable to exercise a little patience and just hang in there. And we always say you should not have money in the stock market that you need over the next, let's say, one to three years.
Starting point is 00:05:38 And this is exactly the reason. If you need the money six months from now for whatever, a wedding or a home purchase, you could be in dire straits at the moment if the market doesn't rebound quickly. So if you've heated that advice, my recommendation is don't look at the value of your portfolio. On a daily basis, a weekly basis, maybe not even at all. Take a look at your cash balance or the money that you can put. put into as cash and think about building for the future and ignore the value of your portfolio. Yeah, I think we're on spot on there.
Starting point is 00:06:09 I mean, you could even go out as far as five years and say, put money in the market that you know you're not going to need for the next five years, depending on your age, right? If you're 40, 45 years old, maybe look at that five-year sort of benchmark there. If you're a little bit older, you're a little bit more in that stage of protecting your wealth, then that timeline it decreases, right? Then it gets to be a little bit smaller, three, one year maybe. But definitely that, you go in with sort of those expectations set already. And then it becomes a little bit easier to control your emotions in times like these.
Starting point is 00:06:42 Let's get to some of the company earnings this week. Intel's fourth quarter profits and revenue. Both came in higher than expected Wall Street. Not impressed, though. Shares of the chipmaker falling more than 9% on Friday. What gives, Maddie? Well, it really comes down, I think, to their data center business. This is kind of the growth engine for the company for Intel nowadays.
Starting point is 00:06:59 I mean, we know what's happening to the PC market. It's kind of in a secular decline. So they really have invested a lot in this data center business. It had a decent year in 2015 up 11 percent, but below what Intel's been targeting. Intel's been looking at 15 percent annual growth in this business, at least projecting that. It dropped to 11 percent in 2015 and dropped to 5 percent in Q4. And the CEO made some kind of cautious comments about that going forward in 2016. They also saw, as we've heard from almost every company, that there's a bit of a slowdown going on in China. Didn't know that was going on. That's kind of affecting their PC market. I didn't realize that China is now Intel's largest
Starting point is 00:07:35 PC market, and so a weakness there is really going to hurt them. We recently sold Intel. Jason knows this in a million-dollar portfolio. I think it was the right move. It's not quite that tech bell, whether it used to be. It's very large, and it's still very dependent on the PC market. Fourth quarter results for Wells Fargo were mixed. Profits a little bit higher than expected, but overall revenue coming in a little bit light, Jason. Yeah, I mean, we know that Wells Fargo is the leading the leading bank, domestic bank here in regard to mortgages. It's the energy portfolio, interestingly enough, for not only Wells Fargo, but really banks all over the country that are taking
Starting point is 00:08:11 hits because of all of these falling energy prices. And when these prices get lower and these banks have a lot of outstanding loans to all of these energy companies around the country, while it just becomes a little bit more difficult to collect on those loans. Thankfully, for Wells Fargo, it's so big it can't fail, right, Chris? No, I mean, honestly, it is so big that that it's not something that is necessarily going to keep them from performing. And it's interesting, I mean, the reserves they set aside to cover potential loan losses almost doubled from a year ago. And its net interest margin did fall a little bit.
Starting point is 00:08:47 But again, I mean, this is a bank that is the leader in the mortgage market. They have a number of different ways they make their money. But I think this all does kind of get back to the question of, I mean, these big banks, are they really too big to fail? Are they still so big that if we do run into another crisis, it would cause some type of domino effect throughout our entire economy, given that we are a credit-based economy today. So very well-run bank, but again, I think you have to kind of look at this greater banking industry and wonder, has anything really changed? I'm not so sure that it has.
Starting point is 00:09:18 The holiday retail numbers are starting to come in, and so far it's not looking that great. Shares of Best Buy hitting a 52-week low this week after their same store sales fell just over 1% run. Blaming it on mobile phones, the same-star sales and the computing and mobile phone business down 6.7% during that all-important holiday season. Not great. A couple areas of positive news, online sales, was up 12, 13%. Consumer electronics up 4%. Appliances up 13%. But that computing and mobile business is such a big business for them, that it's hard to combat that. And it kind of really told the story here. So they're not planning to cut any more stores. They've done a pretty good job since 2013 when the new CEO came in. They've cut costs. They've revamped their
Starting point is 00:10:07 inventory. They've reduced discounts a bit. So they've done what they can do, I think. But this is just a tough business. And in the wake of folks like Amazon, it's really difficult to compete. Before the show, we noticed that Walmart just announced their closing 269 of their stores, including all of their smaller Express store concepts. And that's to focus on. on e-commerce because that's where the business is right now. And it's a tough road. Sorry, I was going to say, I think that's a watershed moment for Walmart, by the way. They put a lot into that. They know the urban market, and that's what they've been going after. And to sort of pivot away from that and to really say they're going to focus on
Starting point is 00:10:47 e-commerce. I don't know. I've said it before. I just think Walmart is a slow-moving train wreck, and it's just getting, it's picking up momentum. Well, you look back to those retail numbers for the holiday season here. I mean, retail and general, came in at about 3 percent well below the NRF's projections there. But e-commerce, on the flip side of that, was actually well above their expectations around 9 percent. So the winners are plain to see. Coming up, can great coaches make great CEOs? We will discuss that and more as we dip into the full mailbag. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Starting point is 00:11:23 Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser, Matt Argusinger, and Ron Gross. Guys, another week, another new radio station started. with the Motley Full Money. Affiliate family, K-I-N-X FM 102.7 in Great Falls, Montana. Ron, you want to hop on a plane, hit Montana? I'm there. Can we ride some horses? Good skiing?
Starting point is 00:11:43 Maybe not in January. Maybe we... It shows you what I know about horses. Let's wait for the summer. Few stocks having as bad a week as GoPro shares down nearly 30% after the company lowered guidance and announced it is laying off 7% of the staff. Maddie, this is one of those stocks we talked about earlier. earlier, this is down for a reason.
Starting point is 00:12:02 Oh, yeah. I mean, where do we start here? I mean, you know, they're now targeting revenue of 435 million for the recent quarter. That's down from a range of 500 to 550 million. So that's a big, big drop-off. They're seeing a lot of weakness in sell-through of the Hero 4 cameras, which is the latest generation of their wearable cameras. To me, the big worry here is inventory. You know, if you go back to the end of September going into the holiday quarter, they had almost
Starting point is 00:12:26 $300 million in inventory up 147 percent from the prior year. Obviously, GoPro put a lot into this final quarter. They did take a small charge for obsolete inventory, or they're intending to now in the past quarter. I just think that's going to pick up. I think they've got way too much inventory. They're probably going to have to take charges against that, so expect a lot more earnings down drafts for GoPro going forward. It doesn't look pretty. I still, I'm not in the camp that says GoPro's a fad, which a lot of people, you know, people in market have kind of concluded about the company. I still think there's a lot going for it. I like the partnership with YouTube. I like Nick Woodman.
Starting point is 00:13:01 lot. I do think there's a lot of value to the brand, but it might take a while to turn it around. How much pressure do you think management feels right now about the transition towards becoming a media company? I think from a financial media perspective, there's a lot of pressure. I don't think Nick Woodman's going to change anything about how he's managing the company, though. Radio at Fool.com is our email address. Radio at Fool.com from Courtney Whitmer in Leesburg, Virginia. My husband and I are huge fans of Shop House with the recent brand damage that Chipotle has suffered? Do you think this might spur them to try and develop their other brands as a
Starting point is 00:13:34 means of driving growth? Jason, obviously, Chipotle owns Shop House, the Asian concept, pizzeria locale. I don't know. It might be time to start ramping up plans for those two. It could be. I mean, we know that call in, call out every quarter management continues to stay on message that the namesake Chipotle stores are going to be the main source of growth here for the coming years. And honestly, I mean, I feel like if this is one management, team that was really feeling the pressure to perform in the short run, then they might try to pull that lever. But this is a different management team, I think we have here. And Steve Ells, I think, listening to the conference the other day, they really got a lot
Starting point is 00:14:14 of expectations out there, eliminated a little bit of uncertainty, explained how they're going to sort of make things better, and the focus really is primarily to bring customers back into Chipotle and regain their customers' trust. So, you know, most people don't even realize that Shop House or even Pizzeria locale are affiliated with Chipotle at all. I think that's probably a positive in the sense that it's created to a separate identity. So they will pursue those growth avenues in time as warranted. But for now, the message is clear that they will be focusing primarily on the Chipotle namesake stores. From Matt Sportone in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm a stock advisor member, but I have a question regarding how I'm investing. I invest 8% of my pay
Starting point is 00:14:58 into my employer's 401 plan, and they match up to 6%, which is great. I've also been buying shares of individual stocks every month, but only a share at a time. My plan is to diversify my portfolio with at least 15 stocks and then beef up and buy some more shares for each of them as time goes on. Does this strategy make sense? More specifically, buying only one share at a time. Great question, Ron. And great about the 401K plan. Yeah. So, Matt, in general, I think what you're doing is fantastic and you're going about it in a great way. A couple of thoughts. So when you only buy one share of stock, you're likely paying a very high commission rate as a percent of your purchase. For example, you buy one share of Starbucks at $57. You pay $9 in commission. That's a 16 percent fee, a 16 percent commission rate. So the stock has to go up 16 percent for you to just break even on that one share. That's a bit tough. I would prefer to see you maybe accumulate enough money where you can buy several shares of a company to try to get that commission rate down. In fact, we even say try to keep it under 2%.
Starting point is 00:16:05 So the other thing is I'd like to see you have a measure of diversification, either through an S&P 500 index fund or an ETF. Perhaps you do have that through your 401K that you mentioned. If so, that's great. I think you're doing a great job. Just give some thoughts to those commissions. Yeah, fees always matter. Always. Before we get to our final email,
Starting point is 00:16:25 Matti just want to mention Supernova. One of the services that you work on is open for a short amount of time to new members. This is one of our services that only is open to members a couple of times a year. For those who are interested, what's the deal with Supernova? Sure. I love Supernova. I've been there since the beginning. If you're a stock advisor or rulebreakers or a David Gardner fan, I think you'll find a lot of value in Supernova, which is essentially taking portfolios, making portfolios out of those great stock recommendations. I'll just throw out that, you know, with this Supernova Open in particular, we're launching a new mission. It's called Odyssey 2. It's a new portfolio. You're getting on the ground floor
Starting point is 00:17:01 of that. And it's pivoting kind of, or it's following the footsteps of Odyssey 1, which is the portfolio that I'm on. And if you're, if I go back to 2012 when we launched, Odyssey 1 came out of the gate within a market very much like this, very volatile, things going in the red. Odyssey 2 is seeing that same situation. But these days, you know, if you look at Odyssey 1's performance, we've done great. It takes time. And I think you're with supernova you're getting on and the ground floor of a good. great new portfolio. We've got a micro site for anyone interested looking for more information, a lot of great
Starting point is 00:17:31 information including some short videos featuring Matt Argusinger, David Gardner and others talking about investing, also individual stocks. You can find it. Just go to supernova radio.fool.com. That's supernova radio.fool.com. Final email and fresh off this week's National Championship game in college football from John Hadley, who writes, I heard an ESPN analyst say that if he had a a Fortune 500 company. He would hire Alabama coach Nick Sabin to run it. It's obviously an off-the-cuff comment, but does it have any validity? I know that one of our executives here at the Motley Fool, Karen McDonough, big Alabama fan. She's not looking for Coach Saban to leave anytime soon, but what do you think?
Starting point is 00:18:12 John, I think that's a great question. I'm a big fan of systems. And I think Nick Saban's got one of the best football systems in the country. So, you know, if you think about putting him in charge of a Fortune a venture company, he would hate dealing with investors. and the media, he would hate it. I mean, he would loathe that. But I think if he came in, he would find great people. He'd set up a great system. I almost see him as more of a chairman of the board in a way, rather than just a day-to-day CEO guy. But either way, I love that. Yeah, just in line with the systems. And you know what they say? Great leaders surround themselves with great and even better people. And I think that Sabin is one of those guys who's
Starting point is 00:18:46 proven it year in and year out. He just really attracts great people from his players to his coaching staff. And so, yeah, whether it's CEO or chairman of the board, I think he could do it. Also, I work for Belichick, by the way. I'm a huge Bill Belichick fan, as we all know. So, all right, guys, we'll lost a couple of listeners. Oh, no. All right, guys, we'll see you later in the show. Up next, we're heading to the Motor City for an in-depth look at the automotive industry. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill.
Starting point is 00:19:26 The North American International Auto Show kicked off this week in Detroit with more than 850,000 people expected to attend. Here to help us sort through some of the headlines. As Joe White Transportation Editor for Thompson Reuters, he joins me now from Detroit. Joe, I know it's a busy week, so thanks for being here. Sure. Anytime. What is your headline for the 2016 Auto Show? Well, you know, here's what a lot of people said, and it's certainly what I felt,
Starting point is 00:19:53 which is that the Real Auto Show this year was the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which was the week before the Detroit Auto Show press days. Several of the big automakers, Ford General Motors, Mercedes, Dylmer-Benz, had bigger announcements in Las Vegas, particularly as it relates to their autonomous vehicle strategies and their technology strategies, you know, their ideas for getting into car sharing, going after Uber and going after Google. All of that was out at C.E.
Starting point is 00:20:30 So anyway, let's get back to Detroit because there were a few things here. The new E-Class Mercedes E-Class sedan was unveiled, at least officially, here in Detroit, although there was a pretty big sneak peek in Vegas. Chrysler, redesigned, renamed, relaunched its minivan, and they're hoping to get the millennials who grew up in the back seats of minivans 20 or 30 years ago to buy another one for their kids. Did they come up with a new word to replace the word minivan? No, but they did come up with a new name for their minivan, which was actually an old name that they're recycling.
Starting point is 00:21:07 They called it now the Pacifica, the Chrysler Pacifica. People with really good memories might know that that was a name that the Chrysler put on essentially kind of a large station wagon that they built during the days when they were owned by Daimler. which didn't do very well, but they brought that name back, and they've put it on this new minivan, which they're trying to position as something like a crossover and something like a minivan. They're trying to hit sort of a rifle shot. It's still got sliding doors.
Starting point is 00:21:43 That's what counts. Honda Civic wins car of the year. Volvo XC90 gets truck of the year. You cover this industry a lot more closely than I do. I don't know about you. the fact that Volvo's winning truck of the year was a little bit of a surprise to me. Yeah, you know, it's sort of like the Oscars where these movies that no one ever sees win the awards. And I don't mean that in a bad way.
Starting point is 00:22:05 I've driven the XC90s. It's an awfully nice vehicle, and it really does seem that Volvo is getting back on track. But you're right. I mean, it's still a small brand in this country. But, you know, Volvo is trying to do something pretty interesting with that vehicle. They're trying to make it more efficient, more of a technology. showcase. And so we'll see. We'll see if people pick up on the brand and recognize that they have something new to say. That segment is awfully competitive, the sort of large-ish luxury sport utility
Starting point is 00:22:39 vehicles. So they have some work to do. The German companies are definitely after some of a lot of the same customers that they're after. You mentioned the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, and in advance at that, one of the reports was that Ford Motor and Google were going to announce a partnership, a joint venture on self-driving cars. We haven't heard anything since. What is the latest with this dance between Ford Motor and Google? Well, first of all, I mean, you're right. It was the dog that did not bark. And I won't take it a lot of time, but I will say I've been to a couple of no-show rodeos like this, between within with involving Google and established the automotive companies in the past.
Starting point is 00:23:24 I mean, I remember the Continental was left at the, it was left kind of tapping their toes at a press conference in Frankfurt one year after a whole bunch of rumors that they were going to have some big alliance with Google. Now, here's what did happen. What did happen was that John Krafich, who is the auto industry veteran Google, has hired to run their self-driving car project just a few months ago, came to Detroit, spoke at the Automotive News World Congress, which is adjacent to the opening of the Detroit show, and essentially said he looked out at a room full of five or 600 automotive industry executives and said, I want to partner with you. I'm looking for partners.
Starting point is 00:24:01 I want to partner with all of you. He didn't say that he had any partners, and Ford has not said either that they aren't working with Google or talking to Google or that they are. It appears that what's going on is that these companies are trying to figure out how can we work together and still compete if that's what it comes to. Because Google certainly is either or can be both a collaborator with the big auto companies or a threat. And maybe not or and a threat. Clearly, Google wants its Android system in the dashboard of your car, connecting your smartphone, to the dashboard and the screens and the infotainment system of your car. There's an area of
Starting point is 00:24:43 collaboration. But whether or not the car companies really want Google to basically take over the brains of a self-driving car that they might build, that's not at all clear. They're very, very wary of that because they saw what happened to the telephone handset makers. They became essentially marginalized in the value chain, and they don't want to do that. Last year, we saw record sales for the auto industry and the falling price of gas certainly helped with that. When you talk to people in Detroit, how much credit is given to the price of gas being low? And to what extent is their concern that when gas prices rise again, it may have a negative impact on sales? There's a lot of concern about that, although you don't necessarily hear it from Indus,
Starting point is 00:25:29 from automaker executives, but you hear it from just about everybody else. Mike Jackson, who's the head of Auto Nation, which is the largest dealership chain in the United States, again came here to that same conference, the Auto News Conference, and essentially said to the industry, look, we're hitting a plateau in sales. It's good. It's a good plateau. It's a good plateau. It's a high plateau. And it's time for us to pay more attention to inventories and not overload on cars. Be very careful about having too many vehicles in the dealer lots and suddenly have sales slow down to a really significant degree and leave us kind of holding the bag. You're right. I mean, volatility of gas prices is a big problem for the automakers.
Starting point is 00:26:17 Right now, it's kind of a good problem to have because the large, expensive vehicles are going off a lot very briskly, but the small cars that they spent a lot of money developing over the last five years when gas was expensive are now just kind of sitting there. And the electric cars that they need to sell in California and several other states to meet with regulatory requirements, they aren't selling. And those are problems. And I think, honestly, I think if you pour truth serum into the drinks of the CEOs of big car companies, they would tell you, you know what, we need a gas tax that keeps gasoline, you know, pretty, you know, $3 and above so that we can sell these efficient cars that California and other government agencies want us to sell.
Starting point is 00:27:03 You're listening to Motley Full Money talking with Joe White, Transportation Editor for Thompson Reuters. One of the big stories of 2015 in the business world, not just the auto industry, but in the business world, was the Volkswagen emissions scandal. And this week, French authorities raided the offices of automaker Renault as part of its investigation into Renault's emissions. As of this taping, right now, there's no evidence of cheating, but Joe, if this happens to another automaker, aren't the knives going to come out? Isn't every regulatory agency going to start knocking on the door of every automaker, regardless of suspicion? Yes, is the short answer. A slightly longer answer is that this is kind of the nightmare for the auto industry. And it was always kind of there pretty much from day one of the Volkswagen scandal that regulators would say,
Starting point is 00:27:59 wait a minute, if these guys are cheating, is anybody else cheating? are we, the regulators doing enough to police the industry and make sure that everybody's playing by the rules? And so, yeah, the situation with Renault is pretty dramatic. I mean, the stock took it just a beating today. And even though it's not all clear whether Renault has done something wrong, I think that it's pretty clear in Europe, and I suspect in the United States,
Starting point is 00:28:26 not a suspect I know in the United States, because the EPA has said so, that regulatory scrutiny of the carmakers' complaints, with emissions is going up, that almost certainly means that costs are going up. And whether any of these, even if none of these other companies are found to have done something wrong or illegal, all of them face the prospect of much tougher, much tougher compliance regimes, likely higher compliance costs, more testing, and all of that. And in Europe, it's pretty clear that the tolerance that European regulators have had for pretty
Starting point is 00:29:01 wide variations of actual emissions or between actual emissions and test emissions, that tolerance is going away pretty quick. And it's going to be much tougher in Europe for companies to get by without actually doing what is required to keep emissions within legal limits. If regulators are wary about emissions, they have to be even more so about the prospect of self-driving cars on the road. When you talk to people in the industry, is there a a best guess as to when you factor in technology advances, when you factor in the pace of regulatory approval, is there a best guess as to when self-driving cars could be mainstream? Well, there are a lot of best guesses, and this is a hot topic. In fact, even here in Detroit,
Starting point is 00:29:54 as we speak, the Secretary of Transportation is about to announce that the federal government is going to try to put some more, allow some more flexibility on some of the vehicle safety rules to allow wider and more expansive testing of autonomous vehicles on the road. So to answer your question, the consensus appears to be that a limited hands-free driving, and I'm using that, I'm using that term kind of deliberately, because there's a lot of different definitions of autonomous driving that are floating around, and I'm a simple guy, and so here's what I want to know. can I take my hands off the wheel?
Starting point is 00:30:30 And over the next couple of years, several companies, GM, Audi, Mercedes, certainly Tesla is already doing it, will allow you to take your hands off the wheel under limited circumstances in a traffic jam on a highway on a traffic jam, so the car can kind of follow the car in front of it and stop and go. In highway driving where the car can see lane markers and keep itself positioned between those lane markers and operate safely. when will we get to the point where, and I think there may be a lot of your listeners are familiar with the video that Google shot a couple years ago of an autonomous car taking a blind man out for a sandwich at McDonald's, a really endearing and kind of a really smart and touching way to kind of say what's to say what's the goal here. That scenario, a car driving someone who's incapable of operating the vehicle safely himself or herself, from a point A to point B in a city, that's probably farther away than a lot of the kind of optimists believe,
Starting point is 00:31:34 because the complexity of doing that, doing it safely, and doing it in a way that will pass muster with regulators. And this is really important. Litigators, lawyers, automakers are very concerned about getting sued, right? The first one of these cars that hit somebody or goes off the road accidentally, there's going to be a giant lawsuit, enormous nervousness about that. It could be longer than a lot of people think before a fully autonomous car is something that you see every day. Two more questions, and then I'll let you go. Apple is doing their best to hide their electric car project. That's for sure.
Starting point is 00:32:11 Alon Musk recently made the comment. It's pretty hard to hide something when you hire 1,000 engineers to work on it. What is the sense in Detroit of Apple these days? Is there, how are traditional automakers looking at Apple? Is it something that they're concerned about right now, or do they think, we got plenty of competitors right now in 2016? Well, actually, both of those things are true. I mean, they do have a lot of competitors in 2016.
Starting point is 00:32:39 Just their own, within their own ranks, there's plenty to work on. The auto companies, I believe, are concerned about Apple, which explains, in part explains all the activity just this month and over the past couple of years by many of the big car companies to demonstrate to their investors and to their, you know, and to potential customers that they're in the game when it comes to electric vehicles, in the game when it comes to autonomous technology, in the game when it comes to connectivity and keeping you connected on the road to the mobile internet. they want to basically establish or reestablish barriers to entry
Starting point is 00:33:23 uh... so that companies like apple uh... can't come in and and eat their lunch i mean that the concern is that apple will create a uh... of a vehicle that that is branded as an you know that you think of as an apple product and where's who needs ford who needs Chevrolet so i do think that apple probably
Starting point is 00:33:44 uh... will have will find the auto business more complex than some of its fans would think. It's a highly regulated industry. A cell phone is not a car. Even an electric car is a far more complex gadget than anything that Apple produces today. So quite where Apple will shake out in this, who knows, but Elon Musk got to know, he lives and works in the same community, and Apple has tried to hire away a number of his people. And they could be a formidable competitor, because honestly, if Apple really wanted to be in the car business, they could take out a checkbook, just about any one of them that they might have, and write a check and buy
Starting point is 00:34:25 Fiat Chrysler. They could do it today. Was there any feature on any vehicle that you've seen so far at this year's Detroit Auto Show that made you think, you know what, the next vehicle I buy, I want that thing to be in it? You know, that's a really good question, and I honestly can't say that I saw anything that just wowed me like that. And I, and, and there was not a real knockout product at the Detroit show. There's some very, very nice products. The new Lexus luxury coupe is a beautiful looking automobile. I'll say, so I'll give a little shout out though to Honda. Honda relaunched the Ridgeline pickup, and again, some of your listeners may have been lucky enough
Starting point is 00:35:12 to see one of these things. It's kind of like seeing a taradactyl. They didn't sell very many of them. But they've redesigned this truck, but if I wanted a pickup truck or needed a pickup truck, I would love to have a Honda Ridgeline. Why? Because in the back, in the load bed, they've engineered a deep, cooler-sized well. Oh. With a drain in the bottom. So this thing is when you're next tailgating party, you've got a built-in beer tub with a drain in the bottom.
Starting point is 00:35:43 You can fill it up with ice and put the beverage of your choice in there. I just thought, well, that's pretty fun. That's a cool feature. It's not very high tech. It's just kind of an ingenious, an ingenious thing put in to kind of acknowledge that, yeah, you know, a lot of people use a pickup truck as a basis for a party. You want to know what's going on in the automotive industry. Follow Joe White on Twitter, read his stuff online.
Starting point is 00:36:06 Joe, thanks so much for being here. Sure, anytime. Coming up, we'll give an inside look at the stocks on our radar. This is Motley Full Money. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money.
Starting point is 00:36:45 I'm Chris Hill and joining me in studio once again, Jason Moser, Matt Argusinger, and Ron Gross. Just a couple of minutes to get to the stocks on our radar this week. Ron Gross, what do you got? Well, this is relatively easy in light of the market turmoil that we find ourselves in. So I recommend picking your favorite well-run company in either starting composition or adding to it. And I'm going to go with the Big Daddy of Mall and say Berkshire Hathaway, BRKB, $125 a share, down 7% this year, down 17% over the last year. Shares are now trading at 1.3 times book value. Warren Buffett himself says Berkshire would be buying backstock at 1.2
Starting point is 00:37:21 times, so we're approaching that all-important measure. I think it's a great time to buy Berkshire. Jason Moser? Yeah, Berkshire Hathaway crossed my radar, Ron. I thought you'd like that. I'm going to go with one. I've tapped here before. It's called XPO Logistics. The ticker is EXPO. But they are in transportation, logistics, primarily trucking and freight brokerage. Sounds sexy. It is. It's extremely sexy world of trucking and logistics. But the smart leadership in Bradley Jacobs, who has been around for a long time, made a number of acquisitions, not only in this industry, but the energy industry as well. Very big market opportunity, and
Starting point is 00:37:58 the price has taken a bit of a hit lately. So it's one that's back on my radar to take a look at Mattie? I know Jason's going to love this. I like Twitter, ticker, TWTR. It is just down all-time highs now, or sorry, all-time lows now. And I would just say, if you look at digital advertising, digital advertising for the first time is going to exceed TV advertising this year. A lot of that is going to Facebook, Alphabet, but a lot of it's also going to go to Twitter.
Starting point is 00:38:23 And I just think they're really going to benefit. I see it everywhere. It's huge in the media. So under- underrated. Let's bring in our man, Steve Broido, from the other side of the glass. Steve, we've got about 30 seconds. Berkshire Hathaway, XPL logistics, Twitter, any of those you want to put on your watch list? Berkshire sounds pretty enticing right now. That sounds a good argument on.
Starting point is 00:38:41 You're not already a shareholder of birth. Not yet. This is a perfect time. All right, Ryan Gross, Jason Moser, Matt Argusinger. Guys, thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, Supernova Radio.Fool.com. Check it out for more information on our Supernova service. That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Full Money. Shows mixed by Rick Engdall, our engineer Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We will see you next week.

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