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I might have chemical burns on my tongue. Let's just start there. Don't be alarmed, Jackson.
C
Oh, no.
B
This is the Barren Streetwise podcast. I'm Jack Howe, listening in. Our audio producer, Jackson Cantrell. This is a fireball situation and as you know, I've developed a little bit of a problem with the fireballs.
C
And to make this clear, this isn't the little bottles that they sell at the gas station. This is the candy.
B
That's right. That's an important thing to lay down right from the beginning. Yeah. No. A colleague brought in a big canister of the candies and I started popping like a couple a day. And I'm up to let's say five. I'm not. If after five, I'm not counting. And you can get a little bit numb after a while. So I was looking up whether like I looked up, can you have too many fireballs? And there's something, the heat comes from something called cap. Capsaicin cap. I might not be pronouncing that right.
C
Kept sassing. I think you went on to WebMD about your fireball habit.
B
So I went to the emergency room. No. Yeah, I just. On the Internet and it comes from peppers and that's where the heat comes from. And it said. Yeah, you know, sometimes you have. You might have to take a break.
C
Okay, nice.
B
So I took a day off, but I'm back. This episode is not just about fireballs. Although I am going to talk about a fireball related stock recommendation that comes from Wall street. Let's say a food coloring related recommendation mostly. We're going to talk after that about the 10 cheapest stocks in the S&P 500.
C
Wait, I thought you just said stocks were. We did that stocks are expensive last week.
B
That's not inconsistent. Right. I said the market is more expensive than it looks. And I gave you some reasons. But these are the stocks that are the cheapest in the market. And really when I say the cheapest, it's a screen I ran for price Earnings ratios. And that's not the be all end all of whether a stock is cheap. I like to look once in a while for the things that are the most broken in the stock market and try to figure out why they're broken and whether they're going to stay broken. And I think some of the returns we're going to talk about might surprise you. Just as a, as a teaser, the cheapest on the list is up more than 500% over the past year. I know what you're thinking. Doesn't that mean it's no longer in the cheap category? Well, no, it doesn't mean that you'll be surprised. Like I said. Okay. Sensient Technologies, the ticker there is SXT. UBS initiated coverage of that company and predicted 30% upside for stockholders. This is a small cap company. The past decade's returns have been pretty disappointing. But there's this sweeping movement afoot now to replace artificial dyes and foods with natural ones. And there is good money to be made in that. What happens is the natural stuff isn't as vibrant as the artificial stuff. So it takes eight to ten times as much of it to do the job. And Sentient is poised to cash in on that new volume.
C
I guess their options are either swap out the dye and use more of it or we, we end up with a great Bayesianing of all.
B
Because you take out the, the vibrant, the vibe. Right. Well, it's funny you say that because if you've ever seen a box of Froot Loops spelled F R O O T Froot Loops, but not here in the US in Canada. And they, they show sometimes pictures side by side with a bowl of American Froot Loops and Canadian and, and the Canadian ones, they, they've gotten rid of the artificial colors up there and they look like they're the color of, you know, those Terra chips where the chips are made, the chips are made from like sweet potatoes. Yeah.
C
They look like vegetables.
B
It should, they just change the name to Root Vegetable Loops because that's what it looks like. And that might fly in Canada but I don't think you're going to be able to sell earthy looking breakfast cereal like that in the U.S. so the challenge for manufacturers is you got to figure out a way to do this and still keep your, your food popping for the people who like those bright colors. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The Sweet heat marbles that have stolen my free will, my fireballs, they contain something called red number 40. I'm sure we've all seen that. And I have heard that that could be doing meaningful harm. And I've heard that it's doing no harm at all. People are divided on the matter. Same goes for Yellow Number five. They're both made from petroleum. They're both approved in the US for food and drugs and cosmetics. In Europe, natural colorants have already taken over 80% of the market. But in the US the natural stuff is only 30% of the market. But it's rising. This topic is a passionate one for many people. I wouldn't describe myself as a natural foods guy. My wife likes to stock our kitchen with raw almond butter and artisan orange peel marmalade and flourless sprouted grain bread. And I recently felt like making a PB and J. And I saw all of that stuff and then I ran out to the store for Jif and Smuckers and wonder.
C
You should have just cut out the middleman and got an uncrustable.
B
That's right. You ever see someone eat an uncrustable while leaving the crust of the uncrustable behind? Because that's the thing that's happening out there. Anyhow, my point here is that I'm a bad person. In our Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He's made phasing out red 40 and yellow 5 a central part of the Make America Healthy Again movement. I think there's momentum for that. It's always hard to pin these things down because the current administration came out with something in support of another controversial food chain chemical, one that's found in Roundup Weed Killer. I don't have a position on either of these things. Sometimes I try to predict which way the political winds will blow, but I'm not very good at it. But for years I've heard parents say that foods with artificial dyes make their kids hyperactive. And I believe these parents and in Europe, products with these dyes have to carry warning labels to that effect. I've seen claims of even more worrisome health effects than that. I have no idea. There is a totally different colorant unrelated to red 40. It's called Red Number 3. It's made from iodine, not petroleum. And that was banned for some uses starting in 1990 due to studies that linked very high doses to thyroid tumors in rats. What matters most for our purposes here is what shoppers want. And enough of them are demanding cleaner ingredients that food companies are responding. Pepsi, Nestle, J.M. smucker, Hershey, Kraft, Heinz, General Mills, Kellogg. These companies and more have announced Plans to phase out artificial colorants mostly by the end of this year. And next year, stores like Walmart and Target are cracking down, too. And California and West Virginia are banning artificial colors in school meals. You can't just flip a switch on this stuff if you're a food company. As we were saying, you don't want your breakfast cereal to come out looking too earthy and dull. You also don't want it tasting like veggies. If it's supposed to taste like fruit, you have to find colorants that won't hurt your sales or fade.
C
Although I'm a fan of beets, so I'm not sure I'd mind.
B
So, anyone out there who wants to do beat loops? Well, we'll come to beets in a moment. Beets play a pivotal role here. If you're going to make a big change like this or these massive food companies, you have to have colorant dealers whose supply chains can respond quickly to what you want. And that brings us to Sentient. It's a vertically integrated company, down to proprietary crop breeding that gives it an advantage. The company started as a whiskey and gin dealer more than 140 years ago. During Prohibition, it leaned heavily on selling its yeast, and today it sells mostly flavors and colors for food, cosmetics, and drugs. Back in 2000, it changed its name from Universal Foods. It is not a fast growing company, at least not up until now. In recent years, it's been growing sales by about 3% a year on average. But UBS reckons it'll achieve 10% yearly sales growth over the next five years, mostly from the shift to natural colorants. This year, sales are pegged at $1.7 billion, up 8% from last year. Sension has about $100 million in exposure to artificial colorant sales, but it figures it can convert that to 10 times as much in natural colorant sales. Shares recently traded at 25 times this year's earnings forecast. You mentioned Beats, Jackson. It turns out Sentient has a product called Super Red that can produce these really vivid shades of red that might be something for my fireballs, and that's made using the company's proprietary Uber Beat technology. That. That word is taken. Uber Beat. Don't try to use that.
C
Every idea I have has already been taken. That's too bad.
B
There is another natural red that I read about in the company site called Carmine. Have you ever heard of that? Carmine?
C
I have not.
B
Well, we're gonna end this bit on a fun fact, then. Carmine has been around for ages. In fact, the British, the Redcoats used it for their uniforms during the American Revolution, and it's still used widely today, including in foods. My only hesitation about Carmine and Jackson, you know me, I try not to be fussy. It turns out that it's made from something called. And again, I hope I'm pronouncing this right. Cochineal insects.
C
Wow.
B
The official name for the entomologists out there is Dactylopius coccus. These are apparently tiny, scaly sapsuckers that like to live on prickly pearl cacti. And the cacti are grown for that purpose in Mexico and Peru and Chile. And the cochineals are collected by hand, and then they're dried and crushed into powder so that their carminic acid can be extracted for dye. And sension says that carmine could be the new Red 3 or Red 40.
C
Oh, my gosh.
B
I'll give you a quote. You're. You're saying your mouth is watering.
C
I know. I just seen From Vegetable to Bug Fruit Loops. Now that's cool. That might get kids interested.
B
Well, as the company's senior technical director explains in an article, quote, at one point, the insect source of cochineal was under some scrutiny. But lately, insects are an emerging food trend.
C
Not in this household.
B
I guess I'll leave you. I guess there's all kinds of possibilities for my fireballs. I'm stocking up with the red 40 ones, but let's see what happens down the road. By the way, the atomic fireballs have been discontinued by the manufacturer. Did you know that? That's a not fun fact. Okay, sorry to end on a down note. Stock up while you can, folks.
C
Was it the red dye?
B
I don't think it's the red dye. I think it might be just lack of popularity. I don't see anyone else out there carrying around a big bag of fireballs.
C
It's just me, but I'm gonna send you a picture, Jack, just because it has something to do with what we're talking about. It's for my fourth grade birthday.
B
Oh, man. Look. What is this? What is this? How old are you in this picture?
C
Isn't that crazy? I must have just turned 10, I guess it's in fourth grade and we'd done the Revolutionary War unit.
B
Oh, my Lord. Look at your uniform. You're in full. You're a red coat. I mean, you got everything. This is such a professional looking.
C
Get the wig, the tricorn hat, and boots that are probably five sizes too big. And the slip.
B
And you dressed as one of the red Coats.
C
I don't know why, but. Yeah, apparently I know why.
B
I know why. I got to think, I. Maybe I. Maybe I shouldn't put this out there. I mean, they had better uniforms, right? They're just flashier. I mean, they were. They were out there with those bold red uniforms. I mean, that's a look. I don't know if it's what you want in the woods. I don't think that's necessarily.
C
I take their side on fashion only.
B
Where do you get a uniform like this? Where'd you get it?
C
Yeah, this was a costume shop near Burbank, Right.
B
And you went in and you said to the fellow at the counter, hey, mister, I'd like to be a Revolutionary War soldier. And he said, I see, young man, you'd like to look like an American patriot. And you said, not exactly. Guess. Guess again. All right, that brings us to the 10 cheapest stocks in the S&P 500. Let's do a couple of them now. Then we'll take a break, then we'll come back with the rest. I'll tell you two things right off the top. Number one, this is not, I repeat, not a sound investment strategy. This is not me saying, hey, buy these 10 cheapest stocks in the S&P 500. They must be a great deal. You can't just do that. It's an overly simplistic approach. But the second thing I'll tell you is it's worth pretty darn well recently. If you pulled up the 10 lowest PE stocks a year ago. And put equal dollar amounts in each. You'd have made 70%. With dividends, you'd have beaten the S&P 500 by 49 points. If you had done it two years ago, you'd have outperformed by nine points. Five years ago, you were ahead by 73 points. And if you did this 10 years ago. You beat the market by more than 300 points. That's nuts. I think it also has to be a fluke. I think the PE is a pretty simplistic signal of value. And the cheapest stocks in the market aren't always or aren't usually the best stocks. I'll come in a little while to why the cheapest stocks have done so well. But let me start with the cheapest one on the list. And really, of course, when I say cheap, I just mean lowest pe. I can't tell you whether this stock is going higher from here. The stock is Micron Technology, and they make memory. And it's up 520% in a year, and it trades at 4.4 times earnings. That compares with just over 20 times earnings for the S P 500. How can a stock that's up 520% a year still trade at 4.4 times earnings?
C
It must have traded at 0.9 times earnings last year.
B
Well, you would think so. What's actually happened is you can get a low PE ratio by having either a low P or a high E or both at the same time. But you can also have a rising P with an E that's just rising a whole lot faster. And that's what's happening in this case. Did that make sense, Jackson? I didn't mean to bring fractions that fractions make people angry.
C
Denominator is growing faster than the numerator.
B
You're making them angrier. No one likes the word denominator. Let me show you what I mean. Memory, of course, is in fierce demand for AI data centers. And that's led to shortages and soaring prices. And so Micron is a company that never earned more than $12 a share. The highest year for earnings was back in, I believe, 2018, and it was $11 and change. But earnings for this fiscal year, which runs through August, they're pegged at $56 and change. And for next year, $93 and change. And that compares with just over $8 last year. So earnings are just multiplying rapidly for this company because of the increased demand and the high prices. And if we were willing to pay anything more than $0 for music royalties, we'd start playing lion eyes from the Eagles. Because that's basically the approach I think investors are taking to this stock. They see the earnings, they see that the stock looks cheap. But they say my eyes deceive me. Or at least I have seen enough semiconductor booms in the past that fizzled. I'm not going to be fooled by this one. I'm not going to jump in with this stock up 500%. So the stock stays at 4 times earnings. But then gradually, investors come around and the stock keeps climbing. I don't know whether that will continue.
C
And I don't think that whole thing would make a very good song.
B
It's going to be a tough rhyming job. You can't hide your lion eyes from our 2.8 terabyte per second massive data throughput. Now, see, throughput is a tough one,
C
too, that in semiconductors.
B
So that's Micron stock. It's basically climbing. If not a wall of worry, a wall of disbelief, a Wall of distrust. A wall of I ain't going to be the last person paying these prices for Micron stock just before the whole AI theme collapses. But of course, there are many sensible people arguing quite reasonably that this AI spending spree has much longer to run. So we'll see. By the way, all this AI spending has done something similar to shares of a hard drive maker called Western Digital. You need a lot of hard drive storage in those AI data centers. This stock is not on the lowest PE list, but it was on it a decade ago and since then it has returned more than a thousand percent. That's one reason why I think the low peers have done so well over the past decade. Another reason is a company called United Rentals that was on the list is no longer on the list. It has cashed in on a trend toward companies borrowing rather than buying construction equipment. Let me tell you one more stock that is on the list and a couple that have graduated off of the list. We've talked about all these names recently. General Motors. That's 6.2 times earnings and it is no stranger to the lowest PE list. But we should point out that stock has also returned 68% over the past year and 100% 27% over the past three years. It has easily beaten the market. GM is generating a lot of cash by focusing on pricey trucks and sport utility vehicles. Demand for those is pretty solid. I know vehicles have gotten so expensive they're difficult to afford. But there's been this split that we've seen in a lot of parts of the economy. Higher income folks are still buying and car companies are catering to them. And that's keeping their costs down and their margins up. So maybe GM will even be able to gain its way off of this list at some point. That's what's happened to Delta Airlines and United Airlines. We talked about them recently. They would have easily made a list of the 10 lowest PE stocks in the S&P 500 a decade ago. Even with this recent price spike for jet fuel, those two companies are generating tons of cash. In fact, if this proves a difficult period for weaker airlines, it might actually benefit those two in the long run. Anyhow, that's two companies down, eight to go. But we're going to tear through those eight. What if we take a quick break here? Jackson, you go see if that red coat uniform still fits and we'll be right back.
C
I wonder if my parents still have that.
A
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Welcome back. We're not just talking about cheap stocks. We're talking about the cheapest stocks, or at least the lowest PE stocks in the S&P 500. I screen for those every once in a while and mostly an act of morbid curiosity, although a bunch of them have done well lately, especially some ones from the list. In recent years, there have been some structural changes that have gone on in autos and airlines and some of these formerly humble semiconductor pockets like memory and hard drives. Let's pick up with our list. I'm going to go through most of these quickly. I don't have much to say about most of them. Have you heard of Global Payments or Fiserv? Global Payments is 4.7 times earnings and Fiserv is 7 times earnings. And they do pretty much the same thing. They're part of fintech, which is supposed to be exciting, but they're in the least exciting part of it, which is processing card payments for merchants. These companies are heavily indebted, but they're also generating plenty of free cash. They've done some deal making in the past. I have to believe that the goal now is to use that free cash to pay down the debt going forward based on the valuations. Investors don't seem super jazzed about this line of work. We'll see how it goes for them. There are two insurance companies that made the list, Prudential Financial and a reinsurer called Everest Group. Prudential's 6.9 times earnings. Everest is 6.3 times earnings. You have to be careful about judging insurance companies by price to earnings ratios. It's more common to judge them by price to book value ratios. Earnings for them can be lumpy.
C
Is that because of natural disasters or the patterns of paying out reinsurance? Or is that for other reasons?
B
Sometimes they have to take big charges because of stuff like that. Sometimes they release excess money into earnings. Generally, insurance companies make money two ways. They sell coverage for something, which means that their goal is to charge you more than they're going to end up paying out on average. But of course there's often a big time difference between when you pay them and when they pay you. So the second way they make money is by taking that float of funds that are available to them and investing it. So their prosperity can be sensitive to things like changes in interest rates and how well investment markets are doing. Also how competitive their particular industry is, whether there are rivals that are pricing low in order to gain market share. Anyhow, the only thing I'll point out about those is that Prudential has by far the highest dividend yield on the list, 5.8%. I do want to mention cable companies. Charter Communications is on the list 5.2 times earnings. We know the cable companies have been losing pay TV customers to streaming that's been going on for years. The thought initially was that's okay. They don't mind that so much because as they lose pay TV customers, they're going to keep broadband cable customers, people who are paying the cable company for their fast Internet service at home. That can actually be a higher margin business for cable companies. When you buy pay TV service, the cable company has to then pay the TV networks to include them. But when you're buying broadband, more of that money goes to the cable company. However, telecom loves this business too and is making inroads with fiber optic service, which is faster than coaxial service. What happened was the phone companies went through this massive spending period to upgrade their networks for 5G. They were also competing fiercely on price. Both of those have subsided. They're not spending as much, they're not competing quite as fiercely, and the free cash flow in that business is great. And that's leaving a lot of money to be put to work on something. And they have decided that the best something is fiber optic broadband. And so they're rapidly expanding their networks and they're able to bundle that service with their wireless service. And that makes wireless stickier. Meaning you might be willing to jump from company to company with your cell phone service, but you're probably going to stick with a company that's providing your broadband for a while. You probably don't think about that company that much. And if you have the two on a bundle with a discount, you might be more likely to stay with the same company for wireless for longer. So the phone companies really like that business. And that means the cable companies are under fire now for basically both of the ways they make a living. And that's got investors pretty pessimistic about those shares. Have you heard of gen digital? That's 6.8 times earnings. That's a mashup of two players in home cybersecurity. The companies are Avast and something called Norton Lifelock. This company is growing, but it's also heavily indebted. There was a big run up over the past decade for shares of enterprise cyber security giants like Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike. Gen Digital did not participate in that, but it has participated in much of the recent downside for these stocks on AI disruption fears.
C
Did you hear about the latest AI cybersecurity news from this week?
B
Anthropic?
C
Yes, from Anthropic.
B
Yeah, we're historian Barrons. You explain it while I pop in this fireball.
C
Anthropic's developing this new model called Mythos. And in the development they decided to delay its release because it was finding very dangerous cybersecurity bugs in software that's been out for 20 years, 25 years, like Linux for example. And now they're so worried about releasing it to the public that they've given it to CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks as well as Amazon and Apple to test out before they release.
B
That's the kind. Let me take my Fireball out. Hold on. That's the kind of thing that's going on in this industry. Like investors are having a hard time figuring out whether AI helps or hurts and maybe it does both, right?
C
Yeah, exactly. The question there is, hey, if these AI models are finding these security vulnerabilities, maybe your security system is just asking your latest version of Anthropic to find all your vulnerabilities and fix them for you.
B
But of course the argument from the cybersecurity companies will be we're on top of it. We're using AI to get even better. Next up on the list is a company called AES and we can cross it off the list immediately. It's five times earnings. It's a debt heavy utility. But it also recently agreed to a buyout by BlackRock's Mobile Infrastructure Partners and other investors.
C
So if my count is correct, that's number nine. That leaves one more left.
B
There is just one last stock left and it is Viatris. I don't know if we've ever talked about this stock. I've written about it in the past.
C
I think I've heard. Is it the EpiPen company? Right. They changed their name because as I
B
wrote in Barron's, this company, it began trading in November 2020. It might as well have been named Hate Sponge Incorporated. I think, I mean, maybe it's just me. I think this was, was one of the most loathed companies out there. There was a drug company called Myelin and they were best known for buying, not creating, but buying EpiPen. Do we all know what that is? It's a life saving injector for severe allergic reactions. And I think it's commonly associated with like, you know, kids who have a nut allergy and they have a reaction and their life's in jeopardy and you give them this pen and they can live. Well, Milam bought this pen and then multiplied the price sevenfold in under a decade. Now, I mean, I'm all for capitalism, but yeah, that's the kind of thing that doesn't sit well with, I mean, picture the parents out there. Of course you don't wait until you need this thing to buy it. So if you're a parent of a kid who has allergies, you have to stock these things and they expire. There's a shelf life. So, you know, and they sell them in two packs. So at one point it was, you know, six or seven hundred dollars for a two pack. And you have to buy them every so often because you don't want to have one past expiration. And then even parents whose young children don't have allergies read. Well, sometimes you have one of these reactions for the first time and you didn't know your kid was allergic, so you better have these pens on hand. Anyhow, I'm just saying that it felt like kind of a burden to these people who had to buy these things. Okay, so that was the old company, Mylan. So what they did was they merged that together with part of Pfizer probably was, I call it the ugliest, the least exciting part of Pfizer at the time, which was called Upjohn. And Upjohn had these former blockbuster drugs that were now off patent. They were for things like cholesterol and impotence and arthritis and depression and they were generating tons of cash. So they merged that business together with Mylan. And the idea was to use all this free cash flow to produce new and growing drugs. And I think a side benefit was you get a company with a new name and maybe over time people forget about the whole EpiPen price hike thing. And it doesn't help their cause, me reminding you here, but I think their strategy is, I'm not gonna say it's working, but I certainly don't feel anywhere near as disgusted over Viatris as I once did over Mylan. And I noticed that if you look at consensus estimates on Wall Street, Viatris's earnings per share are expected to grow slightly this year for the first time since the merger back in 2020, the estimates have been slipping a little bit. So let's see if that actually happens. So maybe Viatris will one day be able to work its way off the cheapest of the cheapies list, too.
C
If you had to buy one of these stocks, which one would it be?
B
Now you're asking this because you know that my instincts on this sort of thing are not good. And so you're gonna use this as a contrarian indicator. Have I got that right?
C
But think about the clicks. The picks get the clicks.
B
Don't tell me that that's something that.
C
That's what I. I'm saying it right now.
B
I mean, I do like that big giant dividend on Prudential with Micron. The thing to do is to jump into the price momentum. But I'm always too chicken for a thing like that. That global payments, that's. That's like almost boring enough to work. But I like the idea of Viatris going from shrinking earnings to growing earnings, even if it looks like meager growth to begin with. Maybe that's something that investors will reward it for. That seems like the safest pick. The safest pick from a bunch of picks that are definitely not safe. Okay, so don't. This, by the way, I'm not picking it. All right? Don't run out and put little Timmy or Susie's college fund in Viatris, because you heard it on a podcast, but you could look into it on your own if you like. What about you, Jackson? Is there one of these that appeals to you or you don't like any of them?
C
I like cable. Yeah. Just because it sounds like such a bad idea on the tin that it's gotta be good. I'll say. I miss cable. I miss all those shows. I don't watch enough of those.
B
You like cable? I was gonna say. I don't think I've ever heard those three words together like that.
C
How would you describe a show like Storage wars and Ice Road Truckers and that? So I miss watching those.
B
I think I know what you mean. Well, those are reality shows, right, but not like the Kardashian kind of ones. Those are like. Like one of my favorites was a bunch of people with beards. Well, the men had beards and they were in Maine and they were restoring cabins. And the title is something like that Main Cabin people, you know, and as I'VE mentioned before, I like the ones with all the fishermen. The Wicked tuna. I was a big wicked tuna guy for a long time. Did you know there's a wicked tuna video game?
C
No way.
B
Told you that yet? Oh yeah. Spotted it at A what's the place where they had the restaurant? The D and B something D and B?
C
Dave and Buster's.
B
Dave and Buster's. Yeah, I was thinking Dun and Bradstreet. That's a Wall street brand from a thousand years ago.
C
That's a much less fun bar.
B
There's a wicked tuna video game and it's got all my favorite wicked tuna fishermen like saying their things in the game. I played it with my daughter. She beat me.
C
Well, I'm long wicked tuna and that
B
is my hottest tip of this week's episode. Get your get yourself around a wicked tuna over at Dave and Buster's before you know, while the getting's good. And when I'm giving fishing video game recommendations, that means it's time to wrap up. So thank you all for listening. Jackson Cantrell is our producer. If you have a question you'd like played and answered on the podcast, go ahead and send it in. It could be in a future episode. Just use the voice memo app on your phone. Send it to Jack Howe. That's h o u g h ehrens.com you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen. And if you listen on Apple, you can write us a review. Jackson, why don't you fire up your AI jukebox and play us out with let's say an Eagle style semiconductor song and we'll see you all next week. Denominator growing faster than you do.
C
Think 520 up and still it's dirty cheap. The old timers remember when the chips came down. You can short anytime you like, but
B
you can never leave. Welcome to the Hotel My Crown, California. Such a lovely price, such a lovey nice plenty of room at Hotel Micron California. What a nice surprise. Can't hide your lion eyes.
A
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Date: April 10, 2026
Host: Jack Hough
Producer/Co-Host: Jackson Cantrell
This episode of Barron's Streetwise dives into the "cheapest" stocks in the S&P 500, with host Jack Hough and producer Jackson Cantrell exploring what it actually means for a stock to be “cheap” (primarily by price-to-earnings, or PE, ratio), why certain stocks land in this category, and whether cheap stocks make good investments. The episode also explores the sweeping trend of replacing artificial food colorants with natural alternatives, highlighting a small cap with growth potential. Lively, humorous banter is woven throughout discussions of sometimes serious market developments.
(00:30 - 03:43)
Quote:
"There's this sweeping movement afoot now to replace artificial dyes in foods with natural ones. And there is good money to be made in that... Sentient is poised to cash in on that new volume."
— Jack Hough, (02:01)
(03:43 - 11:36)
Quote:
"Carmine has been around for ages. In fact, the British, the Redcoats used it for their uniforms during the American Revolution, and it's still used widely today, including in foods...it turns out that it's made from something called...cochineal insects."
— Jack Hough (10:05)
(13:11 - 15:28)
Quote:
"If you pulled up the 10 lowest PE stocks a year ago...you'd have made 70%. With dividends, you'd have beaten the S&P 500 by 49 points...Ten years ago...you beat the market by more than 300 points. That's nuts. I think it also has to be a fluke."
— Jack Hough (14:06)
(15:28 - 17:47)
Quote:
"How can a stock that's up 520% a year still trade at 4.4 times earnings? ...Earnings are just multiplying rapidly for this company because of the increased demand and the high prices."
— Jack Hough (15:33)
(17:48 - 19:10)
(20:54 - 22:31)
(22:31 - 23:57)
(23:57 - 25:58)
(25:58 - 27:11)
6.8x earnings. Result of a merger between Avast and Norton Lifelock.
Heavily indebted, not appreciated in the AI/cybersecurity boom—more downside recently.
Sidebar: AI disruption in cybersecurity (26:04)
Quote:
"Investors are having a hard time figuring out whether AI helps or hurts and maybe it does both, right?"
— Jack Hough (26:43)
(27:11 - 27:33)
(27:37 - 30:52)
Quote:
"It began trading in November 2020. It might as well have been named Hate Sponge Incorporated. I mean, maybe it's just me. I think this was, was one of the most loathed companies out there... they multiplied the price [of EpiPens] sevenfold in under a decade."
— Jack Hough (27:51)
On price-to-earnings ratios:
"I like to look once in a while for the things that are the most broken in the stock market and try to figure out why they're broken and whether they're going to stay broken."
— Jack Hough (02:12)
On investing in the cheapest stocks:
"This is not, I repeat, not a sound investment strategy... but the second thing I'll tell you is it's worked pretty darn well recently."
— Jack Hough (13:13)
On the cable industry:
"You like cable? I was gonna say. I don't think I've ever heard those three words together like that."
— Jack Hough (32:19)
(30:52 - 34:21)
The episode blends breezy, humorous banter with accessible, data-driven stock analysis. The hosts maintain a self-aware, skeptical tone toward Wall Street dogma—mixing skepticism about “cheap” stock screens with clear explanations for outperformance, and practical risk caveats.
This episode is a must-listen for investors curious about low PE strategies, changing industry trends, and the intersection of consumer preferences and investment opportunities (from food dyes to AI chips). Jack and Jackson offer up colorful stories, straight talk, and memorable market lessons—without taking themselves too seriously.